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The Sept McCombie
The following is an article written by Hamish McCombie for the Aberdeen & NE
Scotland FH Society:
McCOMBIE -- A ONE-NAME STUDY
The Beginning
How does one get into a one-name study - a never-ending search for people with
the same surname, all the while ignoring family members who do not happen to have
that name? The answer, as far as I am concerned, is simply that I fell into it through
the process of looking for my own family and noting all those with the same name
that turned up in the hope that they might fit somewhere in the family tree. I soon
realised that not all McCombies were of the same family, but I had gathered so
many names that I became intrigued by the question of who was related to whom
and began to fit names and places and dates together just like a giant jigsaw
puzzle. I have been doing this off and on for about 15 years with the broad
objective of seeking out all McCombies everywhere and establishing their relationship
to each other. It would appear that there are enough of us to make it a real
challenge and few enough to make it feasible.
My father, James George (Hamish) McCombie, while still a young man, died in 1947,
a delayed World War II victim, when I was eight years old. He and my mother as
newly-weds in 1936, had moved from the west of Aberdeenshire to Longside in the
north east of the county where I grew up, a world away from the "home" of the
McCombies on upper Donside. My mother, herself part of a large family, and her two
sons, gradually lost touch with my father's kin. Nearly half a century later, most of
which had been spent abroad, I realised with some regret that I knew very little
about the origins of my name and the people who shared it and resolved to do
something about it.
A few days in New Register House in Edinburgh soon established my descent from a
Joseph McCombie (c 1730-1798) who married Isobel Grey in Logie Coldstone in May
1756 - of whom more later. But I was immediately struck by the large number of
McCombies that appeared in the indexes: were they all part of the same family,
descendants of Joseph? Surely not. Apart from my own immediate family and a few
cousins, I had never met another McCombie and had imagined the name to be quite
rare, confined to a single small family in the Alford area. I was soon to be
enlightened. For a start, had I bothered to look, I would have found over 100 listed
in the Aberdeen(shire) telephone directory of the late 1980s
"The" McCombies
I had not gone far in my search before identifying members of what is perhaps the
best known family of Aberdeenshire McCombies, containing such illustrious names as
William of Tillyfour, an MP and famous breeder of Aberdeen Angus cattle, and William
of Easterskene and Lynturk, land owner and very successful farmer. Up to the
middle of the twentieth century this family comprised many well-to-do farmers, but
it also included several in the professions - ministers, solicitors, doctors and even a
member of the Legislative Assembly of Victoria in Australia. A large branch of the
family established itself in London in the early 1800s from which a smaller branch
moved to the USA in 1890. Australia is home to three other small branches and,
although most have now disappeared, there were members of this family, along with
sundry other McCom(b)ies, in the West Indies throughout the 19th century. There
are relatively few descendants remaining in Aberdeenshire and only one in farming
but there are a number still a little further south in Angus.
The history of this family up to the end of the 19th century is well documented in a
Memoir of the Family McCombie, a fascinating book by William McCombie Smith
published in 1887, from which we learn that these McCombies are descended from
Donal McComie (1649-1714) whose gravestone is believed to be the oldest in the
Tough cemetery. Tradition has it, although proof is hard to establish, that Donal was
the youngest son of the renowned Big John McComie (Iain McThomaid Mor) of Forter
in Glenisla, seventh chief of the McComies -or, in the anglicised form, the
McThomases - a splinter group of the Clan Chattan Mackintoshes, which had
established themselves as a separate clan in Glenshee in the late 15th century. As a
result of the Civil and Covenanter Wars, and ultimately the death of the chief in
1674, the clan had broken up and scattered, many moving north to Aberdeenshire
where the name became McCombie.
Aberdeenshire
According to McCombie Smith, Marjory McCombie, a daughter of William of Lynturk
and great-granddaughter of Donal, married an unspecified cousin (from which I take
it that the only thing known about him was that he was a McCombie). Further
research indicates that he was almost certainly William, the fourth son of my great
x4 grandfather Joseph. Other than this link by marriage, I have found no connection
between the families. However, at the same time as Donal makes his appearance in
Tough (List of pollable persons within the shire of Aberdeen, 1696), no less than five
McComie families turn up as tenants of four large farms in Logie Coldstone. and,
according to John G. Michie's History of Logie Coldstone and the Braes of Mar
(1896), it was the general belief that they also had come from Glenisla. One may
assume therefore that, whether or not directly related, they were in some way
connected if only as members of the same clan living in the same area. Two of the
Logie-Coldstone families occupied the same farm at which Joseph was to appear
some 50 years later. (A hiatus in the OPRs between 1720 and 1748 prevents us from
following the direct descent). It is worth noting here that when we first come
across Joseph and the other contemporary members of the clan in Logie-Coldstone
all are referred to as McComie or McOmie but by the 1770s all have become
McCombie. This was one of the first groups to insert the "b" perhaps for the simple
reason that it sounded better. There were in fact three other families of the same
name in Logie Coldstone, all with children born in the 1750s and 1760s, but, as far
as can be determined with any certainty, no McCombie descendants of these
survive today.
William, Joseph's fourth son, and Marjory McCombie had one son, also called William
(1809-1870), who was not only a tenant farmer at Cairnballoch near Alford but a
distinguished author and the first editor of the Aberdeen Free Press (predecessor of
the Press and Journal). A number of his offspring were prominent in the first half of
the 20th century but, as far as is known, he is survived by only two
great-great-grandsons now living in the south of England. Joseph's descendants,
through his second and third sons, Peter and Charles comprise by far the greatest
number of the McCombies - more than two thirds of the total - remaining in
Aberdeen(shire).
Peter, a corn dealer, moved to Lonmay and his descendants, from two marriages,
are mainly in the north and east of the county; most were, although of course no
longer are, crofters and farm servants. There is some evidence , which is by no
means conclusive, that one of his sons - John, born in 1795 - was the same John
McCombie who arrived in Nova Scotia in 1820 and from whom sprung a large
McCombie family in Michigan, USA. A large number of this family survive today
having spread to many other parts of the country. Another of Peter's sons, Charles
(1804-1883), a master cooper, moved for a while to London and produced five sons,
one of whom lived and worked (and married) in Peru; another was a doctor in India
and two went to New Zealand where a few of their progeny still live.
The "Alford McCombies", many of whom are still there along with many more in the
south and west of Aberdeenshire, are, as I am, descended from Joseph's second son
Charles. This group also comprised many farmers, farm servants, cattle dealers and
butchers as well as, rather surprisingly, a firm of tailors which had many shops in
London from 1896 to the 1970s. Not only are there numerous descendants still in
the Aberdeen area but many are now to be found in various parts of England, while
the largest oversees contingents are in Australia and Canada. (The reader may be
reminded here that I refer only to descendants still having the name McCombie. This
particular family produced an unusually high proportion of daughters, a few of whom
had sons born out of wedlock and retaining the mother's surname, but the majority
of descendants now have other names. I therefore know little about descendants on
the distaff side - no offence intended.)
Cabrach
Around 1760-1770 we find another group of McComies in the Cabrach, straddling the
Aberdeenshire/Banffshire border. It is likely that one of the two main families there
came from Logie Coldstone, some 15 to 20 miles away, as its progenitor was a
Robert McCombie (probably the same Robert born in 1757 in Logie Coldstone),
whereas the other main Cabrach family did not introduce the "b" until the early 19th
century. In this case only a few family members worked on farms. They took up a
wide variety of trades and occupations ranging from gardeners to grocers, masons
to ministers and a doctor of medicine who graduated from Aberdeen University in
1883. To find such employment most moved out of the area some 150 years ago
and spread to Moray, the coastal areas of Banffshire and especially to Aberdeen,
where there are still a good number of descendants, with a sprinkling in Glasgow,
the north of England and Canada. None of their progeny remains in Cabrach.
A little further to the north west, in Boharm, a John McComie married Isobel Watt in
1767 and later moved to Glass in Aberdeenshire where their son Alexander was born
on 1771. Alexander went to India as a soldier in 1792, there to give rise to a large
Anglo-Indian family of McCombies. His third son was Master of Music to the Bombay
Government while the next generation comprised several merchants in Bombay. A
generation still further, two brothers graduated from Aberdeen University, one to
become a physician in London and another a lecturer at Cambridge University in the
early 1900s. So far, there is no trace of present-day descendants of this family still
named McCombie.
Two smaller branches of McCombies, with the earliest references being to gardeners
in Elgin around 1800, have also spread far and wide with some in Edinburgh, London,
Canada and Australia as well as in Aberdeen.
Inverness
Further north and west to Inverness and Ross-shire there was a substantial group of
McCom(b)ies during the period from the mid 18th to the mid 19th centuries,
although there is a reference as far back as 1654/55 to the family of an Alexander
McComie. A few in Resolis on the Black Isle spelled the name with the "b" as early as
1754 which is about the same time that the Aberdeenshire "clan" began to change
the name and throws some doubt on the theory that all McCombies came from
Aberdeenshire. Where these in Inverness and Ross-shire came from or went to, one
can only hazard a guess but very few remain there today and only a handful of
present day descendants have been traced anywhere. This is with the exception of
the family of a John McComie (c1805-1891) from Inverness whose death certificate,
unfortunately, indicates his parents as unknown. One of his grandsons, a piano
tuner, after a spell in Glasgow established a branch of this family in British Columbia
while others are in Perthshire and various parts of England. Some of John's
descendants are still in the area where the family was once well known for its
footballing prowess, one member becoming a professional in the north of England
and gaining several Scottish caps.
Perthshire and Kinross
In A Memoir of a McComie family (1995), Frank McCombie now of Newcastle,
discusses the presence (and subsequent disappearance) of the numerous McComies
in Perthshire in the 17th and 18th centuries. These McComies, for the most part,
had arrived there following the dispersal of the clan from Glenisla but there is some
evidence of a few being there as early as the beginning of the 17th century. Frank
traces with some certainty his family back to about 1790 in the Tayside parish of
Rhynd from whence it moved to Forfarshire (now Angus) and then to Dundee in the
middle of the 19th century. In this case, the "b" was not introduced until after 1850.
While there is apparently none of this family left in Perthshire and only a few in
Dundee, there is a branch a little further south in Fife and others in the north of
England, in Ontario, Canada and in New Jersey, USA. Other Perthshire McComies,
including in particular a family of bakers, are known to have moved to Essex around
1820 but they seem to have petered out there or have been lost in the changing of
the name to McCombie.
Just across the county border in Kinross is the parish of Orwell where we find a John
McComie and his wife Isobel Murdow(ch) in the 1750s. They and the two succeeding
generations were in farming there, but around 1840 their grandson William, by now a
McCombie, with his family of five sons and two daughters was drawn to the rapidly
expanding Glasgow and its shipbuilding industry. The eldest son, James, and his wife
Marion had one surviving son, John, who emigrated in the 1880s to New Zealand,
there to marry an Irish girl and establish a large branch of the McCombies who are
spread throughout the country to this day. Some of the original family are still in the
Glasgow area along with other McCombie families which appeared there, from I know
not where, in the early 19th century.
There were also several McCom(b)ies in Edinburgh and the Lothians in the late 17th
century and the following two hundred years, including, surprisingly, a Donald
McComby who married in 1711 in St Cuthberts Edinburgh, but apart from one or two
small branches I have, so far, been unable to relate these either to each other or to
present day McCombies.
London and the South East of England
This account would not be complete without mention of the "McCombies of Dalkilry"
- the name adopted by a well-defined branch and the eponymous title of a book by
one of their number, the late Emily Fenn. As recounted in the book, the family claims
to be descended from Iain Mor's second son Alexander but this is, to say the least,
questionable and it is not at all sure where George, the earliest known member of
the family, first found in 1792 in Heston, Middlesex, came from. George was not a
common name among the McCombies of that time but there was a George McComie
among the tenant farmers in Logie Coldstone in 1696, and again in the 1760s at the
same farm as Joseph. It is possible, to put it no more strongly, that he was part of
that family; to tease us along in this direction, George Samuel the son of George in
Heston, named one of his sons Joseph and two of his grandsons bore the same
name. For five successive generations after George Samuel, the first born son of the
first born son was named George John, the practice ending with the death in infancy
of George John V. The first was a bookbinder while the second and third were
instrumental in a tie manufacturing business in London which existed in various forms
from 1856 to 1909. There are still a score or more members of the family with the
McCombie name in the South of England.
Finally, also in the East end of London, we find that John McCombie, a widower and
a baker married Martha Corker in 1808. We can only speculate as to the provenance
of this John but the union resulted in a substantial colony of McCombies in London
and more recently in Essex. Walter, a grandson of John and Martha, emigrated to
Australia in 1875 and founded quite a large branch in and around Sydney where they
are still today. There were of course other McCombies in and around London at that
time, especially in the army at Woolwich. There was, for example, a corporal John
McCombie whose discharge papers indicate that he was born in 1761 in the "Parish
of Fairland (sic) in the county of Aberdeen". To my knowledge there was no such
parish, nor can he be found in Tarland - such things are meant to try us! His
subsequent family has been well documented but it is frustrating to be so near yet
so far from finding out where they originated.
Concluding thoughts
Needless to say, being a collector and compiler of family trees covering a number of
apparently unrelated branches and living in a remote corner of France, I am heavily
dependent on information provided by others. I am happy to acknowledge that
clansmen and women in all corners of the English speaking world have, for the most
part, been wonderfully helpful and cooperative. The advent of e-mail has made it
possible to conduct research "together" with others, sharing work and exchanging
information and ideas as we go along. It is curious, however, that those "at home" in
Aberdeenshire have been much more reluctant to part with information. (In the late
1980s, letters to some 75 McCombies in the North East elicited no more than seven
replies ). Is this a natural reticence born out suspicion for my motives, or just
apathy and a lack of interest? It is natural, I suppose, for those living far from the
home country to want to know more about their ancestry but the difference is
striking. A particularly rewarding aspect is to receive communications out of the blue
from people unknown in far corners of the world, seeking information on their
relatives. To be able to provide it is gratifying but one often has to disappoint.
I cannot pretend that I will ever finish the exercise: there were and are several
McCombies in England about whom I know nothing and I have barely scratched the
surface of McCombies in the United States. I have notes on literally dozens of small
branches and twigs and stray names that have still to be fitted into the larger
picture. There are many unanswered questions regarding early McComies and even
McKombies of whom there were quite a number in Aberdeen sometime before Donal
arrived in Tough.
I would be delighted to hear from anyone interested in the McCombie family histories
at either my postal address or, electronically, at hmccombie@aol.com
Hamish McCombie
Thank you Hamish for sharing your research and providing it for use on this message
board.
The Clan, AYE!
Bobby
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