Captain Alexander Buchan Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Captain Alexander Buchan Ancestry Tour of Scotland. This gravestone can be found in Coupar Angus Churchyard, Perthshire, Scotland. In loving memory of Captain Alexander Buchan, Master Mariner, who died 26th January 1938. Also his wife Elsie Robertson, who died 4th March 1961. And their daughter Helen Riddoch Buchan, who died 5th January 1982. And their son Leslie Alexander John Robertson Buchan, died September 1985, aged 88.

Springburn Ancestry Tour of Scotland

An old view of Springburn Cross, Glasgow, Scotland. The origins of Glasgow origins are said to lie with the arrival of St Kentigern, St Mungo, in the 6th century. His church was established on the site of the present Glasgow Cathedral, a Gothic building dating largely from the 13th century.

Castlebay Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Castlebay, Isle of Barra, Ancestry Tour of Scotland.

Susan Smith Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Susan Smith Ancestry Tour of Scotland. This gravestone can be found in Abernyte Churchyard, Perthshire, Scotland. In affectionate rememberance of Susan Smith, Littleton, wife of William Rtchie, who died 28th April, 1889, aged 40 years. The above William Ritchie, died 12th May, 1905, ages 62 years.

William Henry Liddell Ancestry Tour of Scotland

William Henry Liddell Ancestry Tour of Scotland. This gravestone can be found in Coupar Angus Churchyard, Perthshire, Scotland. Sacred to the memory of William Henry Liddell. Late bookseller Cupar Angus.

George Coupar Ancestry Tour of Scotland

George Coupar Ancestry Tour of Scotland. This gravestone can be found in Collace Churchyard, Perthshire, Scotland. Erected by George Coupar in memory of his wife Agnes Duncan, who died 2nd September, 1883, aged 72. Also his daughter Ann, who died in infancy, and his son James, who died 23rd March, 1895, aged 40. The above George Coupar, died April 7th, 1901, aged 88. And of Janet Bruce, beloved wife of their son Robert Coupar, who died 5th February, 1926, aged 79, and his son James, who died 13th january, 1944, aged 57. Also Lilias Isabella Tod, wife of the above James Coupar, who died 9th December 1953, aged 59.

Tour Collace, Perthshire, Scotland, on an Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Best Scottish Tours, Best Scottish Food, Best Scottish Hotels, Small Group Tours of Scotland. Rent a Cottage in Scotland.

Thomas Aird Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Thomas Aird Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Thomas Aird, Scottish poet, born August 28, 1802, died April 28, 1876, he was born at the Old Post Office, Bowden, Roxburghshire, Scotland.

Tour Bowden, Scotland, on an Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Best Scottish Tours, Best Scottish Food, Best Scottish Hotels, Small Group Tours of Scotland. Rent a Cottage in Scotland. Golf Scotland. Tour Roman Scotland.

Mallaig Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Mallaig Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Mallaig is a port in Lochaber, on the west coast of the Highlands of Scotland.

Falkirk Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Falkirk Ancestry Tour of Scotland. In the 18th and 19th Centuries Falkirk was at the centre of a large iron and steel industry in Scotland.

Peebles Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Peebles Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Initially a market town, Peebles at one time played a vital role in the woollen industry of the Borders of Scotland.

Penicuik Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Penicuik Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Penicuik was developed as a planned village in 1770 by Sir James Clerk of Penicuik. It became a burgh in 1867.

Dalbeattie Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Dalbeattie Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Dalbeattie is a town in Dumfries and Galloway, formerly Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland.

Rothesay Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Rothesay Ancestry Tour of Scotland. The town of Rothesay is the main town on the Isle of Bute, Argyll and Bute, Scotland. During the Victorian era, Rothesay developed as a popular Scottish tourist destination.

Tour Rothesay, Scotland, on an Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Best Scottish Tours, Best Scottish Food, Best Scottish Hotels, Small Group Tours of Scotland. Rent a Cottage in Scotland. Golf Scotland.

Scotstounhill Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Scotstounhill Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Scotstounhill is a small area between south Knightswood and Scotstoun situated in West Glasgow. Glasgow is Scotland’s largest city. Situated on the banks of the River Clyde, it became a burgh in 1175.

Balfour Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Balfour Ancestry Tour of Scotland. The lands of Burleigh were held by the Balfours from 1446, when they were granted by James II to John Balfour of Balgarvie, and a tower house was erected in the late 15th or early 16th century. Sir James Balfour of Pittendreich extended the Burleigh Castle in the late 16th century, adding a curtain wall with a corner tower, and other outbuildings. In 1607 his son Sir Michael Balfour was raised to the peerage as Lord Balfour of Burleigh. Legend tells how Robert Balfour, before his accession as 5th Lord, narrowly escaped death when, in 1707, he was sentenced to beheading for the murder of the schoolmaster of Inverkeithing, who had the misfortune to have married Balfour's childhood sweetheart. Escaping from Edinburgh tolbooth, Balfour joined the Jacobite cause, proclaiming the 'Old Pretender' James Stuart king at Lochmaben, and fighting in the 1715 rising. Following the defeat of the Jacobites, Balfour was attainted, dying in France in 1757. The castle was forfeit to the Irwins, then passed to the Grahams of Kinross.

St Kilda Island Scotland

St Kilda Island Street, Scotland. Imagine being told the life you and your ancestors have lived for thousands of years doesn't work any more. Secluded and peaceful, your island community has honored it's ancient traditions of hunting and gathering, ritual and socicety, and they've seen you through good and bad times, where life has been tough but meaningful. And now your simply told it doesn't fit with how outsiders think you should live. Steel's magical account of the sacred island of St.Kilda, far out from the Scottish mainland and the straggle of archipeligo's that surround it, is both heart-warming and heat-breaking. He tells the tale of men and women whose lives are toyed with by authorities that felt they knew better than a people who for generations had lived almost completely isolated from what we call civilization. This book describes St.Kilda when it thrived as a small, close-knit team, and when it worked together for the common good. It describes how St.Kildans hunted and gathered like prehistoric communities had thousands of years ago, and how they dealt with disasters and diseases that threatened their existence time and again. And ultimately, the story of a community that the world forgot for hundreds of years and then remebered again, just long enough to change forever the lives of the people of St.Kilda. The Life and Death of St Kilda (Fontana Original).


St Kilda Island Women, Scotland.


St Kilda Island, Parliament, Scotland.

Kirkpatrick Macmillan Ancestry Tour of Scotland

Kirkpatrick Macmillan Ancestry Tour of Scotland. Kirkpatrick Macmillan and His Dandy Horse Photographic Print, 16" x 12".

Kirkpatrick Macmillan, born in 1812, died on 26 January 1878. In Dumfries Museum stands a replica of the world's first pedal bicycle. A notice states that it was exhibited at the Crystal Palace, London, in the 1890s and that it was made by Thomas McCall, wheelwright, to the same design that Kirkpatrick Macmillan, the inventor, used for his first velocipede around 1840.

The velocipede is longer and heavier than the modern bicycle (it weighs 57 Ib), the rear wheel is 40 in in diameter, the front wheel 30 in. It mainly differs from the bicycle as we know it in that the wheels are of wood with metal tyres and the non-rotating pedals are connected by rods and cranks to the rear wheel. It is clearly superior to the later, short-lived, front-wheel drive bone-shaker.

'Pate' Macmillan was born and spent his life at Courthill smithy in the village of Keir, fourteen miles north of Dumfries. He had three elder brothers, all of whom prospered in Glasgow, one as senior classics master at the High School, another as vice-rector at Hutcheson's Grammar School. Pate preferred the country life. He was a born blacksmith. Long after he invented the pedal bicycle he invented two ploughs that were superior to anything in use at the time, and his son John, who became a Liverpool policeman, recalled seeing him make eight pairs of shoes for horses in an hour, a formidable rate of output to anyone familiar with the farrier's trade. He was also a self-taught vet, a dab hand at dentistry and a member of the Free Kirk who frowned on drinking and smoking but thoroughly enjoyed playing his violin at dances.

Hobby-horses, two wheels joined by a wooden bar with a saddle, had been in use since 1817, but it was Pate who had the brilliantly simple idea of pedal propulsion. His velocipede, with carved horse's head in front, was completed in about 1840. Not appreciating the significance of his strange machine, his neighbours nicknamed him Daft Pate. On 6 June 1842, to his parents' consternation, Pate set out on an historic 70 mile ride to Glasgow. Huge crowds cheered and jeered him on his way. In the Gorbals, while riding on the pavement, he knocked over but hardly injured a small girl. He was arrested and charged, and was probably the first cyclist to be fined for a traffic offence. There is a story, without proof, that a lenient magistrate fined him five shillings, afterwards asking Pate to give him a demonstration of cycling and refunding the fine out of his own pocket. Pate made no attempt to capitalise on his invention; but others did, and it was not until 1892 that he was universally recognised as the inventor of the bicycle.

John Ross Ancestry Tour of Scotland

John Ross Ancestry Tour of Scotland. DUGDALE c1845 PORTRAIT SIR JOHN ROSS ANTIQUE PRINT.

On any map of Canada the northern part of that huge country appears as a vast area with few place names, but a number of these were inspired by Wigtownshire, a tiny county in southwest Scotland. The reason can be attributed to one man, Rear Admiral Sir John Ross, who was born at Balsarroch, near Stranraer, Wigtownshire, in June 1777. Sir John was the fourth son of the Reverend Andrew Ross, minister of the nearby Inch parish and, while nothing is known of his boyhood, it is on record that he joined the Royal Navy at the age of nine. After a few years he transferred to the merchant service, but by 1799 was back with the navy. Experience on many ships, combined with honourable war service, brought promotion to commander and a posting to the Baltic. By 1816 he was married and had started to build a house in Stranraer.

A year later Ross was invited by the Admiralty to command an expedition in search of the Northwest Passage from the Atlantic to the Pacific, a route that would transform shipping and the discovery of which had occupied many minds for three Centuries. Ross accepted the invitation eagerly. His ships, the Isabella and the Alexander, sailed in 1818, when he was accompanied by his nephew, Midshipman James Clark Ross, later to gain even greater fame than his uncle, but in the Antarctic. This expedition lasted until October of the same year, and although it failed to find the passage, there were other encouraging results. Many of the earlier discoveries of William Baffin were confirmed, other claims were disproved and valuable contributions in many scientific fields were made. An account of all these discoveries was contained in the book Ross published after the expedition. Unfortunately, the results did not please John Barrow, secretary of the Admiralty, who developed an intense antipathy towards Ross and bitterly attacked him in a review of the book. For the next 10 years Ross was kept in semi-retirement on half pay until, in 1828, he persuaded a wealthy friend, Felix Booth, to support another search for the passage using steam vessels. Booth put up most of the cash, Ross contributed some of his own, and the expedition sailed in 1829 in the Victory, with the belated blessing of the Admiralty.

Unfortunately, the expedition encountered problems almost from the beginning. The steam engines proved to be virtually useless and in the first of what turned out to be four incredibly harsh winters in the Arctic, Ross had the machinery completely taken out and dumped out on to the ice. In 1833, long after they had been given up for lost, Ross and his intrepid explorers finally escaped the grim grip of the Arctic ice and returned to Britain. Many miles of new coastline had been surveyed and his nephew James Ross had discovered the North Magnetic Pole in June 1831. On his return John Ross was the man of the moment and received a knighthood from William IV.

In 1839 Captain Sir John Ross was appointed consul at Stockholm but nine years later, because of a promise made to Sir John Franklin, whose expedition had disappeared, he returned to the Arctic to search for the missing men. He sailed from Stranraer in 1850 on what was to be a fruitless errand. However, despite the failure, he earned great public admiration on his return the following year and was then appointed a rear -admiral at the age of 73. Sir John was a restless man and spent the few remaining years of his life either in London or at his home in Stranraer, which he had named Northwest Castle. He died in London in 1856, one of the greatest British explorers of his time.

Sir John Ross on His First Expedition: Meeting a Tribe of Eskimos. Sir John Ross on His First Expedition: Meeting a Tribe of Eskimos Art Giclee Poster Print, 18x24.

Whaling During Sir John Ross's First Arctic Expedition in Melville Bay. Whaling During Sir John Ross's First Arctic Expedition in Melville Bay Art Giclee Poster Print, 18x24.