Coming Home

Today was a good day.

Today, I stood on the ground where my forefathers stood.

I stood in the middle of the square, breathed deep, and let the feeling of history wash over me...

I left out this morning and drove up to Dunkeld, not really knowing what to expect. I'd hit a dead end at the General Register Office (GRO) and decided that the best way to make some headway was to just go to where we were from and see if I couldn't figure it out. Before I left, I did some research and found that the records were actually more likely to be found at the Tayside Family History Center in Dundee, but decided to go anyway...most likely because that's the way I do things, just dive in and see what stroke I come up with while swimming...and dive in I did.

Dunkeld is a small little town right next to Birnam which seems a little bigger, but essentially the same kind of place. Each has a main street with shops, restaurants and hotels, and then homes and religious/historical buildings off the strip...except for the fact that they whole place is historical...past fiefdoms ruled by Dukes and other leaders. And I use "home" in the purely general sense...more cottages and what would be apts or condos if they weren't one to two hundred years old....

I went down to the visitor's center and talked with the staff person and there made one of the most fascinating discoveries. Now here in Scotland, since things are so small that houses, streets and buildings often don't have numbers but rather names, or are used interchangably. All this time I had been researching, I kept coming up with people being born at "The Cross", which I'd thought was a hospital or convent. It turns out that the Cross was actually named for the "cul-de-sac" that held the cross market, and would have been the area of town where people came to sell their wares and trade. It was the small sections of houses that was a region of this small little village, like Georgetown or Uptown.

What was more incredible was that I was standing in the middle of it.

Yes, the information center was in the small section that was called the Cross, and so here I stood coming to this revelation and realizing I was right where my ancestors had been. I was standing on the soil they would have played as young children, learned their lessons, had their first kiss, grown to adulthood and toiled at their labours, and yes, even died. I was right where those who had come before me had stood.

I was home.

Next we began to look through the grave marker books to see who had been buried that might rise to the occasion of fitting the relative bill. This only produced more challenges and questions, because while I couldn't find a definitive connection to those I knew lived and died there, I found so many others with the same name....with the same spelling..and the variations...and so while I have yet to find that definitive connection, I cannot believe that these other McFarlanes (MacFarlanes) were not related closely in some manner. We are all members of the Clan, but there seems to be no way that so many from the family could be living in such a small place and not be connected....

My course is clear, and I take up the new challenge joyfully.