CRAIG & BROWN

The three charts towards the bottom show all my known direct ancestors on my paternal side. There are gaps in our knowledge, as we are missing a number of male lines (e.g., we don’t know who my grandmother‘s father was). However, we have managed to push back many generations in several family branches, and tell their stories are told in several articles that are broken into three groups: (i) the ancestors of my great-grandparents James Craig and Jessie Littlejohn; (ii) the ancestors of my great-grandmother Annie Brown; and (iii) additional stories about my parents and our ‘Strachan’ connections.

(i) CRAIG Overview

The story of my CRAIG family has been spread over seven separate pages, each dealing with major branches of the family. The first three chronicle the ancestors of my great-grandfather James Craig, whose forebears converged on Glasgow from Scottish Midland districts like Loch Lomond, Rutherglen, Blantyre and Falkirk. Another major branch of his family (the Norwoods) had come from County Down in Ireland.

1: Craig-Campbell: 1760–1880 (Rutherglen & Helensburgh)

2 A: Findlay-McFarlane: 1677–1827 (Dunbartonshire & Loch Lomond)

   B: Hannah-Craig: 1826–1909 (Glasgow Central & Hutchesontown)

3: Norwood-McBride: 1846–1904 (Glasgow Blackfriars & Hutchesontown)

4: Craig-Norwood: 1871–1932 (Glasgow Blackfriars & Hutchesontown).

My great-grandmother was Jessie Littlejohn, and she came from the village of Keith in Banffshire (now called Moray). Her father’s ancestors came from central Aberdeenshire, while her mother’s had originated in Ross-shire before moving first to Cairnie in Aberdeenshire, and then to Keith in Banffshire.

5 A: Littlejohn-Garden: 1785–1841 (Udny, Daviot & Garioch in Aberdeenshire)

   B: John [1] Littlejohn: 1841–1861 (Fyvie, Aberdeenshire & Grange, Banffshire)

   C: John [2] Littlejohn: 1869–1923 (Cairnie, Keith & Tarland)

6 A: McLeay-McRae: 1740–1820 (Dingwall, Ross-shire)

   B: McLeay-Mair: 1820–1885 (Cairnie, Aberdeenshire & Keith, Banffshire)

            + Whitehills, Banffshire (Alexander McLeay & Sarah Wood)

            + Cranston Connection (Mgt McLeay, Elizabeth Smyth and the Cranston Family)

7 A: Helen McLeay (McLaren): 1840–1903 (Keith, Edinburgh & Auchterarder)

   B: Margaret McLeay: 1852–?  (Keith, Banffshire)

The chart below graphically shows how our ‘Craig’ stories are structured into family branches:

 

(ii) BROWN Overview

My paternal grandmother was Mary Templeton Brown (1907–1986), and she was descended on her maternal side from families that had lived mostly in the towns of Kilmarnock and Beith, in Ayrshire, before later generations gravitated to Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and then Glasgow. Her father is unknown to us, though there is some suggestion his surname might be “Graham”. However, we have been able chronicle her other ancestors, and I have broken their stories into three separate articles:

1: Wyllie – Harper: 1666–1863 (Kilmarnock, Ayrshire)

2: Pinkerton – Brown (ii): 1735–1887 (Dundonald, Paisley & Kilmarnock)

3  A: Brown (i) – Millar: 1770–1857 (Beith, Ayrshire)

    B: 1869–1929 (Kilmarnock, Dalkeith, Glasgow)

    C: 1888–1943 (Annie Brown, Hutchesontown, Glasgow)

To help the reader keep a focus on our ‘Brown’ history, the following chart graphically illustrates the way these stories have been told:

(ii) ADDITIONAL Stories

My paternal grandmother was Mary Templeton Brown (1907–1986), and she was descended on her maternal side from families that had lived mostly in the towns of Kilmarnock and Beith, in Ayrshire, before later generations gravitated to Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, and then Glasgow. Her father is unknown to us, though there is some suggestion his surname might be “Graham”. However, we have been able chronicle her other ancestors, and I have broken their stories into three separate articles:

1: Iain Craig: 1927–1945 (My father’s early life in Glasgow)

2: Iain Craig: 1946–1950 (My father’s time in the army & return to Glasgow)

3: Ian Craig Eulogy: 2016 (My eulogy to my father)

4: Pat Craig (McKay) Dedication (Memories of my mother)

5: The Strachan Connection (Research into the Strachan family of Ireland and Ayrshire)

 

RELEVANT MAPS:

Every story on this website is supported by a large series of specific maps that are colour-coded to show where our ancestors lived, worked and died, and it is always useful to have copies of relevant charts and maps handy when reading the stories — that way you will always keep track of individuals as you explore what we know of their lives. Each article contains the specific links to the relevant maps for that page, but they are shown here for convenience.

Relevant maps for Craig-Hannah-Norwood (pages open in new browser windows):

Relevant maps for Littlejohn-McLeay (maps open in new browser tabs):

Relevant Maps for Brown-Pinkerton (pages open in new browser windows):

Direct Ancestor Charts

Within each article there are numbered descendant charts that contain considerably more detail than these ones below. For instance, they show all the known children for each ancestral couple, with information about their vital facts (birth/death dates and places), the names of known spouses, and often their trade or occupation — and sometimes the number of known descendants with whom I have established DNA connections. Those charts also show how they connect with other numbered charts throughout the entire family. (See information about the charts here.)

Finally, it’s worth noting that throughout this website, all of our direct ancestors, whenever they are mentioned, are marked in purple (to help the reader keep a focus on who’s who). All blue text [mostly inside brackets like this] represents additional information or corrections, and did not form part of any of the original documents we have produced facsimiles of. Copies of the original birth, death, marriage and census records are held by me and stored in the Cloud, and can be made available to interested parties. When reproducing old parish baptismal and marriage entries, I have tried to keep the original archaic spellings and text, and also laid them out to reflect how they appeared in the parish records.

J’ai Bonne Esperance, indeed!

When I first told my Grandma (Mary Templeton Brown) that the Craig family motto, J’ai bonne esperance, meant ‘I have high hopes’, she rolled her eyes and chortled, “Aye, high hopes, indeed; that’s all we bloody well have!”

My Gran had a wonderful turn of phrase, and never missed an opportunity to have a dig at the ‘Craigs’. You could never pull the wool over her eyes, and she would often say in her broad Glasgow accent, “D’ya think ma heid buttons up the back? Well, ah’ll tell ye, ah‘m nae as green as ah‘m cabbage lookin‘!”

My favourite of Gran’s sayings (which Robyn has adopted) was “Ach! It’d gie y’ the boak!”

Not one to retreat from a hearty donnybrook, my grandfather, Thomas [5] Craig, was never slow in retaliating with a good broadside at the ‘Browns’, who he always likened to the family in The Sunday Post cartoon strip, “The Broons”. Their daughter, my Aunt Joyce, had married Jim Strachan, a very successful Glasgow bookie, and  Jim and Joyce had long left the squalor of Glasgow’s working-class slums behind, and had decidedly moved up in the world. My grandparents lived for the latter part of their lives with them at Bearsden, on Glasgow’s northern outskirts. After my grandparents had died, Jim and Joyce moved to the magnificent Boquhan House at Kippen in Stirlingshire, then, in their later years, to California after Jim, very sadly, developed Alzheimer‘s. Joyce and Jim have now long passed, but I still missed them and my grandparents dearly — but my direct ancestral connections to Glasgow, the town I was born in, have largely passed, apart from some second cousins, and a few of Jim Strachan‘s family.

“I have high hopes.”

The Craig, Brown and Strachan families were all fairly typical Glasgow folk when my father was born in 1927. They lived much as their parents and grandparents before them had done: in tenement flats of one or two rooms with a shared toilet on the landing. The men worked mainly in the shipyards or engineering works, while the women were wool and linen dyers, dress-makers or housewives. My Gran, though, became an exception to this, as she worked as a window-dresser for the big Jewish department stores in the Gorbals, and this provided her wee family with an extra income for almost all her working life. My parents had left Glasgow for Australia in 1950, and I’ve left it to my father to tell the story of his early life and his time in the army his own words on another page (see My Early Life by Iain Craig).

“Let majesty flourish”

“Brown” happens to be the second most common surname in Scotland, and this family connects with three separate families of ‘Brown’ on my paternal grandmother’s side (two are blood related). There is also a major branch of ‘Browns’ on my mother’s side, so there’s plenty of scope for confusion, I’m afraid!

So, as flamboyant as these clan badges and mottos might be, the reality for both the Craigs and Browns is that we have evolved from very working-class roots, and our association with the more aristocratic chiefs and their family estates would be very remote indeed. I hope these pages can at least give some colour to the lives of my ancestors.

Read the first chapter ➠