Musings on the Buckalews

I'm in the habit of working on my genealogy on Saturday mornings while listening to my favorite radio programs Car Talk and Wait, Wait, Don't Tell Me. A while ago I determined that my ancestress Sarah Livingston was probably descended from Rev. John Livingston and a relative of the New York Patroon Robert Livingston that gave her husband George Winchell's family such grief in western Massachusetts. From the reading I've done, it seems like all the early Livingstons were descendants of Rev. Livingston.  Until I have the time and patience to visit the history room of the Troy Public Library to see if I can find the records that show just how Sarah is descended from him, I've been slowly adding ancestors to Rev. Livingston's tree from information on-line. 

I found some very good information on Electric Scotland and thought I'd look to see what the site had on the Scotts.  The Buckalews are descendants of Clan Scott, and my great-grandmother Margaret Gatton's ancestors.  The current chief, the Duke of Buccleuch, paid for genealogical research that proved the Buckalews were descendants of the Scotts. I just wish he'd publish the research. 

Here's another case where I need to build the path back to Scotland. One family story is that the ancestor was a soldier in the Netherlands. I believe I just found the origin of the story on Electric Scotland.  Walter, second Lord Scott of Buccleuch, was created Earl of Buccleuch in 1619. 

"and entered the service of the States-General, as he did, at the head of a detachment of Scotsmen, though, strange to say, only half-a-dozen of them belonged to his own clan and bore his name. He was present at the sieges of Bergen-op-Zoom and Maestricht. As Sir Walter Scott says of him, ‘A braver ne’er to battle rode.’ He was recalled from the Netherlands, in 1631, by Charles I., who desired his presence in London, as his Majesty had occasion for his services, but he subsequently returned to his command in the Netherlands, and was in active service there six weeks before his death."

 Earl Walter enjoyed having people around him and entertaining. Novelist Sir Walter Scott wrote this verse about our social kinsman:

‘Nine-and-twenty knights of fame,
Hung their shields in Branksome Hall;
Nine-and-twenty squires of name,
Brought them their steeds to bower from stall;
Nine-and-twenty yeomen tall
Waited, duteous, on them all:
They were all knights of metal true,
Kinsmen to the bold Buccleuch.

‘Ten of them were sheathed in steel,
With hiked sword, and spur on heel:
They quitted not their harness bright,
Neither by day, nor yet by night:
They lay down to rest
With corslet laced,
Pillow’d on buckler cold and hard;
They carved at the meal
With gloves of steel,
And they drank the red wine through the helmet barr’d.

‘Ten squires, ten yeomen, mail-clad men,
Waited the beck of the warders ten;
Thirty steeds, both fleet and wight.
Stood saddled in stable day and night,
Barbed with frontlet of steel, I trow,
And with Jedwood-axe at saddlebow;
A hundred more fed free in stall:-
Such was the custom of Branksome Hall.’

Branxholme

Branxholme Castle

Major reasons Scottish people came to the British colonies of North America were because they were banished as border rievers (which the Scotts were at one time), they were Protestant Covenanters who opposed Catholic King James II or they were dispossessed by the Highland clearances. During the life of Earl Walter's successor, Francis, Second Earl of Buccleuch, the family's story changed from that of riever to Covenanter.  The page states that Francis also had a brother and six illegitimate half-siblings, but their histories aren't given. I'm not certain which family line Frederick Buckalew came from.

Did you know that castles were originally built by the Norman conquerors of Britain to maintain control of their new subjects?  They were square, stone structures of French origin. The Normans built at least 420 castles after conquering England.