Migration.

[Jinty]

I have two established Scots lines back to mid 1700s.  Those dates are not significant in history because, if you go back earlier to 1715 and 1745 there is Jacobite disruption.

Would any of you believing you are Scots thru and thru want to contemplate you might not be?  Those particularly across the Continents, North America, Australasia, N. Zealand who are so proud of being Scots.

It seems to me unless you have a Mac in front of your name, or a Clan named similarly, your Scots origins are in doubt, not that you werent at one time or another, just the origins.

I wonder if some one knowledgeable here would give us some guidelines.  What do we do if we find a Scots line and then find them travelling back and forth to the South, Herefordshire via Cheshire and othe Counties. 

Does anyone know if there was a particular focus on life in the Counties to attract Scots farmers to making a better living and then to travel more south west to Herefordshire.

I have found a birth in the same name as my Scots name of Sherret, named Sheret, it doesnt matter about the variable.   Why would a Scot travel South, via Cheshire, and return again to Scotland as I have seen in Census records and then to Herefordshire to return again to Scotland.  What was so purposeful in Cheshire I am wondering?

Jinty

[Forfarian]

Jinty wrote: "It seems to me unless you have a Mac in front of your name, or a Clan named similarly, your Scots origins are in doubt"

This is not te case at all.

The population of the Highlands was always a minority of the population of Scotland, and the mst common names in Scotland are similar to elsewhere - the commonest name in Scotland in every survey since 1858 has always been Smith, followed by Brown, Wilson and Thomson in varying order. Robertson ("son of Robert") and Anderson ("son of Andrew") are also in the top ten throughout, but it cannot be definitely proved that all bearing those names are descendants of clans, since both names also originated independently in the Lowlands and in England as well as in the Highlands; and Andersen also occurs commonly in Scandinavia.

The top 'Mac' name is MacDonald/McDonald, though the 'Mac' spelling is losing out to the 'Mc' version, which was not in the top 100 in 1858. Next comes Stewart/Stuart, followed by Campbell ("crooked mouth").

I have traced my own ancestry back to the 18th century in every line and to the 16th in some lines, and so far I have to go back at least 4 generations to find even one ancestor with a 'clan' surname (Leslie) and another three to find a 'Mac'. Every single one of my direct ancestors was born, lived, and died in Scotland.