The Loss of the Gordons' Aboyne Estates

The Gordons and Aboyne
Although the Gordons have lived in Aberdeenshire for almost 700 years, they are not of Celtic origin and are not strictly a Highland clan.  The association of the Gordons with Aboyne goes back to the early 15^th century, when they acquired Aboyne Castle by marriage.  The name “Aboyne” is derived from the Gaelic for “Ford at a current of rippling water” and was originally applied to two separate places, Formaston of Aboyne, to the east of Aboyne Castle and Charleston of Aboyne, the present centre of the village to the south of the castle.  “Charleston” is derived from Charles Gordon, 1^st Earl of Aboyne (about 1638 – 1681) who was responsible for the layout of the present village of Aboyne with its characteristic green in the village centre.  Adjacent to Charleston of Aboyne there is a bridge over the River Dee.  The original river crossing there was a ferry and the area was known as “Bonte” (a corruption of “Bountie”).  On the insistence of the 9^th Marquis of Huntly (1761 – 1853), the name “Charleston of Aboyne” was applied to all areas of the village.  Over the years, the full name has largely been abbreviated to “Aboyne”, which is commonly in use today.  On the basis of advertisements for the market held regularly on the green, the dropping of “Charleston” essentially occurred about the mid-1850s.  The parish of Aboyne and Glentanar came into existence by the merger of two separate parishes about 1745.  Shortly afterwards a new parish church was built at the western end of the green in Aboyne, which incorporated a Gordon family burial vault.  Both the 9^th and 11^th Marquises of Huntly were buried there.

The Estates of the Aboyne Gordons
The Aboyne Gordons were the predominant landowners in the parish at least from the mid-17^th century to the 1870s.  In 1793 and 1842 they were proprietors of about 80% (about 30,000 acres) of the land in the parish and they held other lands in Aberdeenshire, elsewhere in Scotland and in England at various times.  The maximum size of their total landholding was probably reached about 1839 and was substantially in excess of 100,000 acres.  In addition to lands in and around Aboyne they held estates in Finhaven, Inverlochy and Glengary in Scotland.  In England lands were acquired by marriage.  Catherine Cope inherited the estate of Orton Longueville in Huntingdonshire in 1781.  She subsequently married George Gordon in 1791.  He became 5^th Earl of Aboyne in 1794 on the death of his father and 9^th Marquis of Huntly and head of the Gordon clan in 1836 on the death of his relative the 5^th Duke of Gordon.

The 9th Marquis of Huntly

But, starting in the 1820s, the Aboyne Gordons suffered a series of financial blows which continued throughout the rest of the 19^th century and resulted in the loss of their estates.  In 1824, George Gordon the 9^th Marquis of Huntly (then 5^th Earl of Aboyne) was a victim of the fraudulent banker, Henry Fauntleroy, who obtained clients’ funds by forging their signatures.  Of the £250,000 Fauntleroy obtained in this way, which was spent on debauchery, George Gordon lost more than £60,000 (>£5.5 million in 2012 money).  This setback did not prevent him buying further properties, Lochaber being acquired in 1834 and Glengarry in 1836.  But in 1839 rumours started to circulate that the 9^th Marquis of Huntly was in a financial crisis.  On 23^rd October of that year a report appeared in the local Aberdeen newspaper which seemed to give an authoritative account of the Marquis’s affairs.  His situation was desperate, since his debts exceeded his assets by more than £150,000 (>£13 million in 2012 money).  To prevent individual creditors seeking redress, he immediately sought and obtained the grant of a trust deed, putting his assets into sequestration under the control of professionally-qualified trustees, who were charged with paying off the debts. 

The newspaper did not portray the Maquis in a flattering light.  He claimed that he was unaware that he was in debt until the end of August 1839.  His professional advisers may have been incompetent (“No clear accounts had been kept, all was in confusion”) but the Marquis seems not to have been taking a close interest in his own affairs.

Most of the estates in the possession of George Gordon, 9^th Marquis, were entailed, a legal restriction on the sale or inheritance of an estate, so that it passes automatically to the owner’s heirs.  The 9^th Marquis had intended that the estate and the marquisate should be inherited together in perpetuity.  However, the down-side of this arrangement was that the trustees of the estate were not free to dispose of the entailed assets.  They sought to break the entail in the courts, but failed.  There immediately followed a fire sale of the unentailed portion of the estate and of other belongings.  In 1840 Aboyne Castle, shootings at the Castle and at the Forest of Birse, and 23 grass parks were offered for let, there was an extensive sale of horses, cattle, sheep, implements and both cut and standing timber.  This wholesale dismantling of his way of life seems to have been too much for the 9^th Marquis to bear.  He broke up his households at Aboyne and Berkeley Square in London and prepared to leave for a continental tour.  Worse was to follow.  In 1841 there was offered for sale “the whole household furniture, plate, wines, linens, books, paintings, etc at Aboyne Castle.”  The following year, 1842, a further 900 acres of timber at Aboyne and Glen Tanar were advertised for sale.  As a result, according to Charles Gordon, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly, the trustees managed to pay all claims “within a very little time”.  However, the sequestration of the estates continued until at least 1861, so it probably took about two decades for the trustees to pay off the 9^th Marquis’s debts, leaving his estate rather reduced from its former size.

The 10th Marquis of Huntly
George Gordon, the 9^th Marquis of Huntly died at his London residence at Chapel Street, Grosvenor Place, on 17th June 1853, having almost reached his 92^nd birthday and was buried at Aboyne.  He was succeeded by his son, Charles who became the 10^th Marquis of Huntly.  Charles was born in 1792 and succeeded at the age of 61.  At this time the village of Aboyne was poorly developed.  There were only five slated buildings, the Established Church, the Masons’ Hall, the Aboyne (laterHuntly) Arms and the mill.  All other buildings were thatched with broom or heather.  In part this state of affairs was due to the failure of the trustees of the sequestered estate to spend money on maintenance and most of the buildings in Aboyne were part of the Marquis of Huntly’s estate.  Charles Gordon thus inherited an estate badly in need of investment, but most of his assets were constrained by the entail.   However, the same law of entail still allowed him to charge substantial sums to the estate to provide for his children!  The 10^th Marquis of Huntly set about raising money by a number of schemes.  In 1856 he petitioned the Court of Session to grant him the right to issue bonds over part of the rent of his estate.  Some money was also raised from the building of the Deeside Railway which eventually passed over the Aboyne estate for about 19 miles, initially to Aboyne in 1858 and then on to Ballater in 1867.  From about 1860 Charles sought to increase his usable land holding by proposing to drain the Loch of Auchlossan and also by leasing improvable land on favourable terms to new tenants.  Mr Calder, the new factor on the Aboyne Estate seems to have been the driving force behind this strategy and by early 1861 he had let more than 1,100 acres of improvable land.  Also in 1860, land at Belwade in the village of Aboyne was offered on long lease for the erection of villas, since Aboyne was becoming an increasingly important tourist destination, partly due to the railway and partly due to the Royal residence along the valley at Balmoral.  But debt still hung, like an albatross, around the 10^th Marquis’ neck.

The 11th Marquis of Huntly

Charles, the 10^th Marquis of Huntly, died, aged 71, on 18^th September 1863 at Orton Longueville.  His first marriage had been to Elizabeth Conyngham in 1826 but there were no children of this union.  He subsequently married Maria Antoinetta Pegus in 1844 when she was 21 and he was 52.  Remarkably, the couple went on to have 14 children in 19 years, 7 of each gender.  The oldest son, also Charles, was born in 1847 and succeeded to the title of 11^th Marquis of Huntly at the tender age of 16, on the death of his father.  His mother, Maria Antoinetta, was his guardian and executrix of the estates until Charles reached the age of majority (21) in 1868, but she spent most of her time at Orton Longville in Huntingdonshire.  Charles was initially sent to a private school in Brighton and then went on to Eton in 1860 at the age of 13.  He matriculated at Cambridge University in1865.  Thus Charles received an excellent education and, as was usual with people born to this station in Victorian Britain, he quickly made a wide range of contacts amongst the scions of royalty and the aristocracy, the gentry and influential people in finance and politics.  This network of influence was mainly acquired through those traditional pursuits of his class, hunting, shooting, fishing and horse racing.  But, in spite of his advantages in life, Charles appears to have been haunted by the duties which awaited him on becoming a responsible adult.  He must have been aware of the financial problems which dogged his father and his Gordon grandfather and to have known that similar difficulties awaited his attention.

The 11th Marquis travels to India
In 1867, instead of returning to Cambridge for a third year, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly managed to persuade his mother to allow him to go on an extended visit to India with a group of young friends.  In truth this journey was both a “jolly” and a convenient opportunity to postpone facing the harsh realities of managing his estates.  A few years later, in 1874, he gave an account of his feelings about taking over responsibility for the estates.  “I recollect of looking, in 1867, from the head of Mortlach down upon the valley of the Dee and upon these estates and thinking how difficult it was for any man to discharge adequately the various responsibilities and multiform duties devolving upon me."    

The Marquis began his journey about the beginning of September, passing through Suez on the way to Ceylon.  He then travelled to Madras, where he shot tigers and other game, before moving on to Calcutta (horseracing and pig-sticking) and Lucknow.  He finally arrived back in Calcutta for Christmas 1868.  There he received letters urging him to return home soon but he put off this eventuality for as long as possible.  He travelled overland from Calcutta to Bombay at a relaxed pace before taking a ship for home.  The Marquis wrote “I dreaded the work which my accession to my Scottish estates would involve….We took it easy sightseeing and visiting friends en route.”

The 11th Marquis falls for Amy Brooks
It was April 1869 before the 11^th Marquis of Huntly arrived back at Orton Longueville to meet up with his mother.  There he found that his mother had let Aboyne Castle and Glen Tanar for the forthcoming shooting season to Mr William Cunliffe Brooks, a Manchester banker.  Fortuitously, Brooks and his two daughters were paying a social visit to Orton Longueville the following day.  The Marquis had dallied with a young lady during his trip to India but the relationship had not lasted. This unexpected arrival of two young, attractive women at his home clearly excited his interest.  William Brooks’s first wife, Jane, had died, aged 45, four years previously and he was now solely responsible for his daughters, Amy (19) and Edith (16).  It must have been love at first sight for Charles Gordon and Amy Brooks, for they were married only three months later, on 14^th July.  The marriage was a very grand affair, taking place in Westminster Abbey with Samuel Wilberforce (“Soapy Sam”, who had engaged in an animated discussion with Thomas Henry Huxley “Darwin’s Bulldog” on the merits of the hypothesis of evolution at Oxford in 1860 – see below), Bishop of Oxford officiating.  The Prince and Princess of Wales were in attendance along with many other notable people.

The Personality of Charles Gordon, 11th Marquis
Charles Gordon seems to have been a cultured young man, with a wide circle of friends.  He was amiable and articulate and had abundant physical courage.  On his trip to India he had shot tigers and other dangerous game and on the day he reached his majority he celebrated by riding a trial by moonlight on the Plains of Oude.  In Britain he proved to be an enthusiastic and skilled fox hunter, who was awarded a brush on one occasion for his adventurous riding.  But he appears to have lacked drive and had a tendency to dodge situations he found difficult to handle.  In truth, like his father and Gordon grandfather before him, he seemed to lack interest in the affairs of his estates and was not successful in dealing with the debt problems that he had inherited.

A disastrous development plan and its consequences
In the five years between his succession to the title and his assumption of control of the estates in 1868, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly reported that the financial affairs of the estate had improved.  At that time rentals from fishings and shootings were increasing and agriculture was prosperous.  The total area of the Scottish estates was then about 90,000 acres.  He set about “with the enthusiasm of youth” to refurbish the physical infrastructure and over a few years he renovated or rebuilt 40 farm houses and 60 farm steadings, erected cottages, made roads and planted 13,000,000 trees, enclosing them with fences to deter the predations of deer.  But he lacked the capital necessary to pay for this extensive programme of works.  Some money was raised through feuing land for the construction of villas but he had to resort to heavy borrowing at high rates of interest against a variety of assets.  This process was helped considerably in 1876 when the 11^th Marquis was successful in having the whole of his estates disentailed.  However, this proved to be a double-edged sword.  The increase in value of the estate, brought about by his programme of improvements, meant that the amount due to the beneficiaries in inheritance had to be increased.  The estates were mortgaged for just over £72,000 (>£7 million in 2012 money) but substantial interest charges rapidly added to this sum and a forced sale of assets ensued.  In 1878 the 11^th Marquis of Huntly enjoyed a windfall.  On the death of Lord Frederick Gordon the Hallyburton estate was sold and the proceeds shared between Charles Gordon and his brothers, but all the furniture and effects in the house went to the Marquis of Huntly.  In the following year 40 animals from his prized Aberdeen-Angus (known colloquially as “Doddies”) herd at Aboyne were let go.  Also in that year the Marquis’s extensive wine cellar from Aboyne Castle (including rare and curious wines) was sold by auction in Edinburgh.  High prices were realised.

The 11th Marquis continues to enjoy life
In spite of his precarious financial situation, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly outwardly continued to enjoy the lavish life of a landed proprietor as though he did not have a care in the world. He pursued his hobbies of hunting and shooting with other nobles whenever he could and he owned racehorses on which he enjoyed staking money.  He continued to entertain at Aboyne and Orton Longueville and to enjoy the hospitality of many other notable families.  He was recognised as an important member of the aristocracy by a number of appointments, being made Captain of the Gentlemen at Arms at Court and in 1881 he was sworn of the Privy Council.  The same year he set out with his wife Amy, the Marchioness of Huntly on a tour taking in Constantinople, the Crimea, the Caucasus, Southern Russia, the Balkans, Athens, Corfu, Albania and Dalmatia, returning in April 1882.  Amy’s health had not been good and she appeared to benefit from the trip and even became pregnant.  Sadly, she gave birth to a still-born girl in September of that year and was seriously ill afterwards.  This removal of himself from difficult circumstances was reminiscent both of the behaviour of his grandfather, the 9^th Marquis, who, in 1840, went on a continental trip at the time when his assets were suddenly discovered to be substantially less than his debts and of the 11^th Marquis’s own behaviour in 1867, when he spent well over a year travelling to India to avoid the responsibilities of estate management.  In February and March 1884, the Huntlys again travelled in the East, this time to Corfu, Albania, Montenegro and Venice.

  

More asset disposals
The forced disposal of assets continued throughout this period.  There was a further sale from his herd of “Doddies”, 32 animals being sold in September 1881 for £1609 (>£165,000 in 2012 money), the home of the Huntlys, Aboyne Castle, was let for the season to C Waring of London, along with the shootings at Forest of Birse and the Castle shootings went to the Earl of Dudley for the season.  A large amount of standing timber at Aboyne was sold to A&G Paterson of St Rollox, Glasgow, presumably for railway sleepers.  A displenish sale was held at Aboyne Home Farm the same year and a collection of silver plate, porcelain, furniture, engravings and stuffed birds from the castle were put up for auction.

An attempt to dispose of the Aboyne Estate
The Aboyne estate, still consisting of 70,000 acres, including Aboyne, Morven, Birse and Glentanar, was put up for sale in 1885 and rumours abounded concerning the identities of those interested in purchasing various parts.  Queen Victoria was said to be interested in Morven, Lady Huntly in Aboyne Castle and William Cunliffe Brooks in Glentanar.  However, land prices were depressed and other estates were also on the market.  The whole Aboyne estate was offered at an upset price of £450,000 (almost £49 million in 2012 money) but there were no bids and the sale was adjourned.  In 1886 the estate was advertised either for sale or to let. 

A journey around the World
The response of the Marquis to his continuing misery was, by now, predictable.  In 1886 he set out with his wife on a round-the-world trip.  In fairness, Amy was again ill, though it was hardly credible that such a long and arduous trip was planned entirely for the benefit of her health.  At least part of the Marquis’s motive must have been to relieve his anguish at the loss of so many treasured possessions.  The Huntlys left London in October 1886 and travelled via the Suez Canal to India.  Amy was a skilled artist and completed several paintings and drawings on the trip, which were used to illustrate his autobiographical book, “Milestones”.  After travelling extensively in India, the Huntlys journeyed on via Ceylon, Australia, New Zealand, China and Japan, before crossing the Pacific to Vancouver.  From there they crossed Canada on the Canadian Pacific Railway, to Montreal, the USA and Ireland before returning to London in August, 1887, almost a year after their departure.

The misery continues
During the journey and after the return of the Huntlys from their wanderings, the unpleasantness of asset disposals continued unabated.  All the houses on the Aboyne estate were valued and offered at valuation to the tenants for purchase, prior to being placed on the open market.  This caused a fuss in Aboyne because some tenants thought their houses were overvalued and for others the house prices were simply unaffordable.  To the villagers this behaviour must have seemed quite out of character for an amiable and fair-minded Highland laird, but his strings were being pulled by remote trustees, whose only concern was raising cash to meet the debts of the Marquis.  There was a sale of stock and implements at Aboyne Home Farm in May 1887and also at this time further attempts were made to sell the components of the Aboyne estate.

In June 1887 Aboyne Castle and estates, still consisting of over 60,000 acres, were again offered for sale.  The net rental value of the estate was said to be £12,100 and the value of timber on the estate estimated at £80,000.  A Mr Bridgewater made an opening bid of £150,000 (£16.7 million in 2012 money) but there were no other offers and the estate was withdrawn from sale.  The four estates on the north side of the Dee, including the Castle were then offered but then withdrawn, only £70,000 being bid.  The estates on the south side of the Dee, Glentanar and Birse were then offered.  There was no bid at £200,000 or at £150,000 and the property was withdrawn from sale.  The auctioneer then offered the property in 6 lots, Aboyne Castle, park and gardens; Culblean and Kinnord (including Cambus o’May); Blackmill, Tullich and Watererne ; Muir of Dess; Glentanar (7,000 acres); and Forest of Birse (11,000 acres).  All bids were below the reserve prices and all 6 lots were withdrawn from sale.  This was a time of deep recession in the agriculture industry and buyers of land were being very cautious and, perhaps because of the Marquis’s circumstances, were looking for a bargain. 

Disposal of the Aboyne Estate
However, some sales were made by private bargain shortly after the failed auction.  Charles H Wilson, Liberal MP for Hull and a major shipowner, bought Culblean and Kinnord, for a price reputed to be £40,000 (almost £4.5 million in 2012 money), the upset for these properties and Morven was sold to Mr Keillor, the marmalade manufacturer from Dundee, also for £40,000.  Rumours again began to fly concerning potential purchasers.  Andrew Carnegie, the Scottish-born Amercian industrialist and philanthropist, was alleged to be interested in Aboyne Castle and it was claimed that Charles Wilson had rented Aboyne Castle from the Marquis of Huntly with an option to buy before the end of September.  In fact the Castle and its immediate surrounds went to William Cunliffe Brooks, the father-in-law of the Marquis, about July 1888 at a price rumoured to be £115,000 (>£12.6 million in 2012 money).  As part of the deal Brooks granted The Marquis and Marchioness of Huntly a life tenancy of the Castle, an act of generosity presumably designed to protect his daughter Amy, the Marchioness.  The unsold parts of the Aboyne estate were again offered for sale in October 1888 by private bargain in lots to suit purchasers.  Attempted auctions had previously generated only embarrassment.  By May 1890 the Aboyne estate had been on the market for 5or 6 years.  Birse was finally sold to Mr W Nicol of Ballogie, near Aboyne and only a few remnants then remained.

The relationship with Albert, Prince of Wales
Albert Edward, Queen Victoria’s oldest son, Prince of Wales and, eventually, King Edward VII was a frequent visitor to Deeside, staying at Abergeldie Castle near Crathie, which had been leased to the Royal family in 1848 and bought by them in 1878.  In the period 1860 to 1880, he was reputed to have led a dissolute and riotous life, surrounded by a group of hedonistic young men, Charles Gordon, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly being one of them.  The Marquis wrote- “My intimacy with Edward VII began in my Cambridge days, when he was Prince of Wales, and from that time I kept up a frequent correspondence with him.  He was a sterling friend, a shrewd observer, and a thorough sportsman.”  There clearly was a close and reciprocal friendship between the two of them, at least in the period 1869 - 1880.  Not only did the Prince and Princess attend the 11^th Marquis’s marriage but the Prince also attended his stag night. Sometime after 1869, the Prince approached Charles Gordon to ask a favour.  The Prince’s favourite ghillie at Balmoral, Alexander Grant, had been dismissed from the Queen’s service for a sexual misdemeanour and the Prince asked if Grant could be employed at Aboyne.  The 11^th Marquis happily appointed him as his personal assistant and put him in charge of the gun room at Aboyne Castle.  Eventually Grant was promoted to head gamekeeper.  In 1871, 1872, 1875 and 1880 the Prince of Wales stayed at Aboyne Castle, usually for a shooting party and the Prince reciprocated in 1871 with an invitation to the Marquis and Marchioness of Huntly to stay at Sandringham.  The Marquis of Huntly claimed that the tales of wild behaviour by the Prince of Wales and his cronies were exaggerated and he put a different interpretation on the period.  “Owing to the general affluence of the country at that time, there was admittedly more spending.  Parents could afford to give their sons larger allowances while at college, in the Army, and on entering life; the country houses were all open, and replete with hospitality; betting and plunging on the racecourse and at cards was very high in several instances, but these specimens soon came to grief and were eliminated. (Author’s italics)  The old custom of sitting late after dinner drinking wine was, with the help of the cigarette, knocked on the head, and it became bad form to get drunk.  The Prince of Wales set the example of moderation in this respect”.  However, rumours abounded on Deeside that the Marquis was a frequent companion of the Prince in high-stakes games of cards and that the Marquis accumulated substantial debts as a result.  That such behaviour occurred seems to have been confirmed by the above quotation from the Marquis, though the Marquis, by implication, appears to deny his own involvement.

Family life
Charles Gordon, 11^th Marquis of Huntly, seemed to live two parallel and largely separate lives in the period from his accession in 1868 until the end of the century.  On the one hand, he was the proprietor of a major estate suffering from chronic and progressively worsening financial problems and on the other hand he played the traditional role of the aristocrat joining in country pursuits, breeding and showing Aberdeen-Angus cattle, entertaining and being entertained, participating in matters of state and travelling to far-off lands.  On the whole he enjoyed the latter but found the task of rescuing the estates from complete dispersal a difficult and unpleasant challenge.  His personal life too was a mixture of joy and sadness.  He and Amy appear to have been devoted to each other but they never had a family, though Amy bore a still-born girl in 1882.  “Milestones”, the autobiographical work of the Marquis is dedicated to “All boys and girls”, perhaps indicating his sadness at never becoming a parent. After her pregnancy, the Marchioness suffered increasingly poor health.  In 1900 the Marquis was told by her doctors that her heart was badly affected and that she was not expected to survive for 6 months.  In fact she survived for another 20 years, though latterly she spent much time in a wheelchair.

Lord Rector of Aberdeen University
The 11^th Marquis of Huntly was not an outstanding success in national politics.  He was politically well-connected, coming from a family of long-standing Liberal supporters. He knew Gladstone well and once accompanied him on a 31 mile walk from Deeside to Fasque House, but the Marquis failed to shine in the House of Lords.  Although he served as Captain of the Gentlemen at Arms at Court and in 1881 he was sworn of the Privy Council, he appears not to have been suited to the cut and thrust of political debate.  In 1896 he wrote that he felt “crowded out of the political world”   The then gentler world of local government politics seems to have been more to his taste.  He was elected to the County Councils of both Huntingdonshire and Aberdeenshire, including acting as chairman of several committees.  However, the public role which he appears to have enjoyed most was serving as Lord Rector of Aberdeen University.  The Lord Rector is elected by the student body and looks after their interests, serving as Chairman of the University Court.  He was first asked to stand in 1872, but lost to Professor TH Huxley.  In 1890 he was again invited to stand and this time he won, as he did again in 1893 and 1896, serving for an unprecedented three terms in total.  During his period as Lord Rector, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly presided at 103 out of 133 meetings of the University Court.  He also attended 120 committee meetings.  For Charles Gordon this position was clearly a labour of love, perhaps because it suited his personality.   Tact, diplomacy and an ability to get along with people were his stock in trade.

Bankruptcy
In spite of the sale of much of the estate that he had owned, the 11^th Marquis of Huntly’s financial problems continued to grow.  Building sites for villas, cottages and shops were again advertised in 1890 and in 1892 another 43 cattle from his beloved herd of “Doddies” were sold for £1,155 (>£124,000 in 2012 money).  He enjoyed a windfall in 1893 when he inherited the Orton Longueville estate on the death of his mother and in 1897 another section of the Aboyne estate, Aboyne Lodge was sold by the trustees of his estate to Mr JR Heaven, but still Charles Gordon did not manage to eliminate his financial burden.  Finally, debt overwhelmed him and he had to admit he was bankrupt.  His affairs were examined in the London Bankruptcy Court in June 1898, where his gross debt was found to be almost £139,700(>£15.3 million in 2012 money), of which just over £20, 711 (>£2.2 million in 2012 money) was unsecured, set against paltry assets of a little over £690 (<£76 thousand in 2012 money).  He had ended up in this sorry state of affairs by raising capital at high rates of interest on the security of almost all his possessions, including the Aboyne estate, the Orton Longueville estate, assurance policies, the furniture and plate on the Orton estate, the furniture, plate and farm stock at Aboyne and whisky in bond, in order to fund the renewal of the infrastructure of his estates, to buy more land and to plant trees.  His unsecured creditors finally settled for 7/6p in the £.  In 1899 the final remnants of the Aboyne estate were sold and the final 32 animals in the Aboyne herd of Aberdeen Angus cattle went under the hammer. 

Even discounting the fact that British agriculture went into a long recession between the late 1870s and at least 1895, it is not clear that the Marquis’s strategy ever had a chance of success, with uplift in rents exceeding or even meeting the required schedule for the repayment of both loans and interest.  He seems to have had poor advice and/or been unwilling, or incapable, of evaluating this borrowing strategy.  This may look like a harsh judgement on the Marquis, especially when he succeeded to the estate at the tender age of 21, but he stated at the bankruptcy hearing that he did not become fully aware that he could not pay his debts in full until the end of 1897.  Anyone with the level of borrowings of the Marquis should have known much sooner that the strategy was not working.  Instead he seems to have gone on down the same road, apparently oblivious to the consequences.  He seemed to plead at his hearing that he was very busy with local politics and the affairs of Aberdeen University and that this contributed to his lack of oversight of his financial affairs. 

It is impossible to say, as has been claimed, if supposed debts resulting from gambling at cards with the Prince of Wales played a significant part in the financial downfall of the 11^th Marquis of Huntly.  He himself attributed his troubles to “the fall on the rentals of the estates, the expense of maintaining them, and interest paid on borrowed moneys.”  It seems likely that the Marquis’s own assessment is close to the truth, taken together with his admission that he undertook initiatives of dubious economic viability.  The Marquis admitted that he had made mistakes.  “My youthful enthusiasm led me into many projects which were economically unsound, and both the “quidnuncs” (nosey gossips) at the time and the world at large since, called me a fool.  It is an easy word to use lightheartedly, and the ordinary man passes it as his judgment without discrimination; but it is better to be a fool with a good conscience than a wiseacre with an evil one.”  Sadly, doing things solely at the dictate of one’s conscience is seldom a recipe for financial success and it proved disastrous in the case of Charles Gordon, 11^th Marquis of Huntly.

Decline
In 1925 the Marquis published a volume of reminiscences, entitled “Milestones”.  In this volume he wrote “Bad luck comes to everyone at times.  Be not depressed by adversity.”  He had certainly suffered bad luck in his personal life, with his lack of direct descendants and his wife, Amy’s chronic ill-health, though he did subsequently meet and marry a widowed American lady.  He could also claim that he suffered bad luck in inheriting an estate which had become run down as a result of being plundered for assets as a consequence of debts accrued in an earlier age.  But it is less easy for him to claim that bad luck was solely responsible for his own failure to invest borrowed money wisely.  In his declining years it is remembered in Aboyne that he cut a rather forlorn figure wandering about the village, calling in on aging acqaintances.  During his peregrinations he must have been reminded repeatedly of good times from the past and to have reflected often on what might have been.

Don Fox

20140329, 20150127

donaldpfox@gmail.com

Introduction to Family Research

Introduction to Family Research

For much of my adult life I have had a curiosity about my ancestry.  This curiosity was based mainly upon family anecdotes that I had been told, or which I had overheard.  They provided enough clues to stimulate my interest but they did not, even in the remotest sense, constitute an account or my origins, or those of my family.  Mostly, these anecdotes lacked specific detail on timing, place or social context but it is worth repeating some of them so as to give some understanding of the basis for my curiosity, prior to undertaking serious family research.

I knew that both my grandfathers, Frederick Fox and Thomas Harriman, had been farmers but had ended their working lives as farm labourers.  Frederick was reputed to have lost his farm due to gambling and Thomas’ fall from grace was said to be due to alcohol addiction.  I also knew that my maternal grandmother, Mary Jane, was a first cousin of Thomas and that she also came from a farming family.  My other grandmother, Jane (nee McAlpine) was a Scottish lady who was reputed to be related to Sir Robert McAlpine, the founder of the construction company of the same name. 

These stories were in the back of my mind for decades as I pursued my career, first as an academic, teaching and researching in genetics and then as a university manager, before finally entering commercial life as the Chief Executive of Southampton Science Park Ltd.  During this varied life in work I learned many skills which would stand me in good stead once I found the resources and the inclination to undertake serious research into my family background.  That opportunity arose after my retirement in 2007.  Then I had the time to spare and the financial means to pursue the study, which quickly became a demanding and consuming hobby.  Also, family research had received a substantial boost from the increasing availability of on-line sources of information and many lines of enquiry could thus be conducted at home from my PC. 

How much truth was there in the family anecdotes and what else would I find out about my past along the way?  I did not start my study by reading “how to” books on genealogy but simply allowed myself to be seduced by the offer of a period of free use of the Ancestry.co.uk website and set about finding my grandparents in the 1901 Census.  This proved to be straightforward and within a few minutes I become hooked on family research, as many others have been, due to an addictive desire to know ever more about my origins and about my ancestors and their lives.

At this point I will digress to the present.  After almost five years of research I know a lot more about my antecedents and the forebears of my wife and my son-in-law.  I now have almost 4500 individuals (all but a few being relatives of my wider family) on my genealogical database.  The process of acquiring this information has also had the effect of stimulating the evolution of a personal philosophy of family research.  This is how I now view my activities.

The terms “family research”, “family history” and “genealogy” are used, loosely, as being interchangeable.  There does not seem to be any generally accepted set of definitions for the terms, which would allow us to say if they are exact equivalents.  “Genealogy” seems to be the least contentious.  The OED defines the term as “the study and tracing of lines of descent.”  This seems to imply a circumscribed discipline in which, once a line of descent from an ancestor has been identified with high probability, the study is essentially at an end.  In the initial stages of a study into one’s ancestors, establishing such relationships is both revealing and fascinating.  Learning that I emerged from generations of farmers in the East Riding of Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire was initially exciting for me but I now find that adding another name and another generation to these lineages is only mildly stimulating, since one can usually know little about the newly discovered ancestor, except name, year and place of birth.  Now I find it more important to have some understanding of relatives’ lives than simply to know who they were.

Before examining the terms “family research” and “family history” let us first look at how we might define “family”.  A narrow definition focuses on there being a genetic relationship between the members of a family and typically this includes parents and children, but occasionally encompasses other close relatives, such as grandparents, cousins, aunts and uncles.  More broadly, “family” can be defined to include everyone living together in a household.  This will typically include parents and children and perhaps other genetic relatives but may also include various categories of non-genetic family members, such as adoptees, new spouses and the children of new spouses from previous relationships. 

When used in a medical context, the term “family history” has a narrow definition, meaning the recording of family structure and relationships, including information about diseases in family members and typically going back about three generations.  This is an aid to identifying the presence of disease with a genetic causation.    Outwith a narrow, medical context, “family history” also has a wider definition encompassing all family matters, not just those dealing with health and disease.

So, what are the essential elements of my philosophy of “family research”, the term I shall use as shorthand to describe the framework of my activities?  Firstly genetic relatedness, ultimately to me, is a predominant, but not an exclusive property linking the people that I study.  This includes people who are my direct relatives, going forward as well as backwards in time, but also people who are collateral relatives, such as uncles and aunts and the spouses of direct and collateral relatives.  Close, collateral relatives are not very interesting if they have left little trace, but more distant collateral relatives are interesting if they have achievements in their lives.    Secondly, I study the relationships, activities and interactions within families, in the broadest sense, to whom I am linked genetically.  But families are not static entities.  They evolve, mainly through marriage, birth and death and my family research covers this evolutionary process too.  Also, families do not exist in a vacuum, insulated from interactions with their neighbours, employers and landlords and my research takes frequent forays into these external relationships of the family.  On a grander scale, families and the individuals within them live within societies which are themselves evolving, buffeted by social and technological change and fashioned by national and international events such as wars and natural disasters.  From time to time consideration of cultural, social and international events is essential in interpreting what happened within families, for example relatives who moved from the country to burgeoning towns as a consequence of the industrial revolution, or relatives caught up in WWI and WWII.. 

It is also important to say something about the research methods that I have employed.  When I started out on this journey I did so without preconceptions and with a frankly casual attitude to the collection, evaluation and recording of data.  It did not take long for me to realise that family research, as I have chosen to define it, is a serious academic discipline, which needs to adhere to certain principles.  In my opinion they include the following. 

Recording information.  Since the strongest theme running through my family research is that of genetic linkage, the employment of genealogical software to store these fundamentals is indispensible.  I use PAF5, which is freely available from the Latter Day Saints (LDS – the Mormon Church).  Not only does PAF5 allow you to record the fundamental statistics of peoples’ lives, such as date of birth/christening, marriage, death and burial but it also allows you to record genetic linkages and to navigate with ease through this complex network of interrelationships.

Information sources.  As important as recording information is the need to record the source of a piece of information so that in the future you, or anyone else, can check the information and evaluate any conclusions based upon it.

Time sequence.  All information on an individual should be recorded in a time sequence.  The “Notes” section of an individual’s record on PAF5 can be used for this purpose.  This should include dates and places of births marriages and deaths, census records, will and probate records, press mentions, etc.  Getting an insight into someone’s life is much easier when data are organised in such a time sequence.  Indeed, this is the start of a biography of the person, though that biography will prove to be sketchy to the point of triviality for most relatives born before 1750.

Understanding the nature of data.  Registration of a birth will usually only tell you when and where a birth was registered, not when and where the birth occurred.  Similarly a christening, would usually have occurred shortly after birth and in the same village, or one nearby, but there may only be a loose relationship between date and place of christening and date and place of birth.  It is important not to make unwarranted assumptions in evaluating such data.   

Limitations of data sources.  Conventional family research is only possible once written records became routinely available.  The Subsidiary Rolls of Edward I, used to raise taxes for his wars in Scotland and Wales hardly meet that description.  The same is true of the Poll Tax records which first date from 1377 in the reign of Edward III.  This was a tax levied at the rate of 4d on all adults to pay for military excursions into France.  The first records which were really useful were parish records of baptisms, marriages and burials.  These records were first introduced by the Catholic Church in Europe in the 15^th century but were not introduced in Britain until 1538 in the reign of Henry VIII, after the split with Rome.  Thomas Cromwell, Henry’s Vicar General ordered that each parish priest must keep these records.  However, this instruction was poorly observed and many records, in any case, were subsequently lost.  Statutory registration of births, marriages and deaths was introduced in England and Wales in 1838 but not in Scotland until 1855.  A census of the whole population was first carried out in 1801 and has been repeated every 10 years, except in 1941.  Sadly, the 1931 records for England and Wales were destroyed by fire.  The censuses for 1801 to 1831 were statistical in nature and did not give information on individuals or households, so it is only from 1841 that we are able to get a ten-yearly snapshot of family relationships. In gathering data from official records, primary sources, eg microfiches of parish records or scans of census records are superior to secondary sources, such as transcripts of parish records and census returns, especially machine-mediated transcripts.  Comparison of equivalent primary and secondary sources will show quite quickly how often transcription, by either man or machine, can introduce errors.  But primary sources can also contain errors, especially when data are collected orally and then rendered in writing, eg a census enumerator who was told that a child was called “Tom” but rendered the child’s name as “John” because he misheard what was said.  One of the weakest sources of secondary information is a source, such as a published family tree or an LDS record submitted by an individual (see original Family Search database), which present “facts” on family relationships, eg parentage, but without supporting data sources.  Such “facts” should be treated as “opinions” until they can be independently verified.

Identifying distant relatives.  It is frequently the case that in identifying relatives before 1800 we are reduced to using only parish records and identification may then rely on someone having the right name, being born in a plausible time bracket and not far from the place of birth of his or her children.  But this is a dangerous practice, especially where a surname is frequent in a given locality, eg Harrison in the East Riding of Yorkshire.  The most plausible birth is not necessarily that of your ancestor.  Parish records are notoriously incomplete and your relative may have been christened or married in a parish whose records have not survived, eg in a non-conformist church.  Ideally you need to arrive at the same attribution by two independent routes.  If this is not possible, then I usually stop chasing a line back because the effort may be wasted.  It is important to remember that an error will normally result in all subsequent, more distant ancestors being wrongly identified too.  I find that potential ancestors for whom I do not have a high level of confidence of correct attribution are simply not interesting.

Can any facts be relied upon to be true?  The answer to this question, in an absolute sense, is “no”.  A brief consideration of any “fact” will soon uncover potential sources of error.  Attributed fatherhood may be unreliable because of hidden liaisons by the mother.  Attributed motherhood may be more reliable but even this apparent “fact” can be in error, eg from accidental baby-switching in a hospital setting.  But if we can never be 100% sure of our facts, how can we proceed with family research, or indeed any kind of research?  The answer is that we try to reduce the margin for error to acceptable levels.  Probability is usually expressed as a percentage or as a decimal fraction.  The probability that a particular statement is true may, in theory, range from 100%, ie it is certainly true, to 0%, ie it is certainly false.  While the extremes of this distribution of probabilities can never be reached, the closer we get to 100% the more likely we are to be correct in our deductions based on the statement.  In quantitative statistical tests the probability that a result was obtained by chance can be calculated and a probability of 95% is usually taken as a practical measure of significance but this accepts that in 1 in 20 such cases the conclusion will be in error.  Most of the time, when conducting family research, we cannot attribute a quantitative value to the probability that a statement is true but we can use perfectly legitimate qualitative approaches to increasing the probability that conclusions are correct.  For example, if we are trying to decide where someone was born we can collect as many independent statements as possible which give this datum, eg different census returns, birth certificate.  If out of three such sources only two agree with each other we would have a dilemma in concluding where someone was born but if we had 10 such sources and 9 agreed, we would be very confident that we could identify that individual’s place of birth.

Essay writing.  Facts are of limited use without integration and interpretation.  For me, this process involves writing a series of extended essays covering coherent areas based on my overall family research database.  Essay writing is an essential process because it drives you to evaluate fully your thoughts on a topic.  It is firmly based on fact but blatantly and openly strays into interpretation and hypothesis building, starting from established facts (as qualified by high probability).  An essay might deal with a branch within my family research data base, eg The Foxes or The Spurriers, or it might deal with an inanimate object, eg “Clipper Ship Conway”, or even an individual to whom we are not related but with whom our ancestors had interacted, eg “Captain WH Duguid”.  I like to keep my essays free from references within the body of the work, to help the flow of argument, uninterrupted by citations.  The reader can always refer to my family research database for the discovery of sources.

Autobiography.  I believe every genealogist should write his or her autobiography, being careful to distinguish fact from opinion and trying as far as possible to be balanced and accurate.  The autobiographer may wish to exclude some materials which might cause offence or embarrassment to living people and this approach is likely to be justified unless it bears upon a matter of substantial interest or importance, which would otherwise be lost.   

It has been pointed out above that the (almost) unifying theme of my family research is the existence of a web of genetic links.  My own career, which included a period of 20 years when I was a teacher and researcher in genetics, gave me a good insight into the nature and significance of these genetic links and it is useful to give a brief summary of the important aspects of the academic discipline of genetics which impact most directly on family research.

The characteristics of an individual are due to information acquired by two parallel routes.  We acquire genes from our two parents which are involved, often predominantly, in determining many of our characteristics, from hair colour to our ability to metabolise chemicals that we ingest.  On the other hand we acquire other characteristics almost entirely from the environment in which we are raised.  The ability to speak a language is genetically determined but the ability to speak Chinese or English is not.  The type of language that we speak is entirely learned during our upbringing, as are many other attributes, such as system of religious belief or style of cooking.  However, many characteristics are the result of an interaction between our genes and out environment.  For example, the disease Favism occurs when susceptible individuals eat broad beans.  Their red blood cells then break down due to an enzyme deficiency. The deficiency is caused by a defective gene but the disease is only expressed if a deficient individual also eats broad beans (an environmental factor).  Genetic inheritance involves the physical passage of an information-bearing molecule, via egg and sperm, from one generation to the next, but cultural inheritance involves only the passage of ideas and information via written and spoken language and via observation of others within a family, tribe or community.

(Please skip the next few pages if you have an understanding of basic genetics!)

The information-bearing molecule alluded to above is deoxyribonucleic acid, universally known by its abbreviation, DNA.  Information is encoded in DNA using an alphabet of four letters and these letters can form 64 different 3-letter words (4^3).  The sequences of these words on linear DNA molecules provide the instructions which pass from the parents to the fertilised egg and determine the genetic component of inheritance.

The fertilised egg cell divides repeatedly during development and the cells produced eventually differentiate to form our tissues and organs.  Before cell division the information in DNA is copied exactly and one copy transmitted to each of the two new cells.  All cells in our bodies (except unfertilised eggs and sperm – see below) thus contain the same genetic information and cells with different functions, eg liver cells, brain cells, are made by switching on and off different sets of instructions in the cell’s DNA.

Most of the DNA in a cell is present in the nucleus but some is present in the mitochondria (small bodies generating energy) in the cytoplasm.  Mitochondria copy their DNA and the mitochondria divide, just like the whole cell.  However, the copying of DNA and the division of the mitochondrion are not synchronised.  Each body cell contains ~100 mitochondria and each mitochondrion contains a variable number of DNA molecules, typically ~5.  When the cell divides the cytoplasm is pinched into two and the mitochondria are distributed roughly equally to the two daughter cells.  The mechanism for separating copied nuclear DNA into daughter cells is much more precise.  The DNA exists as several very long molecules which are condensed by coiling and looping into structures called chromosomes for ease of transmission at cell division.  A chromosome prior to cell division consists of two separate parts, each containing one copy of the DNA information and each daughter cell gets one of these copies, so that each contains exactly the same number of chromosomes and exactly the same nuclear DNA information.

When egg and sperm cells are formed there is a special kind of cell division which treats the chromosomal and mitochondrial DNA differently.  When an egg cell is formed most of the cytoplasm (and its contained mitochondria with their DNA molecules) goes to the unfertilised egg cell.  On the other hand, when a sperm cell is formed all the cytoplasm (and mitochondria) is excluded from the part of the sperm cell (the nucleus) involved in fertilisation.  Egg cells contain mitochondria (with their DNA molecules) but sperm cells do not transmit mitochondria, thus our mitochondrial DNA comes exclusively from our mothers. 

Chromosomes are of two types, those which occur in pairs in the body cells of males and females and those (sex chromosomes) which differ in number and/or type in the body cells of the two sexes.  Humans have 46 chromosomes, in total, in their body cells. These are made up of 24 different types. Twenty two of the types are not concerned with sex determination and each of these occurs as a pair in body cells of both males and females.  The other 2 types of chromosome are the sex chromosomes, called X and Y respectively.  Female body cells contain two X chromosomes and male body cells have one X and one Y chromosome.  X chromosomes contain lots of information in their DNA but Y chromosomes contain very little. 

There is a special kind of cell division which generates gametes (unfertilised egg and sperm cells).  It ensures that each gamete contains only one chromosome of each type not concerned with sex determination.  This is also true of the pair of X chromosomes in females.  Thus, unfertilised eggs all contain a single X chromosome.  In males the X and the Y chromosome separate from each other during sperm cell formation. Half of all sperm cells thus contain a single X chromosome and the others contain a single Y chromosome.  After fertilisation all eggs have 2 chromosomes of each type not concerned with sex determination.  Half of all fertilised eggs contain two X chromosomes and the others contain an X and a Y.  A fertilised egg which contains only X chromosomes develops into a female child.  If a Y chromosome is present it switches development from a pathway leading to femaleness to one leading to maleness.

A gene is a unit of inheritance.  It determines one particular character, for example the structure of a protein molecule.  The information in a gene is made up of the code words in a linear section of DNA and different genes are arranged in a linear sequence along a DNA molecule.  A change in the code words within a gene, eg swapping one word for another, may change the information in the gene in such a way that some body characteristic is changed.  Such a change in DNA information is called mutation and almost all genes exist in a population in these different forms, or alleles.

Humans have ~20,000 different genes.  While all genes are made of DNA, not all DNA is used to make genes.  In humans quite a lot of the DNA in the chromosomes does not appear to contain any information but its sequence of letters is still copied and distributed accurately at cell division.  This so-called “junk” DNA can still accumulate changes in its sequence of code letters, which can be detected by determining the sequence of letters in DNA by chemical analysis.  There is far more “junk” DNA in our cells than DNA used to make genes.  “Junk” DNA has proved to be very important in studying the historical movement of human populations by plotting the geographical presence or absence of particular sequence variants.

Each of our body cells has two of the 22 different types of non-sex chromosomes.  A gene has a fixed position on a chromosome and each body cell has 2 copies of each of the ~20,000 different genes.  If, in a particular human population, there are two forms, or alleles of a particular gene, which we will call A and a, then each individual may potentially have a genetic make-up of AA or Aa or aa for that gene.  If individuals with the make-up AA look identical to those with Aa but different from aa for a particular characteristic, we say that allele A is dominant over allele a.  Sometimes an allele will cause disease in a person possessing it.  Usually when this happens, eg in Sickle Cell Anaemia, where there is an abnormal haemoglobin molecule in the red blood cells, the allele causing the disease is recessive to the allele which determines normal haemoglobin structure.  So only people who have two “a” alleles show the full-blown disease.

The special kind of cell division which occurs in the formation of egg and sperm cells has another important function in addition to halving the number of chromosomes.  It also causes the different alleles of the many genes, both on the same pair of chromosomes and on different pairs of chromosomes, to be recombined to give combinations which did not occur in either the father or the mother.  Many of our characteristics are determined, not by single genes, but by many genes interacting with each other, so recombination is important in generating new combinations of alleles which may produce new characteristics. 

Disease-causing recessive alleles of genes usually only occur rarely in a population, because people with the disease often don’t survive to reproductive age, so these alleles tend to be eliminated.  If a disease-causing recessive allele has a frequency of 1/1000 in a population and mating is at random, only 1 in a million (1/1000 x 1/1000) people will have two copies of the allele and show the disease, though almost 2/1000 will possess one copy of the allele ([1/1000 x 999/1000] + [999/1000 x 1/1000] = approximately 2/1000).  However in a family where a disease-causing recessive allele is present, if close relatives mate together, their children have a much higher chance of having a child suffering from a genetic disease, because this increases the chance that the two relatives, though not suffering from the genetic disease will both be carrying it.  In such circumstances the chance of each child showing the disease is 1 in 4 (1/2 x 1/2).  This is why inbreeding, for example cousin marriage, can have unpleasant outcomes and should be avoided.

All individuals of a species are genetically related to each other and this is true of humans as it is of other animals and plants.  The practical test of this relationship is that all individuals of a species are capable of mating with each other and producing fertile offspring.  All humans present on this planet are linked to each other genetically and, using techniques to identify DNA markers, we are able to follow this linkage back through time.  On the other hand, looking forward, there is a significant chance that any one of us will not leave descendants far into the future.

Looking to posterity, each of us usually has 2 parents, 4 grand-parents, 8 great-grand-parents, etc, with the number of our direct relatives doubling with each successive generation going backwards.  Now, if this proposition was absolutely true, the number of our direct relatives would quickly exceed the number of people in the population of these islands.  If we assume that there are 3 generations per century and we go back 27 generations to a time shortly after the Norman Conquest, then the population would need to have been at least 2^27, which is greater than 134 million!  It is estimated that the population of Britain at that time was actually ~2 million.  The explanation for this discrepancy is that if we could trace our relationships back through 27 generations we would find that many, perhaps most, of our marrying ancestors in those generations were relatives, even if the relationship was often remote.

How much genetic similarity is there between an individual and his/her parents, grandparents and more remote direct ancestors?  The answer depends upon the location of the genes in question.  All the genes which lie on the mitochondrial DNA of an individual come from his/her mother.  There are 37 genes on the mitochondrial DNA and most of the mitochondrial DNA is used to code for these genes.  All the genes which lie on the Y chromosome of a male individual come from his father.  The Y chromosome DNA has the capacity to code for several thousand genes but in fact only codes for ~27, most of which do not have vital functions.  Thus, only ~0.3% of our genes is found in these two locations. As a result, they tend to be ignored so that we can make approximate calculations for the bulk of our genes which lie on the chromosomes and which carry lots of genes, the chromosomes not concerned with sex determination and the X chromosome. (Strictly speaking the X chromosome ought to be treated separately because, while a mother passes her X chromosomes equally to her sons and daughters, a father only passes his X chromosome to his daughters.) 

With these qualifications, we can say that each individual has half his/her genes (strictly speaking alleles of genes) in common with his/her father and the other half with his/her mother.  This halving continues with each further generation and the general rule for calculating the proportion of genes in common with a direct relative is ½ ^ n, where n is the number of generations.  If we go back 3 generations to our 8 great-grand-parents, we only have ½^3 = 1/8 or 12.5% of our genes in common with each of them.  Frequently it is possible to trace some part of our family tree back for 12 generations (say 400 years).  While we may feel emotionally connected to individuals from so many generations back, we actually only share ½^12 or <0.025% of our genes with them.  We are barely connected at all. 

The genetic relationship with remote ancestors, even where a reliable family tree is present (and ignoring the possibility of hidden illegitimacy) may actually be more or less than the estimate (which is an average) and can even be zero, because of the way that recombination of alleles occurs during the special kind of cell division which precedes the formation of eggs and sperm.  This recombination of alleles occurs due to two different mechanisms, depending upon whether the genes being examined lie on the same chromosome or upon different chromosomes.

(Consider just 2 chromosome types in a child’s body cells, called A and B.  There are 2 chromosomes of type A present and 2 chromosomes of type B, which we will call A1, A2 and B1, B2, where chromosomes labelled “1” come from the mother and chromosomes labelled “2” come from the father.  When the child starts to produce egg or sperm cells each gamete receives either A1 or A2 and either B1 or B2.  A quarter of the gametes will have the chromosome complement A1 B2 and another quarter will have the complement A2 B1.  Neither of these combinations occurred in either parent, so there has been recombination.

When genes occur on the same chromosome type, they can also be recombined to give new combinations of alleles on the same chromosome type by the operation of a mechanism which swaps sections of chromosome.  This adds to the mechanism of recombination of genes which lie on different chromosome types.  However, the swaps do not occur very often, typically 1-3 per chromosome pair, some copies of the chromosomes have no swaps at all and swaps tend to occur in a small number of places, meaning that groups of genes tend to be inherited together without being recombined.)

Ignoring the complications caused by genes in mitochondria and genes on sex chromosomes, we can calculate what proportion of other genes (the great majority) that two related individuals have in common due to recent common ancestors.  This value has the grand title of the Coefficient of Relatedness and the symbol R.  Two individuals may be direct relatives or collateral relatives.  The line of direct relatives is, for example, son-father-grandmother-great grandmother.  A collateral relationship is, for example son-(father and mother)-son (ie brothers) or son-father-(grandfather and grandmother)-son (ie nephew –uncle).  R can easily be calculated.  Sons (or daughters) share half their genes with their fathers (or mothers).  We can calculate R by multiplying the proportions together for each link in the genealogical chain in travelling from one individual to the other.  In the case of two brothers there are two separate routes, each of two links (son-father-son, son-mother-son) and so R, the proportion of genes in common between two brothers is (½ x ½)+(1/2 x ½) =1/2 , or 50%.  In the case of nephew – uncle there are two separate routes, each of 3 links (son-[father or mother]-grandfather-son, son-[father or mother]-grandmother-son) so they have (½ x ½ x ½) + (1/2 x ½ x ½) = 1/4, or 25% of their genes in common.  The calculation of R can be extended to any relationship, no matter how remote. 

The above calculation of the coefficient of relatedness applies to a situation where there has been no inbreeding in the last few generation of a family.  Where there has been inbreeding the coefficient of relatedness will be increased in value.  The most common inbreeding situation encountered by family researchers is cousin marriage.  As we have seen, R for two brothers whose parents are unrelated is 0.5, ie they have 50% of their genes in common.  If their parents were first cousins, then the value of R increases to 0.5625.  If their parents were double first cousins, then the value for R increases again to 0.625.

Inbreeding is the mating of genetically-related individuals.  The degree of inbreeding can be quantified by measuring the Coefficient of Inbreeding, F.  It measures the probability that the two genes of a particular kind in an individual are identical due to inheritance from a common ancestor.  In an otherwise outbred population F is approximately half the value of R, the coefficient of relatedness, for the two parents.  The method for calculating F will not be given or explained.  Any good book on quantitative inheritance or plant/animal breeding will give the formula.

(That’s the basic genetics over!)  

Given names and surnames are a vital component of family research, because they are a major tool in identifying individuals at different times and places throughout their lives and, in the case of surnames, in identifying the parents and children of individuals.  Indeed, family research could not proceed if individuals changed their given names with a significant frequency and if surnames were not inherited between generations and, on marriage, if the female marriage partner did not routinely give up her parents’ surname and adopt the surname of her husband.  Also, if the big events in life were not recorded in writing, names would be nearly useless to the family researcher.  But the recording of life events, the maintenance of names within and between generations and the discarding of female surnames on marriage are practices which are only a few hundred years old.  It is worth looking at the origin of given and inherited names, so that we can understand the limitations that this history places on family researchers.

In primitive hunter/gatherer societies it was probably essential that each individual had a unique name, so that accurate communication could occur between members of the group, for example during hunting.  There was no need to have more than one name, provided that every member of the group had a unique name. In Anglo-Saxon England there were so many give names that within a family or small group, such as a village, each is likely to have been unique.  With the coming of Christianity there was a trend to use biblical names as given names and thus the pool of given names became much smaller.  The Norman invasion of 1066 had a profound effect on Britain. Given names introduced after the invasion tended to be either biblical names or names popular in France at that time.  Most Anglo-Saxon names were discarded.

In addition to a given name, many people acquired a second name, or byename, probably to differentiate them from other individuals who had the same given name.  When a byename became fixed, adopted by all members of a family and inherited between generations, it became transformed into a surname.  Byenames were ephemeral but surnames have survived, though byenames probably had many of the characteristics of surnames.  Surnames are classified into four principal subdivisions, those derived from place, eg Bielby, those derived from kinship, eg Harrison, those derived from nicknames, eg Fox and those derived from occupation, eg Harriman.

This fixing of byenames into surnames did not occur quickly or uniformly.  At the time of the Conquest, a few Norman barons had surnames which were derived from the names of their estates back in France, for example Warenne (modern Warren) was derived from the hamlet of Varenne near Dieppe.  Some barons took surnames derived from the names of their English estates as a means of establishing ownership.  However, even long after 1066 surnames were confined to the ruling barons.  By 1250 most knights (landowners at a lower level than the barons) had surnames. Also by this date some families in provincial towns had surnames and by about 1350 most families in England had surnames. The convention of women adopting their husband’s surname did not necessarily occur immediately on the adoption of surnames.  Sometimes women kept their old surname on marriage, or even changed it for one different to the surname of their husband.  The rules were not fixed until well after 1300 but had become fixed by 1400.  Once surnames had been adopted they did not necessarily remain immutable. Some surnames evolved by truncation and some by variation in spelling, which was often a variable rendering by clerks of local pronunciations. After the Conquest, French words were not understood and were often twisted due to English pronunciation, eg Bohun became Boon, Bone or Bown.  Thus whole families of similar surnames arose from the same original name.  Even as late as the mid-19^th century variable spellings of surnames can be found in parish and census records.

One major stimulus for the fixing of byenames into surnames was the creation of written records for the purposes of taxation. In the reign of Edward I (1272-1307) the whole country was taxed to raise money for the king’s wars in Wales and Scotland and the names of all those who paid their taxes were written down and survive today in the Subsidiary Rolls in the Public Record Office.  A century later, in the time of Richard II another tax, the Poll Tax was introduced and names were written down again.  Some of these lists have also survived.  In the Subsidiary Rolls, names such as “Hugh the Baker” probably indicate current occupation (ie “the Baker” is a byename) but “John Carter, draper” clearly shows that in some cases a surname had already evolved. Ignoring 20^th century immigration, at least 30,000 surnames are present in Great Britain.  Some surnames are much more common than others, Smith being the most frequent.

The practice of assuming the surname of the male partner on marriage parallels the mode of inheritance of the Y chromosome in one respect, ie it passes from father to son, to son, etc.  However, unlike genetic inheritance, social inheritance of surname is blind to such events as hidden illegitimacy and adoption. Individual surnames today have characteristic geographical distributions, even common names such as Smith, which may contain information about geographical origins of names.  It is likely that many of the rarer surnames had a single geographical origin and even that all bearers of that name are potentially genetically related.  However, in order to draw conclusions about the current geographical distributions of surnames it is essential first to trace the origin and evolution of that name in written records through the ages.  Also, studies of particular DNA sequences on the Y chromosome show that while such sequences are associated with some surnames, this is never exclusively so, presumably due to hidden illegitimacy.  In the case of very frequent surnames there is usually a diversity of sequence variants present, perhaps mainly due to the name having arisen independently on several or even many occasions.

Prior to the Marriage Act of 1753 marriage was governed entirely by church law and the only requirement was that it should be celebrated by a priest, normally, but not exclusively, after banns or the obtaining of a marriage licence.  The 1753 Act required for the first time in England and Wales, under the civil law, that marriages must take place in the parish church.  Curiously, the law applied to anglicans and roman catholics but not to jews or quakers.  Before this enactment it was normal for couples to live and sleep together and for the bride to be pregnant at the time of marriage.  By the start of the 19^th century it had become the social convention that there should be abstention from sexual intercourse before marriage.  However, premarital conception was at a level of ~40% at the start of the 19^th century, though it dropped to ~20% during the Victorian era.  By the end of the 20^th century it had risen to ~40% again.

Most extra-marital conceptions were actually pre-marital conceptions, since marriage usually followed.  In the late 1700s in England only 2-4% of births were illegitimate.  The illegitimate were often stigmatised, especially during the Victorian era.

It was not unusual for men to delay marriage until their late 20s in the 18^th and 19^th centuries, though women usually married at an earlier age.  Women then usually had children regularly, approximately every 2 years until death or infertility intervened.  In the 1730s, 24% of marriages were ended within 10 years and 56% within 25 years, due to the death of a spouse.  These rates fell substantially during the 19^th and 20^th centuries as health and longevity improved. While women could have 12 or more children, they typically had only 4 or 5.  Towards the end of the 19^th century there is evidence that couples had started to limit conception voluntarily.

Family research depends crucially upon birth registration, both parish records and statutory registration, to identify the genetical parents of a child.  There is usually little doubt as to who was the mother, since her pregnancy was obvious, but the father may sometimes have been someone other that the registered father.  Modern genetical studies have shown that in the UK 1-2% of all births are associated with a so-called non-paternity event, ie the registered father is not the genetical father.  It is impossible to estimate the frequency of non-paternity events in the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries but we can state with confidence that they occurred.  A non-paternity event normally broke the link between Y-chromosome type and surname (but not if the child was conceived by the brother of the husband)!  Modern studies looking for the association of surnames with DNA markers on the Y chromosome support the presumption that non-paternity events did occur in the past.  In former times, in addition to extramarital liaisons by a wife, other possible mechanisms involved in non-paternity events were informal adoption and accidental baby swapping by nursemaids.  Contemporary society provides additional, more exotic mechanisms, such as egg and sperm donation and surrogacy, for non-paternity (and non-maternity) events.

It is worth going back over this introduction to family research to summarise the clear limitations under which such research labours.  Once we understand these limitations we can appreciate what it is possible to achieve with our own family studies and what is beyond knowing.

The evolution of surnames to create firm links between generations and the regular  recording of the great events of life, birth (baptism), marriage and death (burial) from the mid-16^th century onwards, created the opportunity to pursue family research back from the present to that time.  However, there is little chance of pushing back knowledge of our individual ancestors to earlier times.  In the case of my own family researches, the earliest entries on my database are for the Maw family, farmers in Epworth, Lincolnshire from as early as 1467 to the present.  Although the Maws were not my direct ancestors, they intermarried with my Fox farming relatives extensively in the 19^th century.  But they constitute a rare case where family research can penetrate back before the 1650s.  My earliest direct relatives who have been traced are various individuals, probably farmers, on the Yorkshire Wolds going back 9 generations to the mid 17^th century. The earliest records tell us little about the lives of individuals other than names and dates.  It is difficult to get any appreciation of the lives they led.  Even if we are lucky and can trace back our relatives to the mid-16^th century, we have to ask ourselves if such information is useful.  We also need to remember that the greater the number of presumed genetical links back into history, the poorer is the evidence on which that supposition of genetical linkage is based and the lower the probability that we have correctly identified the next set of genetical relatives in the chain as it disappears into the mists of time.

Genetical linkage, either direct or collateral, is a strong driver for most family researchers.  However, the approximate halving of genetical relatedness with each direct link going either forwards, backwards or collaterally, quickly takes us to individuals with whom we have little genetically in common.  Genetic dilution is a factor which is ignored by, or unknown to, most family researchers, but it is an important and inevitable fact.  In addition, it is also worth bearing in mind the more esoteric consideration that, in spite of a proven genealogical link to a remote ancestor, sampling error during the recombination of genes prior to gamete formation may have totally excised a genetic linkage.  We may be “related” to someone but have no genes in common, at least due to recent reproductive history!  The final point in relation to genetic relatedness is that there may be non-paternity events in our lineage.  If we assume that that the frequency of non-paternity events is 2% per generation, then if we can trace a line of ancestors back for 11 generations the probability that there has been no non-paternity events in this chain of 10 genetic links is (0.98)^10, which is approximately 0.8, ie there would be  ~20% chance that there would be at least one non-paternity event in the chain.  A non-paternity event is, like a wrong attribution of parenthood based on records, a fundamental break in understanding our genetic link to the past.

Taking all these considerations together, I find the most interesting area of family research relates to direct ancestors born from ~1770 onwards and extending back from me by 5 generations, ie to my great, great grandparents.  These are people of whom we may come to know something significant about their lives.

Inheritance, as we noted at the start of this discourse, consists of two fundamental elements, cultural inheritance and genetical inheritance.  Cultural inheritance, like genetical inheritance, is diluted with the passage of time but not in such a precise and predictable way as genetical inheritance.  But in one way it endures and may have the power to influence people in future generations.  That is the written word, the creation of music or works of art, or any number of contemporary digital outpourings.  A book, such as “The Origin of Species” by Charles Darwin, could be cited as such a cultural work which has not lost its impact, even though it was first published more than 140 years ago.  Few of us will have a cultural inheritance as profound as that of Darwin’s writings lurking in our family history but through family research we usually find something that is insightful of its times and worthy of preservation.

In recent years it has become clear that each of us carries a precise information record within the 20,000 genes and associated “junk” DNA in our cells which will, in time, become the means to create a deep insight into our individual genetic origins.  Although this branch of genealogical research is in its infancy, it has already given some understanding of the migration of ancient human populations.  These DNA sequences provide a link with a past much more remote than can ever be achieved with conventional family research.  DNA information does not depend on the written word and is unaffected by name changes, sampling error and non-paternity events

Human mitochondrial DNA has a 400 letter variable sequence which can be classified into a branching tree.  This leads to the recognition of ~36 different major branches in human populations throughout the world but only 8 in Europe.  Because of the exclusive mother-to-daughter transmission of mitochondrial DNA, these 8 European families represent only 8 original females in the original population which invaded Europe and left offspring generation after generation continuously to the present day.  These females have been called the “Seven Sisters of Eve” (even though we now recognise eight of them).  Their places and times of origin can be estimated and most seem to have originated in SW Europe 10 – 45 thousand years ago.

A similar exercise to that for mitochondrial DNA can be carried out for Y-chromosome DNA which is passed exclusively from father to son.  It turns out that there are ~21 major Y-chromosome clans in the world, only 8 of which occur in Europe and, of these, only 5 occur in the British Isles

Analysis of minor variants in DNA sequence for both mitochondrial DNA and Y-DNA gives a finer grain understanding of population movements in more recent times.  Of course these two DNA sources deal only with a small percentage of all human DNA and development of markers in the non-sex and X chromosomes has the potential to give an even greater insight into the geographical and racial origins of each of us, if we are prepared to pay the necessary fee!  

Don Fox

20120629

donaldpfox@gmail.com