Wedderburn book; a history of the Wedderburns in ... - waughfamily.ca

INTRODUCTION.
not have been at one time a family of the name, designed of that ilk, introd.
possessing the lands of Wedderbuin in that county, and altogether independent
of either the Border or the Forfarshire family. It is, of course,
possible that the existence of the name, as a place-name, in the county of
Aberdeen, is due to the migration to that county from Dundee of someone of
the name, just as, in 170S, the Forfarshire property of Easter Powrie was
by royal charter re-named >Vedderburn, and the family there thus became " of
that ilk." In this case the Wedtlerburns gradually spread northwards from
the border to Dundae, and from Dundee to Aberdeen. All that can now be
done here, however, is to give the facts and point out the different possibilities,
between which the discovery of fresh evidence may one day decide.
But whatever the case as regards those of the name in Aberdeen and
its county, there can be no doubt that the family in Dundee
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E^de^e tomuy.
originally from the border. On this point the practical
identity of the arms of John de Wedderburn in co. Berwick
in 1364, and David Wedderburn in co. Forfar, exactly a century later, is
almost conclusive, apart from long tradition to the same effect. But that is
all that can be said. The origin of the Dundee family, like the decline of
that in the county of Berwick, cannot be clearly traced. The one
appears as the other vanishes, indistinctly, as in a dissolving view, and as
soon as we see anything clearly, the space is filled with several contemporary
figures for whom no counnon ancestor can be found. It is all very well
for Douglas, in his Baronage of Scotland, to provide one in the person of
James AVedderburn, merchant burgess of Dundee, in the reign of James III.
( 1460-88 \ and to arrange such persons of the name as he found mentioned
in charters known to him in an imaginary pedigree. I do not know if the
early history of the Wedderburns as given by Douglas, and accepted from
him by almost every subsequent writer until now, is a fair sample
of his methods, but if it is, he is not to be taken as an authority
except where he gives the evidence on which he relies. I do not propose
to go into his errors, and those consequent on them, in detail
Thoerrors here, as I have devoted a chapter of some length to " Previous
"Baroifale." Histories of the Family" in the body of the work (part v.,
chap. iv.j. It is enough to state in this place that Douglas'
account of the early history of the family is altogether wrong, and though
his errors lessen in number as he reaches his own time, when his work
becomes of considerable use, his statements are never to be readily accepted
as either accurate or complete. The fact is that thej' are based on what must
have been of necessity a cursory view of only a part of the available evidence.
Nor could it be otherwise. A thoroui,'h exandnation of all the evidence was
impossible to a writer dealing with the histories of numerous fannlies ; much
had, of course, to be left unexamined, and much accepted in regard to each
family from some members of it, as to whose sources of information or
critical faculty the compiler of the Baronage could make no inquiry.
The earliest reference to the name in the neighbourhood of Dundee is
the record of one, John Wedderburn, taking his degree at S. Andrew's in
1434, not long after when—between 1450 and 1.5UU—we find flourishing
in Dundee at least four different families of the name, all of them, no
doubt, closely connected, but for whom no common ancestor
Pour early can be found. James Wedderburn, the father of the Guae
D^del^"" and Godlie Ballatis triumvirate; Walter Wedderburn in
Welgait, from whom sprung the family designed of Pittormie
; David, progenitor of the Craigie branch ;
and Robert, ancestor
of the fannlies of Kingennie, Blackness, and Gosford, were all contemporaries,
and of this time. Of them, the earliest to be named is David, whom we
find mentioned in 1464, and who cannot have been born later than 1440,