Kinship and Survival : The Middlemas Name Through 600 Years

A history of a single kin group, expanding from an Anglo-Norman whose seal is on the Ragman Roll 1296, to more than150 families in the mid-19th century - a different approach from most family histories, which are written backwards from a present day single unit. It presents the concept of an expanding historical torrent and the importance of kinship in ensuring survival over the long-term. Local history (of Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, East and Middle Marches) from the Earls of Douglas to the Age of Improvement serves as a 'camera obscura', giving a comprehensible slant to wider Scottish history over 600 years. The approach encompasses big themes of social change and fragmentation, including Lairdship; the nature of land holding and agricultural work; the rise of urban middle class merchants, professionals and artisans; migration and the pressures which caused it, rural to urban, from Scotland to northern England, and overseas. It is about the sense of identity: what kinship and the name (under several spellings) and the transition from the old church to the new kirk conveyed; about Scotland and Scottishness, then Britishness, and the Empire to World War One.