aut pax aut bellum

Woodrow Wilson said of the Scots: "Every line of strength in American history is a line colored with Scottish blood."

Today is Tartan Day, a day of celebration by Americans with Scottish roots. April 6 was chosen because it is the anniversary of the Declaration of Arbroath, the Scottish Declaration of Independence, signed in 1320.

Did you know that almost half of the men who signed America's Declaration of Independence were of Scottish descent? That first governors of nine of the thirteen original colonies were of Scottish descent? That our Declaration of Independence was modeled after that of Scotland? That Laura Ingalls Wilder had Scottish ancestors?

Well, maybe she did, and maybe they weren't in her maternal line. You can't believe the "Martha" books published by HarperCollins about Laura's great-grandmother -- because very, very little research went into the writing of them. Most of the family names, character names, and location names are pure fiction. The important thing to remember is that the family looked to Scotland via Caroline Ingalls' father's line (Henry Newton Quiner, son of William), not their mother's.

The Quiners believed that they were Scottish, but Laura's aunt, Martha Quiner Carpenter, was unsure of the lineage. In a 1925 letter to Laura, she wrote: "I think we will have to give up finding out where our ancestors came from in Scotland for I have not been able to. Uncle James Lake said that the Quiners were Scotch but they left the 'Mc' off of their name. That is all that I could find out."

There are no Quiner or MacQuiner clans or septs, variations in spelling included. There is clan MacQuarrie and clan MacKay, with various septs, but none all that close to "MacQuiner." Everything I've been able to find out about Martha Tucker says that she was born in America, not Scotland, and it's entirely possible that the connection is even farther back than the Quiners thought, and not through Laura's maternal ancestors at all. The name could be a variation of Queen/Queener. The family could have come from Ireland, not Scotland. I'm positive that someday we'll know for sure. William Quiner, born ~1773 in Connecticut, is person to be researching. And while you're at it, it wouldn't hurt to check out James Lake as well.

Btw, I am a member of Clan Gunn. The tartan shown above is mine. I love this website: http://www.weddslist.com/cgi-bin/tartans/pg.pl?source=rb -- here you can generate images of clan tartans, including warp and weft sequence for weaving.
- posted by pioneergirl at 2:01 AM