Yep, Grandma was from Nova Scotia, in the township of Glencoe near Mabou, near the western shore. The famous Beatons of Mabou (Celtic fiddlers) are from there.
Here's the cemetery where some of my relatives are buried. Hugh MacDonald and John Angus Beaton were my great-uncles; I met them both several times. My great-grandparents are also there (they're not on the list), and I brought a lock of my Brooklyn-buried grandmother's hair to bury on their graves when I visited in 2000. Great Grandpa helped to build that pretty little church in 1908.
The Ancestral Link to the Old World is Alexander McDonald, b. Lockaber, Scotland 1826, d. Glencoe November 26, 1914. The immediate cause why they left was because of the enclosure laws, although being Roman Catholic also didn't help back there either. And while most of NS is in much better shape than it was when Grandma left in 1936 to find work in America, it's still kind of messed up; to this day various cousins of mine from up there come down south, work for a few years to make some decent money, and then go back up and build a little house.
I guess part of the whole Europe/America thing is that sometimes the circumstances under which folks left the Old World were so heinous--cossacks trampling your crops, fox hunters ruining your fences, corruption and bribery, laws that restricted where your ethnicity could live or work, official state religions, the obscene idea of a hereditary noble class, and so on--that many immigrants actually forbade their kids to speak the native language and dropped their old customs and beliefs with gratitude, to make a new life free from the baggage of whatever poverty-stricken hellhole they'd fled from. So, a couple of generations down the line, when the descendents are more comfortable here, people relax and start to look for the good things about their ancestral culture. But, for my family at least and maybe many others, there's always a slight distance. I mean, Scotland just. didn't. want. us. We're happy to learn about the Clan McDonald tartan and meet family historians when we go over there, but America's now our home and we thank God old Alexander left for Canada.
rigging Canadarm to grab Betsy and amyparker.
t swooping around to spray liquid nitrogen in the joints
I guess part of the whole Europe/America thing is that sometimes the circumstances under which folks left the Old World were so heinous [...] that many immigrants actually forbade their kids to speak the native language and dropped their old customs and beliefs with gratitude, to make a new life free from the baggage of whatever poverty-stricken hellhole they'd fled from.
Hungarian Jews in the 1850's, England with Penn's Fleet, Ireland during the Hunger . . . and we knew nothing about any of it until Grandma got curious. I want to see Axminster on my next trip to England, but it's not the place I long for.
Okay, amyparker. I don't like to do this, but you give me no choice.
assembles Parliamentary committee to write White Paper on UnAmericanism and unauthorized leaflets
hires amyparker and Betsy as consultants
HAH!
t turns into a quango. Quacks pitifully.
t imitates Betsy. Jetpack crashes into canadarm. Resultant boom! frightens Betsy-Quango and amyparker-Quango, sending them scurrying for cover
sending amyparker and Betsy a 37-page specification request form on "quangos"
t looks at flapping noisy thing. Looks at Betsy. Blinks
t starts building Nest of Denial.
Yeah, I have family stories I'd love to track down. For example my Grandfather was a tanner who fled Russia after killing a Cossack. I'd like to know more - but that is the complete extent of the family story. So was it political.? There were terrorist Jewish bunds in Russia at the time so not impossilbe. Was it personal? Cossacks pretty much had a license to do anything they wanted to Jews - so that is possible too. And you know, a tanner named lipowvitz had to flee Russia around 1905 or 1910 for killing a Cossack; that does not narrow it down as much as you might think. Tanning was not an uncommon profession for Jews in Russia; Lipowvitz was not an uncommon name (especially since we can't rule Lipowvitzky and other varetations.) And relations between Jews and Cossacks were not good. Rather like an Australian of Irish ancestroy with a common Irish last name (O'Conner perhaps or is that not that common?) trying to track an ancestor who was deported to Australia for killing an Englishman.
Scotland just. didn't. want. us
Scotland weeps for the memory of her lost children.
