Letters My Grandfather Wrote Me: Family Origins

By Bryan Crawford

The Douglases are traced from 100 A.D. with ancestral background in Ireland around 300 B.C. There is an American branch from the 18th century with connections to the U.S. war of independence and the anti-slave movement.
The Crawfords are shown in their early history around the 12th century, then since the early 19th Century in Scotland, Ireland and New Zealand.
The Clarks are shown since the mid 19thcentury but with strong Huguenot roots in the 17th century.
The Gagens are traced from Germany to Norfolk in the U.K. in the 17th century; and to Canada and America in the 19th, where Dan Gagen married into the Chippewa tribe. The book is about Cyril Gagen who settled in New Zealand with his mid-wife mother in the early 20th century, and is written by his grandson.
The last chapter is autobiographical with an in-depth discussion on Social Control and the ethics of its use in modern Britain and New Zealand. The Clarion review states that the book is anti-monarchist which is totally incorrect.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Nov 23, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456788537

Bryan Crawford

Bryan Crawford is a retired clinical psychologist who was born and raised in New Zealand before living in Britain in the nineties.

Book preview

© 2009, 2011 by Bryan Crawford. All rights reserved.

The right of Bryan Crawford to be identified as the author of the work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

First published by AuthorHouse 11/12/2011

ISBN: 978-1-4567-8852-0 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4567-8853-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

Contents

Foreword

1

London

2

The Crawfords

3

The Clarks

4

Gertrude Theodosia Clark

5

Lloyd Crawford

6

The Gagens

7

The Sydenhams

8

Arthur Cyril Gagen

9

Ancient Beginnings

10

The Douglases 1174-1660

11

The Douglases 1660-1837

12

The Douglases 1837-1945

13

The Liffitons

14

The Descendants of Robert Douglas

15

Caroline Helen A. Douglas

16

Mary Sydenham Gagen

17

Design for a New Millennium

18

Epilogue

Appendix 1

The Sky

Appendix 2

Farewell My Son

Appendix 3

Appendix 4

The Sydenham children

Appendix 5

Descendants of John and

Hannah Shore

Select Bibliography

Dedication

This book is dedicated to the memory of my two nieces:

Gina (1992-2010) and Malvina (1965-2010)

Illustrations

Photographs depicted between pages 37 and 49 relate to the Crawford, Clark and Gagen families.

Photographs depicted between pages 245 and 256 relate to the Douglas and Liffiton families, as well as depicting the author’s life.

Genealogical Tables

Table 1: Genealogy of Clan Donald

Table 2: The Ancestors of Somerled

Table 3: The Descendants of Somerled

Table 4: Descendants of William de Douglas

Table 5: The Kings of Scotland

Table 6: Descendants of Sir William Douglas,

9th Earl of Angus

Table 7: Descendants of Sir Robert Douglas,

3rd Baronet of Glenbervie

Table 8: Descendants of General Joseph Hornsby

Foreword

Who might you find you have come from yourself, if you could trace back through the centuries?

—Walt Whitman¹

The reality of genealogical research is that in many instances families will have some disappointing results or be able to trace their origins back five or six generations at best. At the other extreme are works of literature, such as the Banshenchas, whose pedigrees trace the lineage of Irish kings back to 1015 B.C. and Europeans such as people of Greek descent who can trace their origins back to Alexander the Great.²

In the case of people from the United Kingdom and their descendants, the surname of the family will indicate potential blood relationship, albeit less firmly, with others sharing the same name. In the case of Irish or Scottish clans, the researcher can claim their historical heritage from a clan surname. In exceptional cases where there has been a very thorough family researcher, or there is a link with the crown or aristocracy, as denoted in Burke’s Peerage, unbroken lines of ancestors may be traced for hundreds of years, or a millennium. Such is the case with the descendants of Robert the Bruce. This history encompasses all the types of lineages just mentioned from partial to complete, and I feel very fortunate that we have one line that traces the Anglo-Saxon ancestors of our clan back 2,000 years.

The significance of genealogical lineages for famous figures such as Robert the Bruce is that millions of people can trace their ancestry through them. In his book Lines of Succession, Michael MacLagan has shown that most of the European monarchies can trace ancestry back through the British royal family. As each generation worldwide produces children, there is an increase in the number of descendants with the blood of Scottish kings running in their veins, adding to the importance of the lineage. The Princes of Monaco for example, can trace their lineage from our ancestral families of the Stuarts and the Dukes of Hamilton.³

If we all traced back ten generations, the top line of our family tree would contain 1,024 ancestors. Go back another 16 generations to medieval times, of 1360 A.D. for example, and there are 67 million ancestors on the top line. The world population would have been only about 500 million people at this time, so this is improbable. In each county or region there would have been numerous instances of intermarriage within extended family groups, and this would have restricted the number of possible ancestors. It becomes clear how we could all be related. For those of us that grew up with the idea that the U.K. of the 18th century was a settled world, where no-one moved more than a ten mile radius within their lifetime, it may come as a surprise that migration was alive and well back in medieval times 500 years before. As we shall discover, the effects of migration and having families has had a far reaching effect in our world.

In 1977, an American television mini-series called Roots was screened in New Zealand. This was directly drawn from the book by Alex Haley, and drew people’s attention to the topic of genealogy. Since then the internet has been a great help to people researching their family trees. As time goes by many people will be able to link up with other families, achieving a larger network of documented lineages. Some of my research predates these events as I began my investigations as an eleven year old schoolboy in 1964. Since then, the bulk of my material has come from research conducted by relatives and the recent publication of many high quality books over the past two to three decades.

To date it has taken forty-five years to investigate our family origins, before putting the information into book form. Now in the 21st century I am continuing the work. In a sense the task will never be over as new information comes to light and additions are made to the existing material. I have followed a plan using the structure of my family tree as an outline for this work. I have begun with my paternal grandfather’s family, the Crawfords, followed by my paternal Grandmother’s family, the Clarks, then the Gagens, until I got to my maternal mother’s family, the Douglases. Early on I had difficulty with the idea of writing a family history at a relatively minor age. The biggest question was what should I include, and what exclude. Back then I envisaged writing about my immediate ancestors back to about 1800 A.D. I had no idea that one day I would be able to access information about my family that would cover fifty-five generations.

The huge volume of material related to my grandmother, Helen Douglas’s family, and the recent publication of numerous books relating to the Douglases has been a great boon for my research. This means that this book is heavily weighted on the Douglas side creating a certain imbalance. There is difficulty doing anything about this. Either I omit certain areas from the Douglas side for the sake of evenness or I accept our history with its imbalances and relate as complete a picture as I can. The Gagens have an interesting history stemming from Germany, and connections with Australia, Canada, Russia and the U.S. Additionally, my father’s side brings a completely different history with French Huguenot ancestry and their long period of service to the Church in many countries. I would not want to lose such interesting aspects of our family background. I have therefore decided to opt for the more complete picture.

The Douglas side has some interesting connections because they travelled extensively throughout Europe. Not only did our French Norman forbears migrate from the area near modern Belgium to Scotland in the 12th century; they also migrated to Europe from Scotland.

Sir William Douglas for instance travelled to Italy around 300 years before this and married into an Italian family creating the Douglas-Scotti and Scotti-Douglas families. Others went to Spain or France, and today there are millions of descendants from such migrants. The Italian Douglas descendants account for 169,000 websites on the internet. The equivalent German website has over 2,000,000. Several examples of Douglas descendants from European countries come to mind. The Duchess of Marlborough, Rosita Spencer-Churchill is of Swedish and German descent. Her father, Count Carl Ludwig Douglas, could also trace his ancestry through the German line back to James Douglas, 1st Baron of Dalkeith, who was an ancestor of the 15th century Earls of Morton.⁴

Another example of our complicated ancestry concerned a published article in April 2008 about a German Duke with Stuart ancestry. The Duke of Bavaria, Franz von Bayern is head of the Wittelsbach family and could claim the Scottish Crown if the 1701 Act of Settlement is axed. This would enable Catholics to inherit the throne.⁵ Today millions of Douglas descendants can be traced not only to the Commonwealth, but throughout Europe, the Americas, and the Pacific.

Prior to the 7th century, our records and their accuracy are much more open to questioning. In many cases mythological beginnings can be just as interesting as more recent factual records. I have therefore included what genealogical material there is, even if some generations are missing. Where oral traditions exist I have sometimes decided to include them. Although they are sometimes notoriously less accurate than historical records, there are several reasons for using them. Firstly they can reveal some accurate information that would otherwise be missed. An example of written information being incomplete in the public arena would be a Huguenot website that neglects to include in its list of famous descendants Sir Laurence Olivier, one of Britain’s greatest actors. Similarly in our family there are many orally transmitted stories that are unproven, such as our Gagen descent from the north of Germany, but these have been found to match orally transmitted stories from Gagens in Canada, Australia and Russia, and therefore need to be included for a fuller picture.

Secondly an oral tradition can provide information for a future researcher to follow up. A good example of this is the Huguenot line in our Clark ancestry, where lack of resources has meant that limited research has been undertaken, and this side has potential for further discoveries.

Thirdly, oral traditions reflect the beliefs of the people that pass them on, and that information is of interest in itself. An example of the latter would be my Grandmother Gertrude Crawford’s belief that she was almost stolen by Gypsies, a popular type of prejudice of the Victorian era. Although she probably enjoyed telling this story initially, attitudes changed radically during her long ninety-year life; and she probably felt uncomfortable about relating that story in later life. I have included this story because it is an interesting aspect of Victorian social culture.

Not everyone will want to study their family history, but for those that do there are rewards to be had. Histories can help achieve a sense of identity when we know the background from which we come, however diverse that background might be. When we learn of the different cultures or the violent times in which our ancestors lived, it can enable us to be more tolerant and overlook less serious human failings. We probably don’t want to repeat the mistakes of our parents, or previous generations. More importantly there are often good role models revealed, which can inspire. In our increasingly multicultural and complex world, the importance of understanding ourselves and a tolerance for other cultural points of view will be qualities to treasure.

I am aware that, for my grandchildren, my writing about the U.K. will be for them, reading about a foreign country, with strange names and unknown geographical locations. I have therefore taken these factors into account in the script, endeavouring to explain some things that, for someone in the U.K., might be readily understood without elaboration. For the purposes of this book, I have used the terms great-aunt and great-uncle, rather than grand-aunt or grand-uncle, to refer to the brothers and sisters of my grandparents.

In the final, autobiographical chapter I discuss some of the more difficult ethical topics I have come across connected with the police and medical fraternities and our family, which have subsequently been revealed in the world of film-making. The reasons for including these are that there are indications that my family was used for social research and the wider population used for testing new technologies or experimental procedures. Therefore I begin to discuss these topics because they need to be talked about, and only a psychiatrist or in my case, a clinical psychologist, is really qualified to do so. Secondly, as they affect the wider population, I discuss them because to be silent would be to become part of the abusive aspects of keeping people in the dark. In doing so I hope I have raised relevant questions of ethics, and pointed to some of the pitfalls in the area.

There is always the possibility of mistakes in a large scale project like this undertaking. These can come about in numerous ways. The long period over which some of the stories were collected means there is a greater chance of distorted memory, particularly where elderly people try to recall events of their youth. Sometimes separate details can get amalgamated into one story leading to an incorrect deduction. There were a few instances of transcription errors where written material sent to me had a discrepant year of death, or other such error. In such instances, rechecking has enabled a number of errors to be avoided. Hopefully this meticulous attention to detail has led to a more accurate work.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank my relatives for their tremendous help over the years. My great-uncle Bill Crawford compiled the original Crawford family tree and David Gregan computerised the information as well as updating Crawford family history. Ted Crawford gave permission to publish Archibald’s poem, The Sky. Ted and his son Peter, Marion Frost, Jeannie Hamilton, Trudy Smith and her son Rod, provided the bulk of the Crawford history and photographs. Helen Gregan gave permission to publish Beatrice Gregan’s poem Farewell My Son.

My grandmother Gertrude Clark, Aunt Hilary Farmilo, and my father’s cousins Evelyn and Douglas Clark were very helpful in compiling Clark family information. Auckland War Museum provided the historic photo of Riverlea.

I had great encouragement from my Gagen grandfather who helped instigate this book when in 1966 he gave me rare Victorian family photographs of James and Susan Sydenham. This kind act exactly suited my interests and through his faith in me at such a young age, set me on a path of investigation. I am also grateful to Jose Wright of Mooloolaba in Queensland, Australia for her correspondence, and Judith Gagen, previously of Westfarm Knook, Wiltshire, for her extensive 1970’s research into the Gagen history, not all of which could be incorporated here.

On the Douglas side I had immense help from many people, beginning with my Aunt and Uncle, Nan and John Gagen, my great-uncle Bob Douglas, and his son Bob Douglas for his research into the family in Whangarei. I also must thank Mrs Peg Vause and Tom Liffiton for access to and permission to reproduce from the photograph album of Maria Huntley Liffiton. For the earlier Douglas history, I am indebted to no less a person than James I of England (James VI of Scotland) who suggested to the 10th Earl of Angus, the writing of the History of the House of Douglas, which was continued by the 11th Earl. In our own lifetime, Michael Brown and Oliver Thomson have also written illuminating books on the Black and Red Douglases. My thanks go to John Stratford for permission to use material from Lord Alfred Douglas’ literary estate. Kay Williams of the Manawatu Standard kindly provided the photos of Oneida.

For travellers who might wish to visit historic sites associated with the Douglases, Oliver Thomson has written a sixty page guide in his book The Bloody Heart, which outlines places of importance throughout Scotland and Europe.

As the internet age spreads into homes all over the world there is an increasing realisation of out inter-connectedness. Hopefully this publication will help people to understand a little better the complex way history has weaved its complex threads through the lives of our ancestors, reaching areas we would not expect, and enhancing the rich heritage of our history. My journey began in 1964, and it has been a long trip to get here. Final thanks for their encouragement and practical assistance over the years must go to my Aunt Win Bevan, and my parents Meg and Lloyd Crawford for their help, letters and encouragement. I do hope you enjoy this read and that it might inspire people a little to collect their family stories and history for the coming generations.

Conversions

To convert currency from pence to dollars: 12d means 12 pence = 1 shilling, equivalent to 10 cents. 20/—= 20 shillings or £1, equivalent to $2. 1 Guinea = £1/1/-. (My grandfather’s quotes are often in the format £1/5/6 which means one pound 5 shillings and sixpence = $2.55).

One merk (or mark) = 13/4 or $1.33.

Measurements for distances: 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, or about 0.9 metres; 1,200 miles would be about 2,000 kilometres. Area measurements in acres: 1 acre = 0.4047 hectares; 1 square metre = 11 square feet (approx.)

Weight measurements: 1 kilogram = 2.2 pounds (lbs)

Distances: 1 Mile = 1.6 kilometres approximately, 80 miles per hour = 130 km/hour

Maori words

Hangi—feast Pakeha—European or white man

Karanga—formal Tangi—funeral

melodious summons Tiaha—spear

Kuia—old woman Tohunga—Maori medicine man

Marae—centre ground of Whare—house, often

a Maori village with a thatched roof

Pa—village, often

fortified in this era

1

London

In March 2003 I returned to London after a ten year absence. I had previously worked in the city from 1990 until 1993. I missed my friends, and I was there to visit my aunt, Winifred Bevan, referred to as Aunty Win. I am still close to her and she had helped me with accommodation amongst other things, in New Zealand, then in England, over a period of decades.

At this time my aunt had moved from Maida Vale, where she worked with a sheltered housing project, to a retirement flat in the neighbouring area of Queen’s Park. In the flat she had numerous bookcases for her many books. At the back of one of these cases, where it had fallen from its shelf, lay one of my books. I had loaned it to my Aunt ten years previously, and I hadn’t gotten around to reading it.

At my Aunt’s urging, I took the book back to New Zealand at the end of my holiday. In the spring of 1994 I began to read it. Debrett’s Kings and Queens of Britain, had been published in the nineteen-eighties. Imagine my surprise when I discovered in the appendices, the genealogical tables giving the details of my family origins almost 1500 years ago.

I first began researching my family as an eleven year old, in 1964. At Intermediate Normal, a school in Palmerston North, we had been given a school project called Pioneers by our teacher, Mrs Esam. To learn about my family I asked questions of my parents, and later, my aunts, uncles and grandparents. On reaching my teens, I was still interested in the family beginnings, especially with its diversity of working class and aristocratic origins. In 1970 my Uncle John and Aunty Nan took me to Whangarei to meet some of my Douglas great-aunts and great-uncles, and on the way I was allowed to interview my great-grandfather’s second wife: Gertie Gagen.

My grandfather’s gift of photos of his grandparents James Sydenham and Susan Guy in the mid 1960’s, had further encouraged me. James was descended form a famous physician, and I was to learn other facts. Our family was related not just once, but possibly twice to Sir Francis Drake. Moreover there were at least four lines of French ancestry, as well as German and rumoured Spanish ancestry. There was one line however that held greater fascination for my young mind, and that line showed our descent from the Scottish King, Robert the Bruce.

In July 1972 I followed up on my trip to Whangarei when I undertook a two-day journey, riding my Suzuki 250 motorbike from Palmerston North to Whangarei, and there I met my numerous remaining great-aunts and great-uncles. In particular, I was able to meet my great—aunt Dorrie Main whose son Rodger took me on a tour of the superb beaches of Tutukaka and Matapouri. He was soon to be a decathlete at the Commonwealth or Empire games, held at Christchurch from 30th January to 8th February 1974, and attended by Queen Elizabeth.

My great-uncle Robert Douglas had given me copies of pages from Burke’s Peerage, outlining our descent from the Baronets of Glenbervie, and his son Robert was to print a book in the 1990’s that outlined other details of our ancestry. I was also given whole family trees by various cousins on all sides of our family, swelling my already large collection of genealogical information. I was keen to learn more. A few years later I would also meet my great-uncle Jack Crawford, who was keen on flying aeroplanes, despite having lost a leg.

So far I had gotten back mostly to the early nineteenth century, and hit blank walls. Because of the detail available in Burke’s Peerage, I had been able to follow the Douglas line further to the fourteenth century. A family tree on the Douglases drawn up in Canada, and sent to us in the 1990’s, took the family line back to 1174.

Now in 1994 as I flicked through the pages of my recently rediscovered Debrett’s Kings and Queens of Great Britain, I was amazed to discover that not only did the appendices link up with each other, but they went back in time from Robert the Bruce for various periods of up to 800 years. I felt like I had found the Holy Grail of Genealogy. I was discovering that our descent from Robert the Bruce came directly from the ancient Kings of Kent, Mercia and Wessex.

This was not the end of my trail however, as at Queenstown Airport in 2009, on my way to my daughter’s wedding I discovered in a book that gave further links from the Scottish kings, which traced their ancestry through Clan Donald to the high kings of Tara in Ireland, with origins from around 330 B.C. Later that year I was to reap the rewards of the 1972 motorbike journey I’d made, when voluminous correspondence from my father’s cousins arrived which gave in much greater detail the life of my great-grandparents. Unbeknown to me, my great-uncle Jack Crawford and great-aunt Beatrice had made copious notes of their early lives before they died, and my great-uncle Charlie Crawford had passed on other information to his son Ted for the benefit of the future generations.

In 2010 I had the opportunity to visit the family of the Marquess of Queensberry, gaining further information on that branch of our Douglas Clan. A week later I toured Germany, finding possible links between our country and theirs that hint at a role in the reunification of that country. For now however we must start near the beginning with my efforts to discover the origins of my Crawford forbears.

2

The Crawfords

Tutum te robore reddam—I will give you safety by strength.

As we delve into the origins of the Crawfords, we find that they came from Antrim in Ireland, but if we go back further we find that their origins in Scotland. But who were the Scots? We find that they were in part founded by the kingdom of Dal Riada, which in turn comes from Ireland. With all this coming and going, it is a good opportunity to look at the early history of our Celtic forbears.

A Celtic Inheritance

The Celts were descended from an Indo-European people who spoke a common language, probably around 4,000 B.C. The Celts may have emerged as a separate people around 2,000 B.C. speaking Goidelic.¹ Their language evolved into major European and North Indian languages such as Greek, Latin, Celtic, Germanic, Slavonic, Baltic, Indo-Iranian, Indo-Aryan including Sanskrit, Armenian and Hittite.² The Hittites had an Indo-European language, their earliest literatures being from 1900 B.C. and the classical Sanskrit of the Vedas, dates from around 1,000 B.C.³ Remarkably, similarities between Irish culture and the culture reflected in Vedic Sanskrit survive in linguistics, law, social customs, mythology (expressed in bardic poetry) and musical form.⁴ The word for king was rix in Gaulish, cognate with rajan in Sanskrit, and it became raj in Hindi.⁵ The Druid and the Brahmin therefore inherited a common culture.⁶ With Celtic settlements in the British Isles dating from at least the early Iron Age (1,800 B.C.), Gaulish (Italy, France, Switzerland, Western Germany and Belgium), and British probably emerged as dialects of Goidelic.⁷

The Celtic people emerged from the headwaters of three rivers the Rhine, the Rhône, and the Danube, in Switzerland and south-west Germany, spreading throughout Europe. They were farmers, road builders and excelled in craftsmanship, in glass and enamel making, and especially gold torcs and jewellery. They mined salt, gold, silver, tin lead and iron. From the 9th century B.C. they had settled in Spain and Portugal, also reaching Britain and Ireland around that time, but arriving in successive waves particularly from the 6th century B.C. In the western part of Europe people spoke Goidelic (Irish, Manx and Scots), but around the 7th century B.C., the Brythonic form diverged from it (the Picts, Welsh, Cornish and Bretons).⁸

In the great La Tène period, (5th century B.C.), fast two-wheeled chariots were developed.⁹ Greek merchants in the 6th century B.C. called them Keltoi (Celts) and Galatai (St. Paul’s famous epistle to the Galatians of the New Testament was to this Celtic community which was the first non-Jewish culture to accept the new Christian religion).¹⁰ Their advanced knowledge of metalwork, particularly the use of iron weapons enabled the Celts to become fierce warriors. They invented chain mail in the 3rd century B.C. and their shields were superior to those of the Romans.¹¹ By the 3rd century they covered a large area from Ireland in the west to the central plains of Turkey in the east. Warfare was conducted by cavalry and by chariots from which they would leap to fight on foot. The cavalry wore gilded iron or brass helmets, to which they attached yellow plumes for display.¹² The women would follow their husbands to battle in wagons, often joining in.¹³ Despite this, the Celts believed that eloquence had a greater power than physical strength, and that eloquence attained its peak in old age.¹⁴

In 279 B.C. the Celts invaded Greece, defeating every Greek army sent against them. When Hannibal and his famous elephants invaded Italy in 218 B.C. over half his army was Celtic and 10,000 Celts from the Po valley immediately joined him.¹⁵ Their reputation became so renowned that the Egyptian Queen Cleopatra employed an elite bodyguard of 300 Celtic warriors.¹⁶ The Romans called them Gauls, but in Britain and France they are referred to sometimes as Iron-Age people.

Celtic society in Scotland was organised along tribal lines.¹⁷ From stone houses to two-storey dwellings, living in clans was sustained through raising sheep and cattle (the now extinct Celtic Shorthorn). Later monarchs would soon discover how a clan culture could cause problems when they tried to act with centralised authority. Although there was no such thing as a clan culture in the Lowlands, it was from this background that our family clan sprang.

General History of the Crawford Clan

The origins of our clan, the Crawfords are found in the ancient barony of Crawford in the upper Ward of Lanarkshire, Scotland, conferred on a Norman knight in the 12th Century.¹⁸ At this time William de Lindsay acquired the property of a Crawford Clan member in Lanarkshire and married the daughter of Henry, Prince of Scotland. The clan has arms that date back to at least 1196 A.D. The clan motto is Tutum te robore reddam, which is translated as I will give you safety by strength.¹⁹

Early history of the clan begins in the 12th century. In 1127 the king, David I, had been saved from the attack of a wounded stag by Sir Gregan Crawford, and the spot was marked by the building of Holyrood Abbey.²⁰ Crawford Castle, the administrative centre for the Barony of Crawford was built on the site of a Roman fort just north of the Clyde before 1175. Sir John Crawford died in 1248, leaving two daughters; the eldest marrying Archibald de Douglas, the younger David Lindsay, ancestor of the Earls of Crawford making two of our ancestral lines related.²¹

Sir Hugh Crawford, Sheriff of Ayr, would have been responsible for upholding the law in the king’s court, collection of taxes, maintenance of good order and administration of military service.²² His daughter Margaret married Sir Malcolm Wallace, and had a son William Wallace, the legendary freedom fighter depicted in the film Braveheart. His rise to fame was the result of events that began long before his time. The imposition of control from outsiders such as the Romans and others that followed them provided an impetus for the creation of an embryonic state in Scotland. Prior to the Roman invasion, the various tribes were often involved in fighting each other. William was steadfast in his support of King John, becoming the hero of Scotland in the fight for independence from the English.

William used the safety of Selkirk Forest in the south-east to train his men, later joining forces with Sir Andrew Murray from the north-east. In late 1296 Crawford Castle, (known then as Crawford Lindsay), was occupied by Edward I’s troops. William led forty men in an attack on the stronghold, storming the castle and taking it from the English. William became adept at recruitment, acquiring an army of several thousand by September 1297²³ which he used to inflict a defeat on the English at Stirling. This sent shock waves throughout England, though it cost Murray his life when he died of his wounds several weeks later.²⁴ Wallace became Guardian of the Realm, but the Battle of Falkirk ended his career as a senior political figure.²⁵ His subsequent capture, cruel torture and execution in 1305 did nothing in the long term, to prevent Scotland’s fight for independence.

William’s legacy paved the way for Robert the Bruce. The last Crawford sheriff of Ayr, Sir Reginald, died in 1307 as the result of capture when he accompanied two of Robert the Bruce’s brothers, Thomas and Alexander in Galloway, being hung and beheaded by the English.²⁶

Within the Crawford Clan, Alexander, the Chief of the Lindsays married a daughter of Alexander Steward. Their son Sir David Lindsay (1299-circa 1356) was a knight who fought for the Bruce cause and married Mary Abernethy (ca 1300—ca 1355). They had several sons who founded the houses of Edzell, Byres and others.²⁷Succeeding to the chiefship of the Lindsays was William of Lindsay’s descendant, Sir David Lindsay of Glenesk, Angus (1360-1407). He was created the 1st Earl of Crawford in 1398 by Robert III. He married the king’s sister, receiving with her the Barony of Strathnairn in Inverness-shire. He was said to be a brave and chivalrous knight who narrowly escaped death fighting the force under the wolf of Badenoch, dying later in 1407.

The family seat was Finhaven Castle, a Gaelic name meaning white river, while the urban dwelling for the Lindsays was in Dundee. They had more than twenty baronies and lordships besides lands and hereditary revenues from the Great Customs of Dundee, Montrose, Forfar, Crail, Aberdeen and Banff. This gave them the bodily service of the men who tilled these lands.²⁸

Alexander 2nd Earl was a hostage for the release of James I, and died in 1438, succeeded by his son David, 3rd Earl. The murder of James I had left Scotland with a weak regency, and David opposed the crown authority. David’s men led by his son the Master of Crawford, tried to quell the Ogilvies at Arbroath in 1445. The old Earl tried to interpose but in trying to keep the peace was mortally wounded, and the Lindsay side killed 500 of the Ogilvies and their allies on the spot.²⁹

Alexander then became the 4th Earl known as Earl Beardie or the Tiger Earl, from the saying Beard the best of them, the fact that he wore a beard, or the fierceness of his character.³⁰ He once hung a minstrel from iron hooks at the top of a tower for unknown reasons. One prophesied that before he died, he and the Earl of Douglas would be defeated at Brechin. This was fulfilled in 1452 and the Tiger Earl on returning to his castle Finhaven, declared he would gladly have passed seven years in hell to have gained the victory.³¹

Alexander married Margaret Dunbar by whom he had three children. The 4th Earl was one of the most powerful nobles in the realm in armed rebellion with the Douglases against James II of Scotland. With John, Earl of Ross the greatest magnate of the north, Douglas in the south and Crawford in the north-east, James II was forced into concessions with his enemies to avoid internal warfare.³² William, 8th Earl of Douglas entered into close league with the Tiger Earl for defensive and offensive purposes. William Crichton and the bishops persuaded the King that such an alliance was a threat to the Monarchy. In February 1452 a summons was issued for the Earl of Douglas to attend the king, under safe conduct, at Stirling Castle. There he dined with the king before being summoned to an inner chamber. The king demanded that he dissolve his league with the Tiger Earl. The king would not be threatened by the formidable combination of the two Earls. When William refused, he was killed by James II in person. Crawford’s rebellion was not put down until 18th May of that year.³³

Alexander was justiciary of the Monastery of Arbroath, but the monks deposed him for his oppressive behaviour, appointing another which brought the Lindsay Clan about their walls with fire and sword.³⁴ When defeated by the Earl of Huntly in 1452, he was deprived of all his lands, titles and offices. He was later pardoned and died in 1453.

It was his son David, 5th Earl who was created Duke of Montrose by James III in 1488, the first time a Dukedom had been conferred on a Scotsman outside the Royal Family. At the Battle of Sauchieburn that year, the future James IV appeared in arms against his father, provoked by the favouritism of his younger brother. The king’s horse threw James III and he died soon after. Earl David died at Finhaven Castle in 1495.³⁵ From then until 1528 Crawford Castle was in the possession of the Red Douglases. James V spent a night there, making the daughter of the house pregnant.³⁶ By the time of James VI, the Catholic Earls of Huntly, Errol and Crawford controlled vast areas of the highlands.³⁷ John, 1st Earl of Lindsay, assumed the title of Earl of Crawford in 1644.³⁸

Of the more recent descendants of the clan, we need only mention Henry, 13th Earl of Crawford. He was succeeded briefly by his son George, followed by his brother Ludovic 16th Earl, a royalist soldier who fought for Charles I. He fought at the battle of Marston Moor in 1644, but was captured later defending Newcastle, and sent to Edinburgh. His instant execution was delayed by a majority vote, and he was liberated by Montrose in 1645. He died on the continent the following year, that line of Crawfords ending with his death.³⁹

We will return however, to the Earls of Crawford in the final chapter. It is now rime to turn our attention to more recent Crawford forbears.

Discovering the Crawfords

Our immediate Crawford forbears lived at a time where the spectacular achievements of someone such as William Wallace were no longer needed, but they were resourceful and had inherited an industrious streak from their ancestors. Like many families we know something of our clan history but have been unable to trace our past much beyond the past four or five generations. In our branch of the Crawford clan, we know that the family originated in Scotland at the beginning of the 19th century.

The winter of 1972 was almost over in New Zealand when in July; I began my journey by motorbike to Whangarei to meet my relations. It was my second trip to the far north, having gone there two years earlier with my Aunty Nan and Uncle John. I had a vague idea that as well as numerous Douglas relations, I had a Crawford great-uncle, there, but it would be another four years before I would get to meet Jack Crawford. The weather was mild which I was grateful for, because it would make the motorbike journey safer and more bearable. On the way I would stop at the family farm at Karapiro, and in Auckland I’d meet another great-uncle, Bill Crawford, the creator of the Crawford family tree that I kept in my bedroom in Palmerston North. It would be a phenomenal journey, not because it was 1,500 kilometres in length, but because I had started gathering information for my family’s history in 1964, and would continue gathering information well into the next century. Even then I knew it wouldn’t be over, as family research for me, was an ongoing hobby.

My maternal grandmother had died before I was born and I felt a gap in my life. My grandfather Crawford had died in 1964, being the first of my known grandparents to die. Although I had met him numerous times, it had been all too short and it would be a great opportunity to meet members of his family. Now in 1972, I was intensely excited at the prospect of meeting great-aunts and great-uncles I had never met before. My mother was, having kittens about my trip, but was reassured once I rang and told her I had arrived safely at the farm. Most New Zealanders will know the location of Karapiro because it is frequently shown on T.V. as the training ground for Olympic rowing champions such as the Evers-Swindell twins, Rob Wardell, and Ian Ferguson, who I was at school with (Normal Intermediate in Palmerston North). In 2011 it hosted the world rowing championships.

From my Uncle John’s house I travelled to Whangarei, and then back to Palmerston North. On my way north I met the first of my Crawford great-uncles, Bill Crawford at his home in Auckland. He had a fine two-storey house in Orakei. There were wonderful ivory statuettes of Chinese figurines on the mantel piece which he told me were yellowed with age, and that the older ivory figures were, the more yellow they became. We chatted pleasantly for an hour. It was somewhat difficult for me as a young nineteen year old to know what to say, but my great-uncle helped me out of my shyness.

My next stop was to Whangarei to meet my great-uncle Bob Douglas and his siblings. On the return journey I stopped in at another great-uncle’s, Charlie Crawford. He had a large two winged home in a country setting at Whenuapai near Auckland. There were three generations of the extended family living on the hectare size property. When I bowled up on my motorbike I discovered his daughter-in-law Diana in front of the house. She had twins with her and they were stark naked. It was a beautiful sunny day and she was taking full advantage of it by washing them in a tub. Her husband Ted, (my father’s cousin, Robert Edward Crawford) showed me over an acre of grapes they grew for export, under the biggest glasshouse I’d ever seen. Upstairs in the house, there was a music room for the piano: an obligatory piece of furniture for any self-respecting Crawford. Ted and Diana were raising a family of eight children, but my focus was on Uncle Charlie and any family history he could relate. He was obliging, but as it was a first meeting. I was reluctant to take notes, relying on memory to write details later in the evening before retiring for the night. Decades later his son Ted wrote in much greater detail about the family.

On my way home I stopped in at Te Awamutu to meet my great-aunt May Crawford, and her daughter Marion who lived nearby. Marion was married to Percy Frost, a well-known identity in the district through the garage he owned and ran just outside the town. After these quick visits I stayed a night at the family farm with my Aunty Nan and Uncle John. There was some excitement about my trip, and I had to tell all about the details of my stays and what I had learnt. The following day my Douglas second cousins, Colleen and Maureen, Hughes arrived from Whangarei and as there were a number of motorbikes on the farm, we used the opportunity for a photo shoot in the style of the recently screened film Easyrider. The following day I was back safely in Palmerston North, and my trip was over, much to the relief of my mother. It had been worthwhile, and I’d managed to get pages of notes on our family background.

Several years went by before I was able to learn more about the Crawford origins. I went on a further trip to Whangarei in May 1976, when I was finally able to meet my great-uncle Jack Crawford and his family. I learned that he was a mechanic and a keen airplane pilot. He’d had a leg amputated and was hobbling around the house at a great rate of knots. He was still flying planes in his seventies and doing acrobatic tricks in them. Age hadn’t slowed him down and he wasn’t going to be bothered with a small thing like losing a leg. I have few other memories from these early meetings with my Crawford relatives, but they led to a deeper search into the origins of the family, which we will now discover.

John Crawford

Our earliest known ancestor is Archibald Crawford, a Scottish Master Mariner, and his son John, also a Master Mariner. There is a reference to Archibald dated 1828 at Greenock, not far from Port Glasgow. Glasgow was the fastest growing city in Europe in the early decades of the nineteenth century. By the 1820’s it overtook Edinburgh as Scotland’s largest city and by the 1840’s migrants were pouring in from the Highlands as well as a famine-stricken Ireland. The opportunities for work abounded with over 40% of the workforce employed in the textile and clothing trades, although the economic basis of the city was increasingly provided by the River Clyde. An abundance of coal and iron in the west of Scotland necessitated the large scale production of ships.⁴⁰ The problems through this influx of migrants eventually required massive public investment to provide adequate housing, servicing and sanitation. ⁴¹

At this time, Scotland was about to produce one of her finest trade unionists, James Keir Hardie (1856-1914). Born also in Lanarkshire, his family were poverty stricken and he was forced to work in the mines. He believed that the working classes were best represented by themselves. His outlook was influenced by ethics and Christian humanism, something that would have appealed to the Crawfords. Hardy is now widely seen as the founding father of the Labour Party.

In 1861 a third of all Scottish homes had only one room. Even by the time of the First World War, half the population still lived in one or two roomed houses. Between 1850 and 1914 almost two million Scots left Scotland to migrate around the world.⁴² To understand the widespread migration of Scots it is important to look at the social background of the country. Poverty was the main reason for immigration. Wages were about one-third better in England in the 1860’s. While our oral traditions indicate no dire poverty, our family wanted to better their lives. Peaks in Scottish emigration occurred when the economy went through a downturn. Rather than a pioneering spirit, many Scots left their homeland to escape unemployment and lack of opportunity.⁴³ We know that John Crawford died in Northern Ireland. In just two generations our forbears immigrated to gain better job prospects; first to Ireland, then to New Zealand.

The Millikens

John Crawford married Ellen Milliken 18th October, 1853 at the Ballycarry Presbyterian Church, Larne, Antrim. It is not surprising that John went to Antrim on the east coast. Lowland Scots had been immigrating there since Tudor times.⁴⁴ In fact the Irish had been coming to Western Scotland since the 5th century, so there had been a long history of two way migration. Ellen was the daughter of Ezekiel Milliken, a local farmer, and French on her mother’s side. The Milliken’s were well established around Antrim in Northern Ireland.

One oral tradition is that the Millikens were originally from Dublin in Southern Ireland, where they had arrived about the time of William the Conqueror (11th century). Some time after this, it is thought that the name died out in the south as all of the Millikens migrated northwards, but this was many generations ago.⁴⁵ According to other sources, the family originates in the north from county Donegal where they held a family seat from very ancient times. This meant that they would have had a manor house from which they could exercise economic or political influence locally.

The surname is from an anglicized Gaelic name, O’ Malolagain (descendant of Maolagan). Some variants are Millikin, Mulligan and possibly Milligan, one famous bearer of that name being the comedian Spike Milligan. The family motto is Regarde bien or look carefully.⁴⁶ The oral tradition has been strengthened by a similar tradition of family with the Millikin variant of the surname. A local man, Sam Millikin of the Hutt Valley told me how his grandmother passed on to him the information that the Milliken name came from the Dublin area around the 11th century. ⁴⁷

Our forbear John Crawford, as a Master Mariner was required to have knowledge of medicine in order to look after his crew. He was well known for this knowledge in Carrickfergus and people came from miles around to obtain treatment for different ailments. Oral tradition has it that he had a secret formula for treating cancer and his son Archie was convinced that he had cures for it. Archie knew the ingredients for this secret formula and used it on his son Bill to cure him of Tuberculosis to the amazement of doctors when they examined him. Archie tried for many years to get the medical profession interested but to no avail, so the secret died with him.⁴⁸

John and Ellen Crawford had six children: Ellen, my great-grandfather Archibald Crawford (1855-1929), William, another Ellen, John, and Ezekiel. The family were well-dressed, middle—class, but despite this the children often experienced poor health. Their mother Ellen died 14th January, 1892. Her daughter Ellen died in infancy and the second Ellen in her teens. William, an unmarried policeman, died of a brain haemorrhage in Liverpool in 1894. Ezekiel came to New Zealand and farmed with Archie for a while, then left for the gold fields and was never heard of again. Perhaps he died on the goldfields, or perhaps Archie tried to use the cures on him. The remaining son John died in his teens.

Archibald Crawford (senior)

Archibald, (whom I will call Archie or Archibald senior to differentiate him from my grandfather), was born in St. Nicholas, Carrickfergus, 17th August 1856. He was a Master Mariner like his father and grandfather before him. This meant that he owned his own ship. In fact he had his own ship at twenty-one years of age. His father would have liked him to have been a doctor, but Archie had wanted to join the Navy from the age of twelve. He couldn’t stand staying at school, where the school master used to beat him unmercifully, and he begged his father to allow him to leave school and go to sea.

Things came to a head at school when he was fourteen. He had written something on his slate (a small blackboard that children wrote on while seated at their desks). The teacher was infuriated with what he read, and smashed the slate over Archie’s head. Archie may not have finished growing, but he was already six foot four inches tall. He couldn’t take any more from the teacher; so rose to his feet and swung a blow at him, knocking him out. He then left the school premises. Knowing he would be in trouble if he went home to his austere father, Archie headed straight for the docks. There he managed to persuade a Master Mariner to employ him as his cabin boy.⁴⁹ His father eventually agreed on the decision to go to sea, on condition that he stuck to the sea and continued to study. This Archie did, gaining his Master Mariner’s ticket at the early age of twenty-one.⁵⁰

Life at sea wasn’t going to be easy, but Archie was determined to make the Captain proud of him. He was healthy and strong, with a good work ethic and a sharp wit, so he used these attributes to learn the ropes and gain a good reputation. He listened carefully to the other crew members, taking on board any information that he thought appropriate.⁵¹ As a result he became highly regarded by his men, and truly loved by them.⁵² He also became an avid reader on marine topics as well as medicine. He travelled extensively through his chosen occupation stopping in Hong Kong on his travels. In travelling to these countries he was able to specialise in studying herbal medicines, finding local herbs and seeking knowledge of the indigenous people on plants that healed. One of his effective cures for boils was the use of dock leaves as a tea to purify the blood, and as a poultice to use on affected areas of the skin.⁵³

No doubt the ill health and early deaths of his sisters affected Archie’s attitude to staying in Ireland. He would have migrated here to better their life and escape poor conditions back home. New Zealand would have held the promise of better opportunities. We now have a picture of our Crawford ancestors as a sea-faring family, one that hadn’t survived very easily in Victorian age conditions in the United Kingdom, but crucially a healthier life was envisaged in a country with a mild climate that lent itself to a better chance of survival into adulthood. This country was New Zealand. While the family were to experience some early deaths, these were mostly in adulthood, rather than in childhood, and generally the family was to experience a healthy, robust lifestyle.

It was probably in the early 1880’s that Archie immigrated to New Zealand: the twentieth century was fast approaching, and Archie was ready for a new life. On arriving in New Zealand, he was to add merchant and farmer to his list of occupations.

Archibald met Sarah Annie Haywood in Auckland and they married on 6th May 1885. Archie was still earning his living by sailing coastal vessels around the North Island. He had had some leg trouble which made life on the sea unsuitable, so he decided to try earning a living from the land.

Next to Dan Gagen and John Shore (who we will meet later), Archie best exemplified the Pioneering spirit of our recent forbears. Conditions were primitive and work locations were usually isolated, far from help of any kind. First he applied for a land grant north of Auckland City in the district of Whangaparaoa, between Wellsford and Warkworth. To prevent land speculation, applications had to be done through a solicitor, but possession wasn’t granted until the land was developed to the point of effective production. Archie appointed a solicitor to act on his behalf, and then he worked on the plot in the Whangaripo Valley. There were no roads in those days, so access was gained by boat to Warkworth; then by horse and packsaddle.⁵⁴ Originally he went into the bush alone; Sarah Annie staying behind in Auckland. Using a tent for shelter, he later built a primitive whare to live in while he prepared the land. He worked hard felling trees and clearing the bush. Burying his tent and belongings for safety, he then burned off the bush.⁵⁵ Grass seed was then sown in the ashes. He also planted fruit trees, completing the necessary work and improvements to comply with early settlement laws before laying claim to the land.⁵⁶

By 1888 Archie had a growing young family so he returned to Auckland, fetching Sarah Annie and his two children to take into the valley to live with him. He was very proud of his family, though he was a strict disciplinarian which sometimes showed in a quick temper, something that was attributed to his Irish ancestry. Archibald didn’t have much business sense, so sometimes the family were rich and at others, poor and struggling. When he wasn’t working, there was time for some leisure time activities around their home, using his musical ability to compose his own hymns.

Edward Haywood

Sarah Annie Haywood came from a small family; her paternal grandfather Edward Haywood was a farmer. He owned his own butchery, and had three children: Sarah, Helen and the youngest, Edward, who was born in Uckfield, Sussex around 1841. He was a keen gardener and poultry fancier, and was a signalman in England. He became a civil engineering and building contractor, and married Sarah Elizabeth Stanbridge in 1861. It is thought that she was slightly older than he, being born around 1840.

It is known that the family that Archie married into, the Haywoods were already in New Zealand when Archie emigrated here. Edward and Sarah had had two boys born in addition to the two girls, but both had died in infancy. The small family had immigrated to New Zealand on 13th September 1876 on the ship Jessie Osborne. The trip would have been harsh for the two young teenage girls and took about three months to reach New Zealand in December of that year. By the mid 19th century, ocean-going steamers had been made relatively safe, and the fares were affordable.⁵⁷ Although voyages were less risky, there would have been seasickness and feelings of homesickness from the loss of leaving loved ones behind. In those days, leaving family behind would have been heart-rending, not least because there was the difficulty of returning to see parents or grandparents. Mortality rates were higher in those days, and people didn’t live to great ages generally.

Sarah Annie was their younger of the two girls, she and her sister Elizabeth both being born in Newhaven. The family came here because