June 24, 2024
In March of 1986 I married Susan Cook. Some years after that, she took to the recently invented world wide web to shake branches and pluck leaves from her and my family tree as posted on the website ancestry.com.
The results of her research have been a mix of frustration at poor, misleading, scrambled and false leads and dubious information as well as a few connections that have poured some meaning and ignited imagination and questions as to the stories, motivations and migrations of all who came before us. I encouraged her in her intermittent probes into the past, as I have come to believe firmly in the power of the story, the significance of being grounded in a family narrative.
With some surprise, in early 2024 we found ourselves planning a trip to Scotland with our grown progeny. Scotland, a land from whence we selected the name of our son Grant Benjamin during her second pregnancy. Clan Grant out of the Old World, it was a familial name of mystique and shared by some of my maiden Great Aunts who I met as a young teen, the Grants being descended from William MacDonald Grant, immigrant to Virginia of the New World in 1690.
One evening some years past, my wife was figuratively climbing around along the branches of her lineage only to find herself sitting on one of my family tree branches. "Oh Mark," she said in a hesitant tone, "I think one of my ancestors was married to one of yours," and then she definitely hesitated... "and, I think maybe my ancestor deserted your ancestor, having 'defiled the marriage bed;' or so the legend has it." I think we each pondered what this meant, had I married my 7th cousin of something?
Her initial research played out as follows (if one can fully trust the amateur genealogy found on the internet):
Susan Cook, daughter of Helen Cook (nee Mott), had discovered:
William Grant + (marries) Ann Mott in King George County, Virginia.
In the last will and testament of William MacDonald Grant,
King George County, Virginia, 24 of January, 1727.
He names three sons, John, William and Daniel. I leave my wife 1 shilling, "she being eloped from me and her basely abusing of me."
The mists of history and personal character waft away with new voices and new perspectives. William Grant was at best, a curmudgeon and scofflaw; let the records show, that said William Grant was summoned by the Grand Jury on 6th of June, 1717 to answer to the charge of being a common swearer [admittedly, I do not know what one has to do to be charged with being a 'common swearer', and I would be pleased if I found William Grant to be among those uncommon swearers] having sworn one oath on the First day of May past.
William ignored the summons, so at court on 3rd of July, 1717 was fined 5 shillings or 50 pounds of tobacco. As if that is not enough of a mark, he was also charged with refusing to attend the Church of England. It is said his affiliation was a Jacobite and sympathies ran with those who wished to restore the Stuart Roman Catholic royal lineage to the thrones of Scotland and England. Some researchers write, accurately or not, that his Jacobite sympathies made his stay in Scotland untenable after the Protestant defeat of Catholic forces at the Battle of Boyne in Ireland in 1690. Maybe.
For whatever reason, William MacDonald Grant left his homeland, turning his back on the place of his birth, Corrimony, Glen Urquhart, Inverness, Scotland. Yet, the Grant Clan was given the land surrounding Urquhart in the early 1500's by King James IV (a Stuart and Roman Catholic) of Scotland for their loyalty and to collect taxes in that realm for the King. However, by the late 1600's the loyalties of Clan Grant had shifted to staunchly Protestant William of Orange as he took the throne. The Grants holding Castle Urquhart against Jacobite uprisings on Loch Ness and part of Glen Urquhart where the hamlet of Corrimony still stands. William Grant's ties to the Jacobite uprisings does not not square with the greater historical background of his family affiliations. But, as we have found, history and the people in it are often confusing, conflicted and inscrutable to those of us with the internet in the 21st Century.
William Grant: Scoundrel or Man of Principle, opportunist or romantic bound to the celebrated Jacobite lost cause? He is my ancestor down and dirty in the roots of my family tree either way. Arriving in Norfolk, Virginia at 20 years of age, he did well in America. He died at age 64, one note says he was murdered, leaving land, slaves and furnishings to his heirs (except my wife's ancestor, William's wife Ann Mott), the heirs were left having to sort out this rich inheritance with his mistress.
That's my family story, my grounding narrative if you will, and I'm sticking with it - until firm evidence or powerful logic makes me recant.
*****
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| We cross an old stone bridge in search of Corrimony, ancestral origin of my Grant family relations. |
Having drifted but a mile or two down the tiny paved lane in our vehicle from the Chambered Cairn of Corrimony (see previous post), we were in search of my ancestor's home village, Corrimony, birthplace of William MacDonald Grant.
Like many things in Scotland, finding is not always as easy as I imagined. We find an occupied house or two or maybe three, some stone sheds, outbuildings that show to be of current agricultural use. We wander several paces up a road - or is it a driveway? With a shrug we figure we are in downtown Corrimony. If we can find a mid-17th Century building, perhaps it is the very place of William Grant's birth. I find buildings that look old to my American eye, but nothing that smacks of really old 17th Century.
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| So, Is this Corrimony? Yes, it seems to be. Google Map confirms. Gotta be right. |
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| Inga explores downtown Corrimony on a busy afternoon. Indeed, a young William Grant may have walked this very road before he sailed to America in 1690. |
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| The road to the Old Stables of Corrimony |
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| Sue looks into the past from the Corrimony Bridge |
We see no one in our brief Corrimony reconnaissance. We are a bit baffled, expecting perhaps a bit more. I shrug and chalk it all up to the fact that the place just never recovered after William left for America. William was a financial success in the New World - I'm not sure how much land, if any, he would have been heir to if he'd stayed in this half-a-horse town.
We have hope that we might find an old cemetery holding the bones of those Grants that remained in Scotland, enduring the fire, sword and famine visited upon the Highlands, suppressing and emptying the land after the final Jacobite uprising at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, sending Bonnie Prince Charlie and his cause into exile, to live on in the hearts of romantic believers in the lost cause.
We walk past wild rhododendrons blooming on the banks of the small rill at the edge of our lane. We travel to and open the creaky iron gate to Corriemony Cemetery. The graves are not as old as we had hoped and expected. Perhaps there is the ruin of an old church with the ancient graves somewhere in the overgrown low, green hills around us. We find no one to ask, we pass into the cemetery and read the headstones of those Grants, MacDonalds and sturdy Scots names laid out before us.
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| Inga holds open the old iron gate to Corriemony boneyard |
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| Moss-covered monuments rise above Glen Urquhart |
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| Likely distant relatives find peace in Clan Grant homeland |
I find a moving and an immense sense of time, misty distant connections and imperceptible whispers of pleasant ghosts to be my experience among the graves of these Grants. I find a vitality among the roots of my family tree in this place.
I am honored to come back to Corrimony 334 years after my ancestor William Grant left this land.
+++++
How I got here from there - and when I was there, how I came to be from here. (Ten generations as researched by Susan Suneson)
William MacDonald Grant (1670 Scotland-1734 Virginia) m. Ann Mott
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John Grant (1700-1762 Virginia) m. Lydia Barbee (1720 - 1799)
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John Kelly Grant (1756-1826 Virginia/Tennessee) m. Sarah Allgood
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James Grant (1792-1839 Virginia) m. Elizabeth Nelson
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John W. Grant (1822-1861 Virginia) m. Lucy Latham
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John R. Grant (1851-1920) m. Anna Clifton Eskew (1853-1931)
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Mary Latham Grant m. William Noah Keyser
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Janice Keyser (1903-1972) m. Warren Wilkin (1900-1958)
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Mary Lu Wilkin (1932-2019) m. Alfred Suneson (1931- )
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Mark Suneson (1957- ) m. Susan Cook (1958- )
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