Painted people

Last time we looked at the entry on my side of the tree for Lady Margaret Woodville, whose identity remains shrouded. But she also provides a jumping off place to a new limb of the tree.

Lady Margaret's entry shows she married a John James Watson I, about whom I can find nothing remarkable. His importance lies in his lineage. Now given the problems I've described with Lady Margaret, you'll have to take what follows as speculative in terms of any actual relationship I may have.

John James seems to be the first of the Watsons in England. His forefathers' ties lie in Scotland for many generations. If you track back far enough, you run into ancestors who hail from what is now Bremen, Germany. I'll try to find some information on those ancestors for a future post.

Now, the Watsons aren't just from Scotland. More specifically they are from Aberdeen. I've been unable to discover exactly how important they were to the daily life of the city, so I thought for this week, I'd just relay some of the city's history. Most of this information will come from the Encyclopedia Britannica, as many of the other entries I've looked at seem to draw from this source as well.

The original settlement, referred to as Old Aberdeen was supposedly founded by St. Machar in 580. Machar was a disciple of St. Columba, one of Ireland's patron saints who led missions to establish Christianity in Scotland. 

This time frame coincides with the time of the Picts, who were the primary residents from c. 300 CE to c. 900 CE. Their name came from the Romans, who called them Picti, or painted people. The term is a generic one used by the Romans to distinguish between Roman occupiers and the local populations. They are often represented as wearing elaborate body paint or tattoos, but the accuracy of those depictions is up for debate. How much and what kind of painting the name refers to depends on the source you read.

The Picts claimed to have sailed to Scotland from Scythia, but some modern scholars believe they probably originated from previous local tribes and developed a mythology about their origins to support the legitimacy of their rulers. 

They are also known for elaborate stone carvings scattered about Scotland, including in Aberdeenshire. Much of what we actually know about them comes from the scenes on their stones. 

Their influence began to wane in the late 800s, and Irish sources claim the last Pict king was murdered by family members. At about the same time, the Vikings began raiding in the area and establishing settlements. Subsequent local peoples tended to trace their ancestry to Ireland.

The English almost destroyed Old Aberdeen in the 1300s. The rebuilt city is referred to as New Aberdeen. By the way, the name means "the mouth of the Don," which is a river that flows through the area. The city's location on the coast, along with its two main rivers, the Don and the Dee, helped it become a major center for fishing, shipbuilding and commerce. At one time it was also known for granite mining.

Today it is a center for the North Sea oil industry. 

I need to catalog these posts, which I will work on this week, because I found some names that might be worth exploring, but they sound familiar, so I may have already written about them. 

Image: A Pict stone from digitscotland.com