Details of the Royal Mullins Lines of Scotland & France
Anne Keith Walker was the first immigrant to the American colonies in our lineage to the royal lines of Scotland and France. She was born in 1674 in Aberdeen, Scotland[i], and immigrated to the colonies at the age of 11 in the company of her sister Elizabeth and her parents Rev. George Keith and Elizabeth […]
King Duncan I of Scotland & Macbeth
We have a long-ago ancient ancestor, King Duncan I of Scotland, a relatively obscure and ineffectual king who reigned a millennium ago from 1032-1040. He was killed at the Battle of Bothnagowan on August 14, 1040, by an army led by Mac Bethad Mac Findláich (Macbeth in English), allowing Macbeth to assume the crown of […]
George Johnston of that Ilk of Caskieben
Dr. William Johnston
Dr. William Johnston was a physician and first Professor of Mathematics at Marischal College from 1626 until his death in 1640. He was married to a cousin, his mother’s niece Barbara Forbes, and had 3 children: one son, Thomas, who predeceased his father in 1636, and two daughters, Anna and Elizabeth. Dr. Johnston was proprietor […]
Elizabeth Johnston
Elizabeth Johnston (bef. 1640 – betw. 1704 & 1716) was a Scottish Quaker missionary and wife of Rev. George Keith, an early leader in the Scottish Quaker movement. Elizabeth and her mother, Barbara Forbes, became very involved in the nascent Quaker movement in Aberdeen as early as 1663[i]. Elizabeth was a personal friend of William […]
John Willson, Sr.
Little is known about the parents of Benjamin Willson, UEA: John Willson (?-1761) and Ester Haun (?-?). They were Scottish, and we do know that Benjamin was born in Scotland. We do not know his date of immigration to the American Colonies.
Our History During the English Clearances
During the 18th and 19th centuries in Scotland, most farmers rented their land from wealthy landowners. Beginning in 1762, started by Admiral John Ross of Balnagowan Castle in Scotland, landowners began making “improvements” to their land to make room for more profitable sheep grazing in place of farming. Families were driven off the land they […]
A Proud Scot Declines a Sovereign and a Meal
The Bates family, one of the maternal branches of the Bonners, originated in Northumberland County, the northeastern-most county of England, on the Scottish border. Sir Ralph Bates (1734-1783) and Lady Anne Ellison were wealthy, landed gentry—they owned a large estate known as Milbourne Hall just north of Newcastle-upon-Tyne that had resided in the Bates family […]
The Anie In Callander Parish
Annie Willson Bonner‘s mother was Catherine McKinlay—she descended from Finlay McKinlay, a Scot who lived in the early 1600s. Finlay had 4 sons who started a farm called the Anie in Callendar parish in northern Scotland. These photos show some of the original walls from our ancestral farmhouse that are still standing almost 400 years […]
Robert Turnbull (Jr.)
Robert Turnbull (Jr.) was christened “Robert” in Midlothian in January 1809. He learned the tailor trade from his father, and immigrated to Canada in 1832, eventually finding his way to Elma, Galt, Ontario, in 1834, where he set up a tailor shop on West Main Street. Meanwhile, Helen Little’s family immigrated to Canada about the […]