Reunion: A Search for Ancestors

by Littrell, Ryan

  Too, we had enough heather to bring out, and we could stretch it upon the ground so that each soldier would have a place to sleep. We had water from the River Coe and from the mountains, and so they would not be thirsty.

  At dinner that first night, we asked them to our fires, and our whisky was brought to them. They thanked us, and some of the Gaels among them gave us a toast. Soon the salted meat was hung above the fire until cooked well. We offered it to them, and they took it kindly. They were hungry from their march, it was plain to see.

  Long after the meat was served, after the last one of them declined the last drink, we went to bed. In nearly every house, the last of us to retire needed to search for a space to lie down, laughing quietly, hoping not to stumble, for the soldiers were everywhere about the floor, their shoulders and heads and ankles. Aye, some of them snored.

  So it was, not only that first night, but for the nights afterward. With each evening, with each new serving of beef and lamb, with each new round of whisky, all began to speak a bit more openly, a bit more plainly. The first jokes were made about Jamie and Willie, and the first guarded opinions were aired. So many of the soldiers were Gaels, who soon began telling some of the old tales.

  We had our stories to tell, as well, and our bards recited the poems in our tongue while the Lowlanders and the Englishmen among them were given whispered summaries. When the first of the songs began, we knew we had made them comfortable, and every night after that, glances were met with smiles.

  From then on, we treated them to dancing after all of us had finished dinner. Our bagpipes played the old songs. When the pipers performed the Ceòl Mór, the Great Music, with its traversals and intricacies, the soldiers listened silently.

  We had the days with them, too, the mornings and afternoons after the fireside singing and drinking. The soldiers did drills for some of the time, but during most of the day, they were among us. We invited them to play shinty with us, and I should think the best men won. We had contests at archery, and, yes, some wagering. Now and then, some of the soldiers watched our women and children spin wool and make butter.

  Captain Robert Campbell, like the rest of them, came into a routine soon enough. Upon rising from his heather bed at Inverrigan and taking a bit of breakfast, he would go to visit his niece Sarah and his nephew Alasdair Og, Alasdair MacIain’s son. Sarah and Alasdair Og would welcome him into their house and give him a dram of whisky for the morning cold, and they would enjoy one another’s company for a time. The days were for the soldiers’ drilling, but each night, he would have dinner with Alasdair MacIain’s sons, playing cards and backgammon beside the hearth as the whisky was passed about.

  Campbell, then, was sitting with Alasdair Og and his older brother John on the evening of February 12th, after nearly two weeks with us. Dinner had been finished, and Campbell had rightly thanked the two MacIains for it. The three of them were playing cards and drinking whisky when they heard a knock upon the door. It was a messenger, carrying a letter from Campbell’s superior officer.

  Campbell opened it and read: “You are hereby ordered to fall upon the rebels, the MacDonalds of Glen Coe, and to put all to the sword under seventy.”

  CHAPTER 25

  ALIAS CAPIAS

  Hoping to discover the parents of my ancestor Angus McDonald in Virginia, I boarded a train in New York. We left in mid-morning, and before long I saw the Philadelphia skyline, and then the row houses of Baltimore. By lunch time, the Capitol Building was on the horizon, followed by the Washington Monument as we crossed the Potomac River. Soon we were out of the suburbs of northern Virginia, and the traffic thinned on the roads around us, and by late afternoon I was at my hotel in downtown Richmond.

  The next morning, I walked a few blocks down the street to the Library of Virginia and finished my coffee on the marble steps outside. Up another flight of stairs, I came to a big room, two stories high, with tall windows letting in the sun.

  It must have been obvious that I had no idea what I was doing, because a librarian approached me and offered to show me around. This room stored all the microfilm records and the reference books, she said, while that room on the other side of the stairs, the one I’d apparently passed by, stored all the county-specific texts. Now, right here was the desk where I could find archivists who might point me the right way, and here were the computers that were equipped for microfilm viewing, and over there, stored in row after row of white file cabinets, were the microfilm rolls, mostly organized by county.

  “All right, thank you very much,” I said.

  Right then, I didn’t know that county clerks in 18th century Virginia often didn’t take the time to compile useful things like indexes. So if you wanted to know what was contained in 700 pages of handwritten court records, you just might have to read through 700 pages of handwritten court records.

  Right then, walking toward the computers, I didn’t know that the fish and chips at the Penny Lane Pub on Franklin Street were pretty good, and the chicken fingers weren’t bad. Turkey sandwich at the Wall Street Deli? Not too shabby. The burritos at Cafe Olé were great for lunch, but the place was closed for dinner. Nice beer selection at the Capital Ale House, decent burgers.

  Right then, signing in at the desk and getting set up at the computer, I actually believed I’d be here in downtown Richmond for just a day or two.

  I went to the cabinets and found the A’s: Alleghany, Amelia, Amherst. The roll fit into the microfilm reader that was attached to the computer, and in a few seconds I was scrolling through the 1766 court records of Amherst County, Virginia, from one yellowed page to the next, like it was an online photo album.

  Reading through these court entries and deed books and wills, hour after hour, I found references to my Angus, but none of them revealed much about his origins or his family. I knew about each time he sued someone, each time he was sued himself, and the surveys detailed the location and dimensions of every piece of land he owned, but there were no clues about his parents, his siblings, his children.

  Still, maybe I’d find some hints in records from nearby counties. My Angus lived just across the border from Augusta County, on the other side of the Blue Ridge Mountains, so I decided to look there. Searching through the Augusta County land records, I found a February 1786 deed involving my Angus—and his wife Martha. This was the same Martha who was mentioned as Angus’ wife in 1795, and then again in 1803.

  Now, based on censuses, Kentucky marriage records and information from distant cousins, it was clear that my Angus’ 1826 will listed his children in order of birth, from the oldest to the youngest, and my ancestor John was last. Nancy, the one listed right before John, was born between 1782 and 1784, so John was probably born in the mid-1780s. His older sister Martha’s marriage record listed her mother’s name, and though it appeared to read “Patsy” (a nickname for Martha), there was a slight chance it read “Betsy” (a nickname for Elizabeth).

  But now that I knew my Angus was married to Martha in early 1786, I had no doubt that the marriage record really did read “Patsy,” and I never should have doubted my eyes anyway, and so Martha had to be the mother of those last few children listed in Angus’ will, including my ancestor John. She was probably the mother of all of them, which was why Angus referred to them, together, as “my first children.” I had a new ancestor, and I added her name to the upper-right corner of my family tree:

  I’d discovered Martha, but couldn’t find any other Augusta County records involving her or her husband Angus, and the McDonalds and McDaniels in that county didn’t seem to have a connection to my family. I looked all over Virginia for a marriage record, but there wasn’t one. From what I could tell, the two of them had just shown up in 1767 in Amherst County, already married, living apart from any relatives.

  But how did they get there, and where did they come from?

  I picked up my notebook, walked to the help desk, an
d asked for help. The archivist, a middle-aged man wearing a tie, listened as I told him that I’d gone through all these records, and didn’t know how my two ancestors came to this particular tract of land tucked under the Blue Ridge Mountains. Their land was in western Virginia, and so I imagined that they first lived in eastern Virginia and migrated westward.

  “Well, now,” he said, “that is possible, but there’s a much greater likelihood that they came from somewhere north, in fact.” In the 1750s and 1760s, most people who migrated to Amherst County and the other western counties along the Blue Ridge Mountains came from northern Virginia, western Maryland, and Pennsylvania. The bulk of the migration wasn’t from east to west, but from north to south, through the Shenandoah Valley, along the frontier.

  As he said that, I saw the connection. My ancestor had an uncle, I told him, who lived in northern Virginia, in Frederick County, and who owned land in western Maryland. Winchester, the town where my ancestor’s uncle lived, was a hub for people and goods traveling up and down the Shenandoah Valley and east to the Potomac River and the ocean. Perhaps my ancestor was part of the migration south through the valley, going to Amherst County from Frederick County.

  “That very well could be, but of course you’d have to look into that,” he said. “I can’t give you an answer to that. But what was the name of your ancestor?”

  “Angus McDonald.”

  “And what was the name of your ancestor’s uncle?”

  “Angus McDonald.”

  He grinned. “I see. So you’ll want to keep in mind that those Scottish families were very tight.” They usually emigrated together, and even if they emigrated separately, they often ended up living together once they were here in America.

  It was quiet for a moment. I was writing all this down as quickly as I could. He gave me another moment, and then said: “Now, let me just ask you one question, and you might not know the answer yet, but then you might. This Angus McDonald, the uncle—did he have any mercantile connections, by any chance?”

  Actually, yes, he did. According to family tradition, I said, Uncle Angus was involved in a shipping and trading business in the port town of Falmouth, in northern Virginia, before joining the military in 1754.

  He nodded, like he’d been expecting to hear me say just that. In the thirty years or so before the Revolutionary War, merchants from Glasgow dominated the economy of northern Virginia, buying tobacco from farmers in exchange for all sorts of goods. The heads of these Glasgow firms grew so wealthy that they came to be known as the Tobacco Lords, and they formed tight networks, often cementing alliances through marriage, employing family members and in-laws. It was common for young, Scottish men with Glasgow connections to come to the ports and towns of northern Virginia and work in the trading business.

  Frederick County, here I come.

  I headed toward the file cabinets, looked for the F’s—Fluvanna, Franklin, Frederick—and brought back some rolls of microfilm to the computer. Threaded the first roll into the uptake reel, inched forward to the first page. And a whole new tale opened up.

  Here was an Alexander McDonald, Sr., who was in Frederick County by 1752, a decade before Uncle Angus’ first appearance in the county. From the court and chancery records, it looked like he was a merchant. Did Uncle Angus come to Frederick County because of this Alexander? Were they brothers, or maybe cousins?

  Here, too, was an Alexander McDonald, Jr., and he was a schoolmaster. At first, I thought he had to be the son of Alexander, Sr., but then an archivist told me that in Virginia at the time, the words “Jr.” and “Sr.” were used to differentiate between two men of different ages living in the same area, whether or not they were father and son. So Alexander, Sr. certainly could be the father of Alexander, Jr., but it wasn’t certain.

  One thing was certain—Alexander McDonald, Jr. sued Alexander McDonald, Sr. in 1764. The suit was dismissed because Alexander, Jr. had recently moved out of the county, but the caption in this court entry at least said what the suit was about: Trespass, Assault, and Battery. On a completely unrelated note, Alexander, Sr.’s wife was brought into court in 1760 for “retailing liquors…without a license.”

  A John McDonald was here in Frederick County, as well, and in 1765, he sued Angus McDonald for trespass, assault, and battery, but he and Angus settled out of court. Here, then, was an Allen McDonald, making his first Frederick County appearance in 1771 as a defendant who’d been charged with—you guessed it—trespass, assault, and battery. John and Allen were the names that my Angus gave to his sons; maybe these men were my Angus’ brothers or cousins. Maybe the McDonalds punched each other because they knew each other.

  Even before coming to Richmond, I’d learned a lot about John McDonald of Frederick County, and now, seeing these records, I suspected I might be on to something. John was a doctor, a close friend of Uncle Angus, and he and Uncle Angus served together as Justices of the Peace. In his will, Uncle Angus appointed this Dr. John McDonald to be his executor, the guardian of his children, and he gave Dr. John his sword, his sash, and his gorget engraved with the Glengarry coat of arms.

  Through Clan Donald histories and online research, I’d discovered that Dr. John was the son of Archibald MacDonald, the tacksman of Achnancoichean, from the MacDonalds of Keppoch. Dr. John’s sister was married to the Keppoch chief, and his great-great-grandfather Angus had been killed while fighting alongside the Glencoe chief against the Campbells in 1646. Here was the son of a MacDonald tacksman, who had a Glencoe connection and a close bond to Uncle Angus.

  Now, according to family tradition, Uncle Angus may have been a descendant of the Glengarry chiefs on his father’s side, and so he may have come from one of the Glengarry tacksmen’s families. And my uncle Chuck’s DNA matches suggested that my ancestor Angus might have been descended from one of the Glencoe tacksmen—Uncle Chuck was a closer match with Lachie (probable descendant of the 17th century Achtriachtan tacksmen) than he was with Colin (descendant of the 17th century Glencoe chiefs).

  I remembered that many of the Highland emigrants to America before the Revolutionary War were the children or grandchildren of tacksmen, so were Uncle Angus, Dr. John, and my ancestor Angus among them?

  All this history, and the names of these Frederick County McDonalds, were on my mind as I picked Reel #72 out of the file cabinet and threaded it onto the microfilm reader. I scrolled forward to the title page: Order Book 14, 1767-1770. These were the court records, indexed by the plaintiff’s surname, and I’d already gone through the index and found a few McDonald plaintiffs, and had read their cases.

  This time, though, I had the time to look for cases in which McDonalds weren’t the ones suing, but the ones being sued. That meant reading through the list of plaintiffs, from A to Z, and seeing whether any McDonalds were listed as defendants. I started with the A’s, didn’t find anything, went to the B’s, didn’t find anything. Then I got to the C’s and said to myself: All right, funny, don’t think too much of it, let’s see.

  The case was called Campbell v. McDonald. Page 81.

  I fast-forwarded to page 81 and saw: “Thomas Campbell v. John McDonald, Angus McDonald, and John McDonald, Jr.” The date was August 7, 1767, and the caption read “In Debt.” Campbell was claiming that the three McDonalds had borrowed money from him and hadn’t paid him back. Nothing more was written about the lawsuit, but the next time the suit came before the court, it was May 7, 1768—exactly nine months later. There, on page 276, the court entry read:

  “The Defendant John McDonald, Sr. being dead, this suit as to him is ordered to abate. The Defendant John McDonald, Jr. being no inhabitant of this colony, this suit as to him is discontinued. And the Defendant Angus McDonald not being arrested, on the motion of the Plaintiff by his attorney an Alias Capias is ordered against him….”

  Neither of these two Johns could be Uncle Angus’ friend, Dr. John McDonald. This John McDonald, Sr. was dead by May 1768
, while Dr. John lived until 1787. And this John McDonald, Jr., according to the court, left Virginia before May 1768, while the records showed that Dr. John lived in Frederick County in 1768, and was there for the rest of his life.

  So, besides Dr. John, there were two John McDonalds in Frederick County before May 1768, and even though the words “Sr.” and “Jr.” didn’t necessarily mean they were father and son, I suspected they were: They’d borrowed money together, which suggested a close relationship.

  Now, what about this Angus McDonald, the one who was sued for the same debt? He was required to be in court that day, but hadn’t shown up, and so an “alias capias” was issued against him. I Googled the phrase and learned that an alias capias was effectively an arrest warrant, compelling the sheriff to bring a defendant into court.

  I was just wondering, and so I scrolled back a few pages to the first court entries for that date, and there I found it: “At a Court Continued and Held for Frederick County, May 7th, 1768. Present: Jacob Hite, Isaac Hite, Thomas Speake and Angus McDonald, Gent. Justices.” Uncle Angus wasn’t just sitting in the courtroom on May 7, 1768; he was one of the Gentlemen Justices hearing the case and issuing the arrest warrant.

  The Angus McDonald who was sued by Thomas Campbell couldn’t be Uncle Angus.

  And after all these days of microfilm reading, all these genealogists’ reports, all these days of online research and note-taking, I knew of only one Angus McDonald besides Uncle Angus who had a link to Frederick County. My ancestor Angus.

  The scenario made perfect sense: My Angus lived in Frederick County with his family, became indebted to Campbell there, moved to Amherst County in 1767, and then was unable to be arrested in Frederick in 1768 because he no longer lived there. Unlike John McDonald, Jr., who was dismissed from the lawsuit because he’d left Virginia entirely by May 1768, Angus was issued an arrest warrant because he still lived in Virginia.