BOCA INTERNATIONAL PUBLISHING COMPANY

Tuesday, January 3rd, 2012, 1:45 a.m.

Sometimes, the stories in families get all mixed together and in a hunt for fame, a connection is made with a famous person. I had that thought for a number of decades in the person of Sir Walter Scott, the famous Scottish writer. Now it has to be understood that research can do one of two things, either promote further research of find the truth. My study of Sir Walter Scott came from trying to pinpoint the family connection. It went something like this. My Great Aunt Margaret Scott Carswell, a spinsiter throughout her life, descended from an Errington who was descended from a Scott received her middle name along with a family inheritance that ended with her own aunt, all a result of an ancestor who wanted the famous name of Scott to be handed down through the family in the absence of a son to carry it on. Well, that was okay so far until my research led me astray. In searching for the name Scott, I came across the name Jobson and the end of a line. It seems that Sir Walter Scott II, the son and last to carry the SIR in the title, married a Jane Jobson of Lochore. There was my answer, except that I did not have the answer as to which uncle had made the pledge of money to carry on the task.

I must have read a dozen books about Sir Walter Scott and his life history trying to find that answer. Along the way I came across the name of a favourite uncle Walter Scott who farmed just across the border in northern England, what is now part of the New Forest, a large national park in the area laid out by the purchase of old farmland. My trail went cold until I found a family of Jobsons in New Zealand researching their Scott connection. Together we came to the conclusion that the Walter Scott I was looking for was the same Walter Scott who farmed in northern England. His son was also a Scott but married a Jobson and he would have been the Scott trying to carry on the family name.

Now, tell me this, if you found the name Scott in the family, a daughter-in-law named Jobson, and a close Scott family friend named Fergusson who brought the two together, would you not think that we were somehow related? We that was the story that had me hooked for decades but like the true researcher, there was just not enough for me to connect the dots. Now that my distant cousin in New Zealand has done that for me, the lines can be drawn, except for one thing, how is it that we all share the same names and timelines and vicinity? Maybe there is some more direct connection between Sir Walter Scott's family and mine. Maybe a little more research needs to be done to find what I read at Scott Library at York University and see if we cannot connect our Walter Scotts by the common farm name.... hmmmmmm. Connections between families for purposes of marriage usually came from who you knew back then. Did the Scotts know the Jobsons and did the Jobsons have a suitable cousin recommended by the Fergusson? The total mystery has not yet been solved. The journey has not ended.