Rainwater and mistwater are trickling down from the mountains into streams such as Allt an t-Seanmhuir and Allt Coire Meannarclach. One of these streams, Allt Lairig Eilde, comes down into a waterfall to your left. This becomes the River Coe, and while you walk alongside it, the river takes in more of the brooks from above, and yet more. As you pass through the long hallway, beneath the peaks, you will see that the water quickens across the meadow known as Achtriachtan.
Here, however, the way winds again, with Sgorr nam Fiannaidh up above you on the right, and green Meall Mor up on the left. Down where you are, a field stretches for a few hundred yards and the river beside you tumbles over rocks. Then, under the cone peak of Sgorr na Cìche, with the hills of Ardgour on the horizon, you come to our loch, which becomes the western sea. The ocean, as you call it.
Light comes and goes all over the glen, because almost every time a cloud passes under the sun, the shadow below moves across the mountains. Soon the flowers and grass are in unbroken sun, until another cloud arrives and a new, long shadow rolls across. Even when the sky is wholly blue, some mists come down to cover the mountaintops, and even when the sky is quite full of the grey, a few mountaintops stay clear. For most of the year, the rain is off and on, as well, all day; it will drizzle for a bit, then clear, then come again and build without yet becoming a downpour, and then break for a time until the next, present drizzling.
In spring and summer, the meadows sit, bright green, and the heather stretches with its pink and purple. The streams swell, now, with new water. But the rocks are up there, as well, mute, as they were last year and the year before, and always. In autumn there is the velvet and the auburn, but along the river and even near the brooks, the bright green has not passed. Only in winter do things become almost uniform, when the snow covers the passes below and the peaks above, and the streams ice up and the trees frost over.
No matter the season, no matter how cold, there is one place to which we return. North, out over the waters of the loch, is Eilean Munde, the Isle of St. Munda, with ocean waves hitting every shore. This isle is where I will be buried. This is where all of my ancestors lie, and all those who have belonged to the clan of Iain Abrach.
But we are not the only ones who bury here. It is not ours alone. To the north of the loch are the Camerons of Callart, and to the southwest are the Stewarts of Ballachulish. The isle has three places where a boat may come ashore, and so there is one rocky beach for each of the three clans: One for the Camerons, one for the Stewarts, one for the MacDonalds. These are called The Ports of the Dead.
I have seen it, when our people gather upon the southern shore of the loch. Her body is carried from her house and brought down into the boat. One man climbs into the boat, and he readies his two oars. The water is cold, always. Our bagpiper begins to play the lament.
There is fog on the water as the piper plays. The isle can hardly be seen. The boat pushes off, and a few more boats follow behind, holding her family and the buriers. There is a hush, and sobs and quiet voices, and the sound of the rowing, with the water passing over the oars, and all around is the piper’s lament. But now the pipes are fading as the isle comes closer. Through the fog, the oarsmen are the first to see the port of the MacDonalds, and know they have found the place.
CHAPTER 9
JUST OFF THE
STATE HIGHWAY
Not long after receiving Mark MacDonald’s email about the DNA results, I was packing for the trip to Lincoln County, Missouri. There, hopefully, I’d uncover my great-great-great-great-grandpa Hiram McDonald’s parents. I’d be a step closer to discovering how my McDonald ancestors came to America, and why, and exactly who they were. The path to Glencoe somehow went through Lincoln County.
I went home to central Illinois, and after a few days, got in the car. Driving southwest toward St. Louis, I saw exit signs for towns I knew: Farmersville, Litchfield, Staunton, Collinsville. Every ten minutes or so, you could look off to the side and see the water tower of a small town, and in between towns were the country roads that run alongside cornfields and soybean fields.
Country roads in Illinois don’t wind their way—they form a grid, organized, marking off parcels of land with precision. I could look out over the fields and see a grove of trees a mile away, or a grain silo or a radio tower. There aren’t many undiscovered corners here. When it’s flat in every direction, all the way to the horizon, the sky looms down at you, so that you’re within it, not under it.
I passed under the signs on I-55 that tell you how to get to the suburbs on the Illinois side of the Mississippi River, and soon I was driving over the river, surprised, as I always am, at how big it is. From there, it was a short drive northwest on Highway 61, and then I was nearing Troy, the Lincoln County seat.
I’d never been to Lincoln County, and it seemed that everyone in my family had left by the early 1900s. What I knew about the place came from Internet research. For me, Lincoln County was all about online summaries of marriage records from the 1830s and 1840s, a few historical accounts of the area, my own imaginings of Hiram and Nancy’s life together.
And since I’d never experienced the places where my ancestors lived, those places were unmoored from the here and now. My Lincoln County wasn’t the county in eastern Missouri with a current population of 47,727, but the setting of a 19th century family tale. Maybe that’s why, as I drove into Troy, everything modern felt alien—the billboards advertising new subdivisions, the Jim Trenary Chevrolet dealership.
Eating lunch at Mustang Sally’s, I went over the plan for the day. The online transcription of Hiram’s gravestone showed that he died in October of 1882, and I’d learned that Lincoln County only recorded deaths in 1883 and 1884, so there wouldn’t be a death certificate revealing his parents. But the county courthouse might have a will or a probate record, or maybe a marriage record, showing that Hiram was Elizabeth’s son.
After going through the records at the county courthouse, I’d head north out of Troy. Just off the state highway, a few miles out of town, was the Bryant Creek Cemetery, where Hiram and Nancy were buried. Elizabeth was buried just down the road, at the Ezekiel Downing Cemetery. The courthouse would probably close around 5:30, so I’d have enough time to see their graves after that.
I finished my grilled ham and cheese sandwich and drove a few blocks to the county courthouse on Main Street, with its columns and red bricks. I was led past the front desk of the Recorder of Deeds office and down a narrow hallway, and then up a staircase that creaked a little as I walked. The room above felt like an attic—short ceiling, old carpet, muffled voices coming from the office downstairs. For a second or two, the sense came over me that I was in somebody else’s house without their permission. I was the only one here.
I’d told myself to look through the wills and probate records first, but I couldn’t resist opening one of these old books that contained the wedding records. All these couples, all these names, rendered by 19th century justices of the peace in their cursive handwriting, ink stains here and there.
I ran my hands over the paper every once in a while as I turned the pages, making my way back, from the 1850s to the 1840s. I took out the oldest book, the one that recorded the earliest weddings in the county, and made my way through 1838, to 1837, to an entry that read: “Be it remembered that on the 7th day of April A.D. 1836 was joined in the holy state of matrimony by the undersigned justice Hiram McDonold and Nancy Buchanan. Signed, Brice W. Hammack.”
I’d never seen a picture of Hiram or Nancy, and I knew almost nothing about them except their names and some dates, so I was hoping at least to see their signatures, a few marks of individuality that the two of them might have left behind. But only the justice of the peace had signed. And none of the witnesses to the wedding were listed.
If I were going to discover who Hiram’s parents were, it would have to be through wills and probate records.
But I went through all the M’s, and there was no Elizabeth McDonald. For some reason, her estate had never gone through probate.
That meant it was on to the wills, in this file cabinet here. These were the originals, organized by date, folded into yellowed envelopes. According to the online transcription of her gravestone, Elizabeth had died in 1853, so I started with the earliest wills, thumbing my way toward the present, and when I came to 1853 without finding any McDonald wills, I felt the first tinges of disappointment. As I went further, it became clear that Elizabeth hadn’t left a will.
It almost seemed like she and Hiram never wanted me to know, like they’d tried to make it impossible for me to discover them. Like they’d covered their tracks.
One thing caught my eye, though—Samuel K. Tilford’s will, filed in 1860. Samuel was the one who appeared to be the father of Liza Ann Tilford, Hiram’s first wife, and grandfather of their daughter Eliza. I opened up the envelope even though I wasn’t his descendant, and had no way of knowing whether he would have minded the intrusion. I scanned over his handwriting, and there it was, a bequest to “my granddaughter Eliza Ann McDonald.” Just as I’d expected, Samuel was Liza Ann’s father, Hiram’s first father-in-law.
Right then, someone called from downstairs: “Just to let you know, we’ll be closing in a few minutes.”
“Thanks, I’m almost done,” I said.
There was still enough time to look for Hiram and Liza Ann’s marriage record, so I went back to the old, leather bound books. The entry was dated February 1, 1833, and said that they’d been married “in the presence of James McDonald, Fielding Lewis and James Stone & others.” Again, there were no signatures, but James McDonald was probably the same James I suspected of being Hiram’s brother.
Still, it was disappointing not to see Elizabeth listed as one of the witnesses. Maybe she was one of the “others.” Maybe she wasn’t even there—I began to wonder whether she was Hiram’s mother after all. If she had been his mother, wouldn’t there be some record that showed it, somewhere up in this attic?
Quickly, and expecting the nice lady downstairs to come up any second now and be a little less nice, I picked up the book that included the indexes to land records. Maybe Elizabeth and Hiram had bought or sold land together, or to one another, which would give at least a little support to the idea that they’d been mother and son. But even though there were several land sales between Elizabeth and Ezekiel McDonald, and a few between her and Darius McDonald, there weren’t any between her and Hiram.
I wanted to stay and read more, hoping some revelation would save the day, but it was time to go. Stepping out of the courthouse, I could feel how the air had cooled in the last few hours, and I could see gray clouds coming in. It felt like I was in a movie whose messages were obvious: Notice how nature mirrors the inner turmoil of the protagonist. Because I knew tracing back Hiram’s ancestry was probably a lost cause at this point. Records just hadn’t been kept, and I shouldn’t have let myself hope that they had been. The link between Hiram and the MacDonalds of Glencoe would have to remain a mystery.
I sat in the car for a minute while looking over my maps. The Ezekiel Downing Cemetery, where Elizabeth was buried, was just a short drive away, but it was on privately owned property, and what if I weren’t welcome, or what if the owner weren’t home? The Bryant Creek Cemetery, where Hiram and Nancy were buried, was about two miles farther down the road. And from what I could tell, it was open to the public, so I’d go there first.
Map in the right hand, steering wheel in the left, I made my way out of town and then spent a minute or two in that stretch where it’s no longer town but not yet country, where billboards and subdivisions run into fields. Soon, though, it was all fields and trees on either side. After a few miles, I turned onto the state highway—a two-lane country road, really, with houses and farmers’ fields and lawns right up against it. If you lived here, and you slowed down the car to turn onto your driveway, there’d probably be no one behind you to mind.
I drove slowly, looking around and glancing at the map to get a sense of where I was. Ahead was supposed to be a house, according to an Internet source, and the Ezekiel Downing Cemetery was in a grove of red cedars behind that house, about 200 yards off of the road. I saw the house, and so I slowed even more, trying to get a glimpse of the cemetery, but it was blocked from view by trees and a barn.
Now the road curved, straightened, and after a minute or two, made a bend. The Bryant Creek Cemetery was supposed to be in a grove of trees right by the road, but after a few moments I started to think I’d missed it. I saw a gravel driveway and pulled off to take another look at my map. Just past the cemetery, there was supposed to be a winding path or mini-road. Maybe this driveway was it.
If so, the cemetery would be about a hundred feet back, somewhere in those trees. I couldn’t see any signs or gravestones from here, though. It was misting, and quiet, and the gray in the sky brought out a bit of the blue in the grass. I got out and started toward where the cemetery might be. Somebody in a car drove by, probably wondering what I was doing trudging along in wet, six inch grass.
Off of the road was an old fence, barbed all the way along the top. I walked along it for a few moments until I saw what looked like a tombstone.
There it was, the cemetery, nearly concealed in the trees, enclosed by its own fence.
But I needed to find a way through this barbed wire fence on the outside. I came across a gate, but it was chained shut with a lock. And that cow over there was kind of glaring at me. Whoever owned this land apparently didn’t want anyone to enter without permission, and I had no way of knowing who the owner was, let alone know how to contact him or her.
Fingering the barbs, I stood for a while, trying to read the inscriptions on stones sitting less than ten yards away. Hiram and Nancy were right there, but I was shut out from seeing them. Logic said I shouldn’t be surprised, but logic wasn’t able to hold back the feeling in me that I was being told I didn’t belong here, that I wasn’t on the guest list.
Walking toward the car, I thought of just going back into Troy and finding a place to have dinner, recognize reality, call it a day. Still, on my way out, I’d check one more time for the Ezekiel Downing Cemetery down the road, where Elizabeth McDonald was buried—perhaps the mother of Hiram, or perhaps not. Nearing the house again, this time from the opposite direction, I slowed the car down to a crawl, and from this angle I could see the cemetery clearly. It was in a circle of trees, enclosed by a fence, out in the middle of a soybean field behind the house, like an island.
I turned into the driveway, parked and looked around: White house, neatly trimmed lawn, a barn that had an official-looking “1816” printed on it. Hopefully, someone was home, and hopefully, that someone wouldn’t think I was crazy.
Here goes.
CHAPTER 10
DÙTHCHAS
Tha fhios agam nach eil cuimhne oirnn aig mòran nach eil a’ fuireach ’nar beanntan ’s ri taobh ar n-aibhnichean.
I know that few of you, beyond our streams and mountains, remember us.
Few of you know how our Gaelic would pause when wolves’ eyes appeared, or how the River Coe glistened as it pushed along, slowly, like shards of glass. Few know the smell of damp plaid with peat smoke. Few of you know how our men looked as we stood behind our chief on the field, while our axes waited and the bagpipes sang the songs of our fathers, until the signal came and our screams landed upon our enemy and we charged.
If you are to know anything of us, you will first want to know of these things, of our ways, our mornings,
because these are what they have always wanted to take away from us.
We have rarely numbered more than five hundred or so, and like our ancestors, most of us live in just a few villages tucked beneath the mountains. There is Achtriachtan under the steep face of Aonach Eagach on one side, and on the other, the looming of the Three Sisters, near the meeting of the waters, with heather all about. Farther down the glen is the village of Achnacon, where the river twists before the Field of the Dogs. Inverrigan, then, lies quietly away from the river, hidden at the beginning of a little forest, along the stream of Allt Fhiodan. Where the glen ends, on the shore of Loch Leven, there are the villages of Invercoe and Carnoch. Both of them, and all of their roofs, can be seen from the burial isle.
Some of the old ways have turned shape, but are still in our memory. They are still here with us. For one, our people never congregated our houses around a manor, or placed them, full of hope, near a market, or scattered them away to fields of wheat. No, our few villages stayed within a full pail’s walk from the river, and our houses were made for shelter, not secluded resting, because there are places in the mountains for that, and even places by the loch, where one can sit and see without hearing another person’s voice for hours.
We built those houses of stone, with no need of mortar, for the walls were so thick that snow and rain could never enter. Neither could they come through the roof, whose curved timbers carried the water down and away from the earth and thatch above. The fire burned all day, escaping through a hole in the roof, and was smothered with ashes each night, as the embers smouldered beneath. The beds were the earthen floor, or bunches of heather with the brush turned upward and the roots turned down against the ground.
Keeping us warm were the same clothes that covered us during the day. Each one, man and woman alike, had a long, linen shirt called the léine croich, which stayed the colour of saffron, even after all the river washings, and it lay under our draping plaid.
Reunion: A Search for Ancestors Page 6