Ancestor hunt in Scotland: the Cumming Clan

Kellas House

Desparate after three days of searching to unravel the Cumming ancestor line in the Inverness Area but with little results, Ian decided to visit Altyre Estate. This is shown on the map of Scotland together with other castles.

He knocked on the door of the white mansion of Altyre Estate which had three cars parked outside, a Volvo Estate, a Range Rover and an Ashton Martin DB7. The owner must be doing well, living on something else than his estate.

Sir Alistair Gordon-Cumming, a man in his early fifties, opened the door. On asking him if he knew about the Cumming Clan, he answered that we could stop looking as we just found the head of the clan. He was pleased with our visit and said he was a bit disappointed that he gets queries at his door only twice a year.

Introduction

When you reach a pensionada's age, you are the next one to be added to the family tree. Your significance will soon change from head of the family to a twig of a branch of the family tree. A green leave will drop off that was nurtured by your family branch for some 80 years and this is all that remains. This may be the time to check your family tree.

So did my Canadian friend Ian from Vancouver. He invited me for an ancestor hunt near Inverness in Scotland. His lead went back to a house called Braeside on the Kellas Estate in the late 17th century where his five times great grandfather was born and who moved to Canada in 181..

Fist day

We drove from Edinburgh to Forres, near Inverness, and stayed in a bed and breakfast of Mrs Jean Dean. She has a large 250 m2 house built of granite stones with spacious rooms. Her daughter's family happen to visit as well so she was full but didn't mind having us despite being very full as it as late and the neighbouring bed-and-breakfast was closed. Very kind of her.

The next day we drove to Dallas, population 500, and on to the Kellas Estate. Dallas, Scotland, is not named after Dallas-Texas, as some Americans think that drive by, but Dallas-Texas, is named after this village.

The neighbors of Kellas House had some interesting information. Kellas and its 700 hectares now belonged to Mr. Jurgen from Nijmegen in Holland. He is a Dutchman having a large share in Tetra Pack, the makers of the plastic spouts you find on milk and juice packs all over the world. Mr. Jurgen visits the place a few time a year, mostly in the fall for pheasant hunting. The 20 room mansion is for hire for Euro 2000 a week and you could even book a day of pheasant hunting. Mr. Jurgen may be rich but he doesn't like to waste his assets. Property must pay for itself, financial neutral or sustainable, a good principle. Walking around we saw dozens of pheasants waking in the meadows raised for hunting. They were tame, you could come up as close as 5 meters. This would be like shooting pigeons on the Dam Square in Amsterdam.

The Braeside house were Ian's ancestor used to leave before moving to Canada is off the road. It is still there but looks rather new, only 100 years old. The current tenants lived here only for the last year and had no information.

We went to Elgin to check the birth records in the community centre. In Scotland the older records were maintained by the church and easily date back to the middle ages. The volunteer present was very talkative and cracking jokes. When we gave him a few big city style push backs, he got irritated.

The local pub in Forres was a good source of information. A plumber mentioned that there were not so many Cummin's around but a famous one was the owner of Altyre Estate, Sir Gordon-Cumming. With 10000 acres of land, this is one of the largest estates in the area and it is also shown on the map of Scotland, like the Queen's summer retreat near Braemar. The plumber said that the Lord was very approachable, no problem to pay him a visit. He liked working for him.

Second day

The Dallas graveyard was a good source of information. Scouting all the tomb stones, we found several Cummings. They died between 1850 and 1950. This, of course, did not give us any leads. None of the tombstones stood out, only one or two were esquires (people ranked high in society) but noen of the clan leader were buried here as we couldn't dicover a Lord or even a Sir.

Third day

Altyre Estate was shown on our map of Scotland bur our Kellas Estate was apparently too small to be listed. The Altyre estate is at least 10000 acres (around 10 by 4 km).

Ian knocked on the door of the white villa of Altyre Estate, a 12 room mansion. Sir Alistair Gordon-Cumming, a man in his early fifties wearing an old blue Scottish Sweater with a few holes opened the door. On asking him if he knew something of the Cumming Clan he answered that Ian could stop looking as he just found the head of the clan. He was pleased with our visit and said he was a bit disappointed that he gets queries at his door only twice a year.

From Ian's notes: “Sir Alistair Gordon-Cumming answered the door himself, and spoke to us for 15 minutes. He is the current chief of clan, and expressed an interest in visiting the the Cumming Clan Societies in the US and Canada. Indeed, he hoped that there would be a head of clan appointed in Canada, and winked in my direction.”

My family tree goes back to the mid 17th century, Ian said. I asked Lord Gordon-Cumming about his. Well, he said, we came to England in 10xx with William of Normandy. We were cotton-traders from Flanders and some claim our blood-line dates back to Charlemagne in the 9^th century. “Cotton traders ... ?”, I said. He apologized for the mistake. “Sorry, linen-traders”.

He was thinking of putting windmills on the hills like we saw near the Kellas Estate. Being subsidized, they are very profitable if you have a a good, windy hill.

We drove back towards Edinbrugh across the Cairgorns Highlands along a mostly narrow rural road and stayed overnight in Braemar. This is a very scenic route, it takes you across the barren moores with patches of forest. It was getting dark and by chance we saw one-person tent at a meter distance from the road. Not a great camping spot but at night there should not be much traffic.

Some kms before Braemar there is a rather new, white, very long suspension bridge for pedestrians across the wide river. This looked unreal, my first thoughts were why invest so much for just a walking trail that starts across the river. Later I found out that this was the tourist entrance to the Queen's summer residence, Braemar Castle.

In October Braemer is a pensionadas paradise. The main hotel, a Victorian building, offered cheap accommodation and meals but these were based on a fixed menu. Ian being 67 and myself 51 still managed to be the youngsters in the hotel. Ian called it a geriatric hotel, the old people moving carefully up the stairs.

In one of the bars in town a short, dark haired girl was serving. We assumed she was Polish but was talkative and looked interestingly cute. She turned out to be Spanish so we asked her how she ended up in this cold place leaving the warmth of Spain behind. We got no real answer. It wasn't the usual “love”.

Fourth Day

There is a 700 m high hill South of the town. We walked up while a gale with wind force 10 or 11 was blowing. It was 8 degrees Celsius and the wind chill made it very cold. On top we had a nice view over the valley and I could recommend it. Unfortunately, the Queens castle isn't visible.

About one hour South of Braemar we passed ski hills. With the climate variations, Scotland gets very little snow. It looked like a small operation, active a few weeks of the year.