You probably have heard the old saying about a person who wears his (or her) heart on his or her sleeve. How about wearing some of your family heritage around your neck?
It can become a reminder of who you are, or part of you.
While we were in Scotland last summer, we went into a couple of tartan shops. Knowing that the older I get, the older my knees look, I knew that I could not wear the kind of clan tartan my Scottish ancestors wore.
I hinted broadly that a tartan shirt or a tartan necktie would look pretty good, though, as a Christmas present. But, alas, my Lady was too distracted by starting our eventual move to a new zip code to remember my hints.
(Actually, Nancy is recognized in Scotland as a Lady, which makes me a Laird, because she owns some land there. She has read all of the Outlander books and we watch the TV series each week, which led me a few years ago to buy her a piece of land in the auld country. I think it is an entire square foot of land in a Scottish land preserve.)
Anyway—
A few weeks ago I took the matter into my own hands and I ordered a tartan- patterned necktie.
This is the ancient tartan of MacDonald of Clan Ranald. A more modern tartan is available, but this great grandson of Ranald McKechnie, a Scotsman who arrived in Kansas in the 1870s via Canada, wanted to wear his older roots around his neck.
We are a very old batch of folks, all the way back to the 12th Century, and we were somewhat inhospitable. In fact, we were downright hostile. We were known as being warlike. In fact—and this might mean something to Outlander followers—my ancestors helped defeat the Clan Fraser in the 1544 battle of Kinloch Lochy, also known as the “Battle of the Field of the Shirts” because the warriors fought on such a hot day that men on both sides discarded their shirts. When this vicious battle was over, only five Frasers and eight MacDonalds were still alive.
The home of my clan was Castle Tiorim. It remains, although it is unhabitable.
The MacDonalds were on the British side during the Jacobite rebellion that was dramatized in the books and on Outlander. Scottish Prince Charlie made a bid to get his father installed on the British throne but was routed at the Battle of Culloden in 1746, fought on a field near Inverness that we visited last June.
After hearing our tour guide describe the battle, I remarked that the circumstances reminded me of the American Battle of Bunker Hill (which was fought on Breed’s Hill). He commented that the sons and grandsons of the MacDonalds at Culloden were part of the victorious British forces that day in Boston.
So much for any hopes of being a member of the Sons of the American Revolution.
The point of this journey through a family history that probably holds little interest for you is just this:
History, your history, can be an exciting thing to explore if you look beyond dates on tombstones and, instead, at the events of the dash—the mark between the dates of birth and death—because our ancestors did not exist in a vacuum. Learning about the events they witnessed either in person or from a distance humanizes them, brings them closer, and often explains why they wound up where they did—and an understanding of how you wound up where you are.
The history most of us took in elementary and secondary school, the kind taught chronologically while ignoring the social and economic issues that drove the nation to be what it was, earned the reputation of being boring.
It is like Kansas, or at least the popular view of it. Kansas, however, is NOT boring.
I-70 is boring. But a few miles off it is where you will discover life, past and present.
So it is with genealogy. Dates are boring most of the time. But what those ancestors did and what was around them in the years of the dash is where you will find understanding of them and maybe a bit of yourself.