Family-History Pilgrimage: Day 5

Sunday, June 11, 7:30 a.m.

A palace peacock,
indignant at interlopers.

Ann at Scone Palace.

Yesterday’s visiting was wonderful, all around – in terms of tourism and family pilgrimage. We took the hour drive to Perth to visit Scone Palace, the grounds of which were the site of the coronations of the ancient kings of Scotland. Fifteen hundred years ago, this was the capital of the Picts, an ancient people in what’s now eastern Scotland. It was also the location of the Stone of Destiny, what we Yanks know as the Stone of Scone, in the time when the Picts and other Celtic peoples were united under a common king. That stone has been used in British coronations for centuries, most recently under the seat of King Charles III. In the Middle Ages, Scone Abbey was founded, and Scottish coronations took place there until the Protestant Reformation. Sadly, John Knox and his followers destroyed the Abbey much as they destroyed yesterday’s site, Holyrood Abbey. 

Abbey remnants in the garden. 

Today, nothing of Scone Abbey is left but a stray sarcophagus and some stones, strewed in the (absolutely beautiful) gardens. In the early 1800s, the Earl of Mansfield, whose family had received the estate in payment for foiling an attempt on the life of King James VI in 1600, began rebuilding the medieval house as a Gothic-inspired palace. Though it no longer housed royalty, Queen Victoria came to stay in the 1840s. On the day we visited, we were joined by hundreds of local people inhabiting the grounds for something called Potfest, which (even in these libertine days) is actually a festival of local potters.

A giant rhododendron.

The gardens were also worth the trip, especially for Ann, who knows what she’s looking at. For me, beautiful was enough; but I was also amazed at the sizes of plants we know back home. What for us is a shrub maybe as tall as your shoulders (a rhododendron, for example) here towers five times your size. It’s like walking through the royal gardens in the Land That Time Forgot.

Also on the grounds is a gate and a cemetery for Old Scone, marking where the village used to be. Old cemeteries are interesting anyway, but my family members the McLagans came from Perthshire, and some lived and died in Old Scone itself. Ambling through the cemetery, I came across a headstone from a branch of the family I hadn’t traced. My immigrant ancestors were Alexander and Elizabeth McLagan, as well as their son John and his wife, Mary Brown McLagan. Of course, their headstones wouldn’t be in Scone, but I did come across a headstone for George and Jane McLagan, as well as their daughter Jane, who died at 17, and daughter Margaret, who lived to be 77. George died in 1863, close to the time when the older McLagan immigrants died (Elizabeth in 1851 and Alexander in 1853). I don’t have any information about Alexander’s parents, but my guess is that he and George may have been brothers or cousins in the very small town of Old Scone. I’ll take that hopeful connection, especially given how cool his gravestone is.

The front of the
McLagan headstone.

The inscription side of the
McLagan headstone.

I don’t know a lot about the McLagans’ emigration story. Alexander was an innkeeper in Old Scone, and one immigration record shows them in Ontario, Canada, as early as 1834; but other Scottish records show them in Perthshire then and years later. In any event, Alexander and Elizabeth both died in St. Louis in the early 1850s. Their son John and his wife, Mary, came soon after the senior McLagans, arriving in Canada most likely between 1861 and 1871. John was a Presbyterian, so I doubt his emigration was about religious struggle in Scotland. He was also a farm laborer, the records say. So, most likely they crossed the pond, like so many other immigrants then and now, just seeking a better life. I’m grateful for that, given how poor a farmer I’d likely be.

Arrow slit in the Old Scone village wall.

It was a perfect day both for outdoor wandering and the drive between Edinburgh and Perth (crossing the Firth of Forth, which is fun to say). Back in Edinburgh, we had dinner at an Indian restaurant up the street from the hotel and shared a meal with another American couple seated next to us. As always seems to happen somewhere along a trip like this, the small-world connections were fun: They live in Sacramento, CA, where my cousin lives; the wife is a parishioner at the Episcopal cathedral there; and their son is looking at a real-estate deal in Kansas City.

This morning, we’ll leave Edinburgh and drive to Glasgow in time for worship at the cathedral of the Scottish Episcopal Church there. Former St. Andrew’s member the Rev. Ryan Zavacky e-introduced us to the cathedral’s dean, so we can have another one of those small-world moments shaking the dean’s hand after church.