It's a small world

The mobility of Scots during the past two centuries never ceases to fascinate me. While researching my latest book project, I have discovered that, around 1842, Joan Carfrae, a relative of my great-great grandmother, married and emigrated to the United States with Allan Pinkerton (pictured), the Glasgowborn founder of the Pinkerton Detective Agency. Along with my Australian and Canadian cousins, and my other more remote American kindred, this provides me with yet another link into the worldwide network of those with whom I can, for better or worse, claim kinship.

A century earlier, a neighbour of the Carfraes at Gifford was the Reverend James Witherspoon, the Minister of Yester Kirk, whose son John, having also joined the Church of Scotland, took his family to New Jersey in 1768. Once established in America, he became President of the small Presbyterian College of New Jersey which later developed into Princeton University. John Witherspoon was one of the only clergymen to sign the American Declaration of Independence, and from under his tutelage at Princeton emerged 37 judges, three of whom were elevated to the Supreme Court, 12 members of the Continental Congress, 28 US Senators and 49 US Congressmen. His best known descendant today is the Hollywood actor Reese Witherspoon.

Immersed in the same research project, I next found myself visiting the coastal town of Prestonpans, in East Lothian, where I met up with John Burns whose family own Burns Yard, a treasure trove of scra...

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• By : Roddy Martine
• In : Roddy Martine's World
• Issue : 37
• Page : 7
• Words : 830