In case you missed the news… In September, archaeologists from St. Mary’s College of Maryland, in partnership with the College of Southern Maryland and a local businessman, announced the discovery of a long-sought fortification known as the Zekiah Fort. Built in 1680, the fort provided refuge to the Piscataways against raids by the Seneca and other more northerly Indian groups during the complex wars of the late 17th c. These wars involved different factions of Englishmen and their Indian allies. Locally, they were struggles for land and resources, and for political control of the Maryland colony. More broadly, they figured in the long-range struggle between religious and political factions in Britain. The Piscataways were allied with the Maryland colonists and Lord Baltimore who moved them to the Zekiah site in 1680. (For discussion of the wars leading up to 1680, see J. Frederick Fausz’ “Merging and Emerging Worlds,” on my Sources page for Native Americans in Early Maryland.) The site is near Marlborough. Read about it on Southern Maryland On Line.
Using sources that may be dodgy
I started this train of thought in my last post, re: ACGS Yearbooks. Here’s a little more.
The perpetual problem in family history research is that so many of the available narratives are unreliable–sometimes intentionally so, more often because the authors and compilers haven’t exercised a very high standard of evidence analysis. Often no distinction is made between what has been proven and what is believed, and enthusiasm counts for more than accuracy. It hardly matters whether you’re looking at your grandmother’s genealogical notes, a magazine article about a local historical site, or the efforts of an amateur historian–rarely will such sources prove entirely sound.
People make mistakes. (About half the family trees I’ve seen on Ancestry.com give the wrong name for the father of John S. Magruder. His father was Nathaniel; his uncle was Nathan. Read Nathaniel’s will if you don’t believe me.)
People hide secrets. (Is the birthdate in a family Bible accurate? Or does it hide an out-of-wedlock conception?)
People find one record and stop looking. (The wife’s not in the will, therefore the wife was deceased.)
People assume public records are accurate. (Try comparing ages for one person across 2 or 3 19th-century census records!)
People look for evidence to confirm what they already believe, or want to be true, ignoring gaps and contradictions. (Among those associated with a particular family, I’m looking for African-Americans named Basil Mullin, so I want to believe a slave named Basil, with no surname given, must be another Mullin.)
People like heroes, villains, and good stories. (We’d like it if Roderick McGregor had freed all his slaves in his will. Sadly, he didn’t.)
That’s the reality, so what should we do? The question is not whether to use sources that may be unreliable–often they are our only starting point. The question is how to use them. And the answer is twofold: cautiously and proactively.
Here’s an example from my own research.
In the 1917 Year Book of the American Clan Gregor Society, Caleb Clarke Magruder, Jr., published a 26-page article titled “Nathaniel Magruder of ‘Dunblane’,” in which he summarized and quoted from the wills and estate records of Nathaniel Magruder (d.1786) and a large number of his descendants. C.C. Magruder was one of the better researchers among the early ACGS writers, and I am interested in this particular family, so I am quite happy to have this article. It has pointed the way toward several interesting lines of inquiry, clarified some family relationships about which I was hazy, and given me a large panorama of the family’s property-transference, slave-owning, and other matters.
But that’s not the same as accepting C.C. Magruder as the final word. Here’s where caution and proactive research come in.
I had already read a few of the wills he quotes, so I spotted one large error right away: he says Roderick McGregor did free all his slaves, when in fact he freed only one family. This is very clear in the will and in the estate inventories. (I’ll refrain from theorizing how this mistake could be made, but there it is; and others have quoted it as authoritative.) This alerted me to treat the article with caution, but you shouldn’t need any special red flags. You should always follow up with your own legwork. (See Will of Roderick McGregor and related pages, for images and transcriptions.)
I discovered another error quite by chance… or, rather, by casting a wide net. On subjects that interest me, I read every published source I can find, and I often start with the index. That’s how I discovered–in Letitia Woods Brown’s Free Negroes in the District of Columbia 1790-1846–that one Elizabeth Magruder made her will in the District in 1827, including detailed provisions regarding her slaves. When I first found that information, I didn’t know who this particular Elizabeth Magruder was. C.C. Magruder’s article clued me in that she was Nathaniel Magruder’s unmarried daughter (and John S. Magruder’s sister). Why Elizabeth made her will in Washington, D.C., despite the fact that her legal and apparent residence was the family plantation, Dunblane, in Prince George’s County, may be explained by the will itself: her executor and all her heirs are found in the family of one of her sisters, a D.C. resident. Another lesson here: check other jurisdictions, wherever your target has relations, business interests, or property. (See Will of Elizabeth Magruder and related pages, for the rest of the story.)
The last issue I’ll talk about took a while to pin down. Because Roderick McGregor’s wife, Ann, is not mentioned in his will, C.C. Magruder states that she predeceased him. It’s a perfectly reasonable assumption in a time when divorce was so extremely rare. But once all the clues are assembled, it seems very probable that Roderick and his wife Ann were legally separated or divorced at the time of Roderick’s death. I picked up this trail in the 1850 census, which shows Roderick living alone and Ann living with a woman who is likely her mother. It took me a while to feel confident that this Ann McGregor was Roderick’s wife–I think I first drew the connection from the genealogy in Sue Emerson’s Magruders in America. Sue doesn’t give sources, so at that stage I had to call it a working hypothesis and keep digging. Eventually, I found Ann McGregor’s will, from 1871, which confirmed her identity. My last confirmation came from details in an 1850s land record. Again, the lesson is: cast a wide net. Search every category of records you can reasonably reach, for any and all information about your target. (See Interrelations page in the Magruder-McGregor pages, for details of this story.)
One way to contextualize any article you are reading is to consider what sources were and were not consulted. C.C. Magruder’s article on Nathaniel was based primarily on a survey of wills in Prince George’s County and the District of Columbia. You immediately know that you can and should look for other categories of records to confirm and expand the information.
And then, since we are people, too, and prey to all the mistakes I listed at the top of this post… distinguish carefully between what you can prove and what you believe to be true, and then be thorough and transparent in documenting and revealing your sources, allowing others to judge how firm the basis for that belief might be. It is useful to read each other’s theories; it is the opposite of useful to read a theory presented as if it were fact.
No time to do all this? Fine, just practice that very last piece of advice, letting the rest of us know that (so far) your only source is an uncorroborated article or family tree, and more work remains to be done.
In Evidence Explained, in the chapter on “Fundamentals of Evidence Analysis,” Barbara Shown Mills offers 6 descending “Levels of Confidence” that a conscientious researcher can communicate to readers.
Certainly: no reasonable doubt, sound and adequate evidence
Probably: more likely than not, good evidence but not quite certain
Possibly: some evidence, but far from proved
Likely: enough evidence that the odds are in its favor
Apparently: you’ve formed an impression but not tested it
Perhaps: you think an idea is plausible, but have not tested it
This is a useful vocabulary, whether or not we all conform to Mills’ exact distinctions. It allows us to share what we’ve found without making too-large claims about what our research “proves.”
American Clan Gregor Society Yearbooks…& how to use them
You may be surprised to find a link to the ACGS Yearbooks, given that I have confessed my lack of belief in Alexander Magruder’s Clan Gregor origins; but the ACGS was founded by Magruders and Magruders still make up a large portion of its membership, so it follows that the yearbooks are full of information by and about Magruders.
Unlike recent yearbooks, which focus on activities in the present, the early yearbooks were full of historical articles, family histories, memorials to individual ancestors, transcriptions of wills, and the like. All are available as PDFs from the ACGS Library, now in the care of Special Collections at the Langsdale Library of the University of Baltimore.
Use these articles with caution! The authors were not professional historians or genealogists. Some were careful and reasonably skilled, others appallingly bad on both counts, and nearly all the articles contain errors of omission if not outright wrong “facts.” In these old publications, legend and pure speculation enjoy equal status with research. For most, the goal was celebration of a heritage, not its verification.
Check the evidence, corroborate, and correlate. Look for original records and for multiple sources.
Be particularly cautious when you notice that the writers cite each other as authorities. Most of the historical articles were penned by three or four men, who are content to rely on each other without risking any further inquiry. These guys were friends and colleagues, working together to establish a historical grounding for the ACGS. You can’t blame them for accepting each other’s word–but you don’t have to.
For example, you may be excited to see that both Mr. A and Mr. B make the same claim about such-and-such…then find, on closer scrutiny, that Mr. B’s authority is Mr. A. So all you have, after all, in Mr. A’s assertion, for which he offers no evidence.
Phrases like “it is traditional” also should set off alarm bells. Most assertions that follow that phrase will turn out to have no basis in the historical record, and some will turn out to have no basis in oral history either. Such phrases can be used to cloak speculation in an air of authority.
Ask where the “tradition” comes from and who has handed it down.
The prime example for us, of course, is the “tradition” that Magruders/McGruders were part of Clan Gregor, which has flourished among American Magruders for around 200 years but is unknown to McGruders in Scotland. The idea was introduced to Scottish MacGregors in the 20th century and many have accepted it, but neither the historical record nor DNA has thus far supported it. Alas!
So where did this belief come from? When, where, and why did 19th c. Magruders adopt this belief? That’s worth finding out.
Don’t be intimidated by sources that sound antique and grand. Try a web search to find out the exact nature of these old books. Who wrote them? Who published them? For what audience and for what gain? Look for critical views and academic assessments. Dare to read what modern historians have to say on the same subjects.
For example, Sir Robert Douglas’ Baronage of Scotland (1798) was taken as authoritative by 19th and early 20th c. researchers and enthusiasts. Now available on line, it is offered by its editors as a sociological document–a snapshot of the beliefs of its day–and, at best, only a starting point for research. The Clan Gregor entry, often cited in support of the most grandiose claims about the clan chiefs’ genealogy, has been described by historian Martin MacGregor as “a work of sustained fiction.”
In short, be skeptical of claims that are not backed up by citations of sources. Be proactive in following up on those sources. Compare and correlate different sources, making sure they are independent of each other–that is, not all relying on the same prior source. On some questions, you may never have a hard and fast proven fact, but multiple independent sources that suggest the same conclusion will give you far more certainty than one self-confident writer who offers no evidence for his or her claims.
And above all, enjoy the hunt!
Probing the Past
I’ve added a link to my blogroll for this excellent site (from the Roy Rosenzweig Center for History and New Media at George Mason University and Gunston Hall Plantation). You’ll find, in addition to resources for teachers, a fully-searchable archive of 325 probate inventories from the Chesapeake region of Maryland and Virginia from the period of 1740 to 1810. As the introduction says–
Probate records provide valuable information about the lifestyles of people during the colonial and early national periods. Such listings of possessions, from a time when household goods were not widely mass-produced, illuminate a family’s routines, rituals, and social relations, as well as a region’s economy and connection to larger markets. They also shed light on attitudes and policies toward slavery. For famous people, these records enrich our knowledge and understanding of their daily lives and values. For ordinary people, they offer a rare glimpse into their lived experience. These records also provide an opportunity to engage in comparative studies with other eras and to analyze how culture changes over time.
The project was begun by researchers at George Mason’s home, Gunston Hall Plantation, as a way of building a context for data about Mason and life on his plantation. The criteria used in selecting the 325 estates therefore assure that this is primarily a portrait of the wealthiest planters of his day. A few others sneak in because they have features of special interest, such as room-by-room inventories. Three Magruders by name and other Magruders by female descent are included. Note that in the record for Nathaniel Magruder (who met the room-by-room criterion) the transcriber omitted two pages, including the page where slaves are inventoried. All pages seem to be present in the scans of the original document.
Evidence Explained
Yet historical truths are rarely rooted in either shortcuts or comfort.
–Elizabeth Shown Mills
I guess this is the ultimate nerd moment: excitement over Elizabeth Shown Mills’ 800-page bible of accountability: Evidence Explained: Citing History Sources from Artifacts to Cyberspace. Not being a professional historian, I wasn’t familiar with this book until I read about it on Michael Hait’s blog, at which point I couldn’t wait to get my hands on it.
My practice on this web site may fall a bit short of her exacting and exhaustive standard of documentation, but many things are becoming clearer thanks to Mills’ lucid explanations of not only how to record your sources but why. As she says in the Foreword:
As students, when we were introduced to research principles, we may have been told that identifying sources is important for two reasons. First, we provide “proof” for what we write. Second, we enable others to find what we have used. Both purposes are valid, but they miss the most critical point of all:
We identify our sources–and their strengths and weaknesses–so we can reach the most reliable conclusions. (10)
In the next 700+ pages, she walks us through the documentation of every imaginable kind of source, from a quilt to a videogame. Not interested only in the “output” of a clear and useful footnote or bibliography, Mills starts with the “input”–the steps we must take while researching to record and evaluate each source…and to maintain the flexibility to re-evaluate it later on, as our knowledge and range of contexts grow.
She also reminds us that “family-history standards require a higher level of proof than does most litigation” (18) and in fact can accept no margin of error at all, because “Correct identification is the foundation upon which all else rests.” (19)
If you’ve never had a systematic introduction to research, this book is your crash course. If you’ve been over all this stuff before, but don’t always remember how to apply it, here is your right-hand helper. Far more than a set of templates–though plenty of those are provided–this book is a thorough course on the fundamentals of sound research and evidence analysis.
For someone like me, moonlighting out of my own field, it’s a very powerful torch.
Progress on building the site
In Slavery’s Legacy, I’ve finished the pages for the wills of John S. Magruder and his son Roderick McGregor, also for the William & Matilda Bowie family, and for Washington and May Magruder. African American surnames that show up on those pages include: Magruder, Bowie, Dodson, Godfrey, Henry, Buchanan, Vermillion, Chapman, Shaw, Chase, and Stewart. I can’t list all the first names, but you can use the Search function to look for them–that’s why I type out all the names, even when I’ve uploaded an image of the document they come from.
I thought I knew this material backwards and forwards, but in fact there was a lot to learn. Writing out the details, listing the names and ages, checking the sources, I stumbled on a couple of new connections and several unanswered questions.
I also invented some new curse words for the broken Search page on the Archives of Maryland “Beneath the Underground: The Flight to Freedom” site. Good thing I compulsively download and save copies of just about everything…and can even occasionally find them.
Why you won’t see much about Clan Gregor on this site
Like many American Magruders, I was raised in the belief that Alexander Magruder was a member of Clan Gregor. I love MacGregor history and have studied it in detail all my life. Sadly, modern research makes clear that we Magruders are not related to Clan Gregor.
In Scotland, Don McGruther has ransacked the historical records for evidence of association between that clan and McGruders, and has found none. Nor is there any tradition in Scotland associating the two lineages. This lack of connection is confirmed by a small Magruder-McGruther DNA Project, which shows no close relation between well-established MacGregor markers and a small number of McGruder / Magruder men who volunteered to be tested.
The American Clan Gregor Society was founded in 1909 by descendants of Alexander Magruder, including my great-grandfather, and the ACGS is still family to me; but I can’t pretend that I still believe in our Clan Gregor descent.
I am, however, very interested in how, why, and when American Magruders came to believe it. We know that in 1820 one John Smith Magruder, of Upper Marlboro, Maryland, changed all his children’s surnames to McGregor. (It took a special act of the Legislature.) There are claims that the belief dates back to Revolutionary times, but as yet I have found no evidence for that.
(If you are a Magruder, and somewhere in your family is a record showing an early belief in the MacGregor connection, please share!)
It could not have been handed down from Alexander himself, nor from anyone who knew him, because it is clear that 19th c. American Magruders believed they were descended from MacGregors who had survived the rigors of the Proscription–the details of which they probably drew from the writings of Sir Walter Scott. (John S. Magruder read Scott’s books aloud to his children, for example.) It is also possible they got some of their details from early tartan books published by Scottish woolen mills from the early 19th c. on. The mills had an interest in spooning every Scottish surname into a Highland clan, to sell more tartan, and their information was often spurious.
As for the “traditional” belief that the Magruders/McGruders/McGrouthers were descended from Gillespie the Cruiter, or Harper, a younger son of a 14th c. Clan Gregor chief, I can trace it no further than the speculations of Henry Latham Magruder, of Chicago, who undertook in the last years of the 19th c. to find evidence for the MacGregor-Magruder connection. It is clear from his correspondence that he found no such evidence, but instead formed a theory that the name evolved from a patronymic, MacCruiter or MacCruither, meaning “Son of the Harper.” He never says anything more certain than “It is my belief..” and he does not say from what source he derived his conviction. Gaelic linguists deny that this is the meaning or origin of our name, in any of its spellings.
In fact, in his correspondence with ACGS founder Dr. Edward May Magruder, Henry Latham Magruder argued passionately for the founding of a Magruder society, not a MacGregor society. When he could not prevail, and the ACGS went forward as Clan Gregor organization, he asked that his correspondence be preserved in the society’s archives. Thus, you can read it yourself, right here–
It is clear in the correspondence that Edward May Magruder, the principal organizer of the ACGS, sought information from Henry because his research, conducted in Scotland with help from a researcher there, was more extensive than that of any other American Magruder. Before this time, Magruders had believed their name was a variation or corruption of MacGregor, or that it had been adopted when the name MacGregor was proscribed in 1603. Once researchers like Henry Latham Magruder had traced the McGruther / MacCrouther name to at least the middle of the 15th c (150 years before the Proscription) and uncovered Alexander’s true origins–in a family and community far removed from Clan Gregor’s troubles–they had to find another way to connect him to the MacGregors. We have to remember that they worked under the assumption that the connection was true, an assumption that influenced their interpretation of facts.
Thus was the “Son of the Harper” born, and Gilane or Gilawnene McCrouder–our first documentable ancestor, who signed a document in 1447–was claimed to be his son. Henry Latham also filled in a genealogy between Gilawnene and the next documented man of the name: James McGruder, who in 1547 was pardoned for having taken part in a Protestant attack on Queen Mary’s governor the previous year. James was a page to to David, the second Lord Drummond. And if we are correct in our identification of Alexander Magruder’s parents, this James was his great-grandfather.
We can’t blame the founders of the ACGS for believing what their families had taught them. Even Henry Latham Magruder, as he argued for a Magruder society, was vehement in his continued belief in the Clan Gregor story, claiming it went back in his family to Revolutionary times. But we have resources they did not have and we cannot ignore what both the historical record and the DNA record tell us. We should take Henry’s advice and embrace our Magruder heritage for its own sake.
Maybe someone should design a Magruder family tartan, to ease the way.
****
Don McGruther: MacGrouthers in Scotland before 1855. Self-published, 2007. Issued jointly with Sue Emerson’s CD, Magruders in America, under the title Wha’s Like Us?
Henry Latham Maguder: Correspondence 1894-1909. American Clan Gregor Society Collection, Series IX, Box 10. University of Baltimore, Langsdale Library Special Collections. Used with permission.
In which battle was Alexander Magruder captured?
I admit to changing my mind a few times about this question. The candidates are the Battle of Preston, 1648; the Battle of Dunbar, 1650; and the Battle of Worcester, 1651. At the moment (June 2021) I am leaning toward Worcester. Here are the arguments.
In an essay published in The Yearbook of the American Clan Gregor Society, Vol. LXIII (1979), Charles Kurz wrote:
Tradition is that Alexander McGruder served in the Scots Army of King Charles II, was captured after the Battle of Worcester on 3 September 1651, and was later transported to Maryland. In the context of Scottish and Maryland history, students of Alexander Magruder’s life have difficulty accepting the tradition that he was captured after ‘the Battle of Worcester’. The time span from the purported 3 September 1651 capture is difficult to reconcile with a time for sentencing as a rebel, a 3- to 6-month voyage to Maryland, a period of indenture, and two land assignments of 50 acres each on completion of indenture–all within 26 months–by 19 November 1653…According to T[homas] G[arland]. Magruder, Jr, it is very possible that Alexander McGruder could have een captured at the Battle of Preston on 17 August 1648. (68)
I have argued in the past that it’s most likely Alexander was captured at Dunbar on 3 September 1650–two years after Preston and exactly one year before the Battle of Worcester. The defeat at Dunbar was huge and Scots prisoners many. Accounts I have read differ in some details, but agree that hundreds, if not thousands died on a forced march to Newcastle, even as their captors debated what to do with them. In true Puritan fashion, a committee was appointed–which quickly determined that those healthy enough to work might be sent to the coal and salt mines. As early as September 16th, the committee was receiving petitions from entrepreneurs who wanted to profit by transporting prisoners to the colonies as indentured labor. Thus, these captives from Dunbar became the first prisoners from an internal war to be transported–barbadoed in the slang of the day–a decision that was unprecedented and notably scandalous. From these accounts, I think it unlikely that Alexander, or anyone else, was transported to the colonies after the Battle of Preston two years earlier.
However, prisoners from Worcester, a year after Dunbar, were quickly marched south to London, thousands dying on the way, to be prepared for transportation to the colonies. A strong argument for believing that Alexander was among them arises from the way regiments were raised and commanded. There was no “Scots army,” as Kurz puts it; regiments were raised locally and personally by titled and landed gentry, from among their tenants and allies. Lord Madderty’s brother commanded a regiment at Worcester that was overcome, with many (including Lord Madderty) captured–a perfect fit for Alexander, whose father was Lord Madderty’s chamberlain. Given his father’s status, Alexander would have served as an officer in such a regiment. (I have seen American accounts assigning him a rank but this is, pardon the pun, rank speculation.)
For Scots prisoners shipped to New England in these years, many records survive, including their names, the ships they arrived on, and where they were sent to work. Unluckily for us, no such records survive from Maryland or Virginia.
In the Yearbook of the American Clan Gregor Society for 1952, Herbert T. Magruder published “Some Notes on Circumstances Surrounding the Transporting of Alexander Mac Gruether as a Prisoner of War; and His Landing in Maryland in 1652.” He writes that
[r]esearch by William H. Gaines, Jr., an editor of Virginia Cavalcade, a publication of the Virginia State Library, has brought to light a record of the fact that a fleet of two warships, the JOHN and the GUINEA, and several armed merchantmen was fitted out by order of the Parliament in the summer of 1651. The ships sailed from England in the fall of that year. Among the passengers were six hundred Scottish prisoners of war, who were being sent to do penance in the colonies. The voyage was by way of Barbadoes, which was a center of Royalist resistance as was the Virginia colony. The weather at the season may also have been a factor in plotting the course; for the John was lost at sea; and the Guinea lagged behind. The merchantmen therefore arrived first off the Virginia capes in January 1652, and anchored offshore to await their armed escort. At length Governor William Berkeley and his Council were brought to terms of submission by the Parliamentary Commissioners; and the fleet sailed up the Chesapeake to bring the Maryland colonists into line.
It is certainly probable that Alexander Mac Gruether was one of the six hundred Scots on board those transports[.]
If Alexander was captured at Worcester, the timeline in this account could explain the rapidity with which he reached Maryland. Historians say that Cromwell disliked the costs of housing and feeding prisoners, and moved rapidly to dispose of them. Chris Gerrard, research director of the Scots Prisoners Project at Durham, has given me his opinion that Worcester is entirely feasible as the place Alexander McGruder was captured. There is, however, nothing to connect Alexander or his fellow Drummond retainers to the burials at Durham.
That said, the Scottish Soldiers at Durham project is well worth following, as they study (and try to identify) the remains of prisoners from the battle of Dunbar, imprisoned and later buried at Durham Cathedral. A victim of the Reformation, the building was empty in 1650 and had not been used for worship for several years. Mass burials of the 1,600 men who died there (out of 3,000 imprisoned) were discovered in 2013 in a routine construction project. Read this wonderfully informative interview with Christopher Gerrard, leader of the research team, at the Council for European Studies.
Some further background…Maryland had been plundered by Puritan freebooters as early as 1645, when its Catholic governors were arrested and sent to London in chains. Those with the resources to flee had hightailed it back to England, or at least to Virginia, leaving the colony to the lawless rule of Puritan-backed thugs for the next two years. By the time the Calverts returned in 1648 (bringing with them a Protestant governor to appease their enemies) St. Mary’s City held fewer men than had founded the colony in 1631, all other survivors having scattered into the woods and swamps for self-protection. It was in this atmosphere of desperation, as the Calverts struggled to keep hold of the remnants of their colony, that the famous Act Concerning Religion–so often touted as the first American law to guarantee freedom of conscience–was passed by the hastily reorganized Assembly. It failed in its first purpose, however–to convince the Puritans to keep their hands off Maryland. In the following year came the Regicide and Cromwellian rule, followed in due course by the battles of Dunbar and Worcester, and the final submission of Virginia and Maryland to the forces of Cromwell’s Parliament.
This was the Maryland to which Alexander was delivered.
Several sources give the number of prisoners still on board when the Guinea reached Maryland at 150. Wherever he was captured, and however long the hell of his ordeal, it is probable that Alexander Magruder was among them.
* * * * * *
Magruder's Landing 