Our emigration paths

My Buchan ancestor came to Australia in 1852. Buchans have been probably been on the move for a very long time. Our DNA confirms that the Buchan family have ancestral roots in Scotland, meaning they were there between 500-1000 years ago. [Many 'Scots' find out that their DNA suggests Irish or sometimes English or European ethnicity]. 

A study such as mine can document where Buchans went, and when they went. Social history might tell us why they emigrated when they did. I have traced the movements of all descendants of George Buchan and Jean Johnston until modern privacy laws kick in.

Scots, like all peoples of the British Isles, moved primarily to North America (USA - 33% and Canada 48%), to Australia - 76% and New Zealand - 70%, to South Africa - 3%, to countries in South America, to the Indian subcontinent as well as western Europe, Scandinavia and Central America. The darker the colour in the map below, the higher that place's current population is thought to have British Isles ancestry.

Map by Allice Hunter https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=92285323, accessed 17 July 2024.

But there are stories to share in the detail

I will document the families experiencing emigration, the when and the where. Generation by generation, family line down to the modern day. Did 'whole' families emigrate at one time, or over generations? But even 'whole' families often left behind parents, siblings and cousins. They left behind friends and neighbours too, but our documents largely focus on family relationships. Shipping or passengers lists are often missing, and the emigrant is first found somewhere else.

Migration within the British Isles is captured by censuses, and by marriage and death records. One generalisation is that lowland Scots migrated south into England, highland Scots went overseas. Relatively few Scots were transported to Australia as convicts in the late 18th-19th centuries. But many thousands of Jacobite soldiers were transported to the Americas in the early 18th Century. Many thousands of Scots were transported to the Caribbean in the 17th century.

From the 5-17th centuries there was constant movement between south-western Scotland and norther Ireland coasts, though there was little cause for those Scots to move to southern Ireland counties. By the late 1700s the migration was almost all into Scotland. 

The Scots, as part of the British Army, and East India Company, and other ventures also chose to spread their business enterprises widely around the then British Empire. 

So migration of Scots has been sometimes by their own choice, or as convicts, as soldiers, as wives and children (with almost no say), re-uniting families, or even escaping families or creditors. 

Generation 1 - George and Jean's children

The children of George and Jean all died in Midlothian within a 4 hour walk from Newlandrig!
James, their unknown son, Isabella, Andrew and Helen all died in Newlandrig village itself.
George and Robert died in Newbattle (in mining accidents in the neighbouring parish)
Alexander died in Newton (a parish north of Borthwick)
William died in Edinburgh.

Generation 2  - George and Jean's grandchildren

George and Jean had 44 grandchildren, from six children, an average of seven children per family, but family size ranged from three to eleven, including three illegitimate children.

William line - Mary Ann Buchan (Smart) born in 1852 was William's only daughter. She married in Midlothian in 1892 aged 40; but moved the Jedburghshire/Roxburghshire, her only child was born in Crailing, Roxburgshire in 1895. Only five years later she became a widow, and survived another 20 years (in Bonjedward).

George's line - two of his children moved within Scotland - 1) Jane Buchan (Farquharson) born in 1831 had all her family in Midlothian but later moved to Dunfermline, Fifeshire by 1891, and 2) William Buchan born in 1832 moved to Haddington, East Lothian where his son James was born in 1863.

His daughter Isabella Buchan (Scott) born in 1842 was the only one of his children to migrate overseas. She went to USA in 1904, her last child was born in Newlandrig in 1887.

Isabella's line - Her eldest daughter Jane Inglis (Prentice) born in 1835 moved to Haddington, East Lothian by 1861, where she married in 1865, had two sons and died in Whitekirk, East Lothian. 

Andrew's line - His eldest daughter Christina (Kyle) moved with her husband to Stirlingshire. The other two daughters lived in Midlothian.

Robert's line - My x2 great grandfather Robert Buchan born in 1833/34 was 19 when he left Scotland in 1852 for Melbourne, Victoria, Australia. I think he was the first of the Buchan family to emigrate. What were the push and pull factors? Well a pull was certainly the gold rush of the 1850s that made Melbourne the richest city in the world at the time. Was a push factor that his father was remarried with a whole new family, while his mother was presumably long dead?

Another daughter, Christina Buchan (Anderson) born in 1846, emigrated to DC, USA in 1875. She had an illegitimate child in 1870 who died aged only two days old of spina bifida. Did this influence her wish to move? Was she separated emotionally from her family, as she was physically on the 1861 census? She was living with her Ireland grandparents in 1861.

Alexander's line - Andrew Wightman Buchan born in 1845 in Borthwick, but his brother Robert was born in Roxburghshire in 1855. He married Jane Oliver in 1865 and they had all their children in Scotland. The family emigrated to Southwold, Ontario, Canada in 1883. 

In summary, three grandchildren of George and Jean emigrated overseas - Robert to Australia, Christina Buchan (later Anderson) to USA and Andrew Buchan to Canada. Four of the grandchildren moved within Scotland. A whopping 38 grandchildren lived and died in Midlothian.

Generation 3 - George and Jean's great grandchildren

The next generation is a very much bigger one, as many of these 44 children married and built up the Buchan stocks. There are 154 known great grandchildren of George and Jean.
In the graph below, the numbers along the baseline refer to the number of generations  following that of the siblings.

Known descendants August 2024