One of my dad's cousins has built a very nice family tree (not sure if that link is public or only viewable to those that have received an invitation) history on ancestry.com. I was checking it out, tracing the lineage back as far as it would go. I figured to find 7 or 8 generations, hoping to figure out when and where our ancestors came to America. Instead, it went back more than 25 generations, back to the 1200s.
Guess what i found? 25 generations ago, my great-x-23 grandfather was Robert the Bruce, the first King of Scotland. He's best known in our age from the movie Braveheart, whose final scene is seen here...
His first child was Marjorie Bruce, born 1296. Her story is quite interesting. First, i found another site that traces her lineage back even further, into the 10th century. As a young girl, Marjorie was taken prisoner by the English and kept in a convent until age 17. She soon wed upon her release, and while pregnant with her first child, was thrown from a horse. The injuries would kill her, but not before the child, a son named Robert, was delivered. Robert Stewart became King Robert II of Scotland.
One of Robert's daughters was Johanna (Jean) Stewart. Her 3rd husband was James Sandilands. From there, there are 17 generations of Sandilands, though sometimes the surnames are noted in the records as Sandlin or Sandland. Somewhere in there (the records are spotty), the Sandilands came to America. They passed through Chester county in Pennsylvania, Virginia, Duplin county in North Carolina, York county in South Carolina, and Dekalb county in Tennessee.
Until we get to a Nancy Sandlin, born 1834 in Tennessee. Nancy married a man named Manson Scott, and their second son was Daniel Marion Scott (curiously, he also died after being thrown from a horse). Daniel's second son was Walter Marvin Scott, born 1886. Walter Scott is my great-grandfather, my dad's dad's dad.
We are all sons of Scotland.
