It was a daft thing to do I suppose.  Even a wee bit careless you might say, but it happened, nevertheless.   

You know how it is.  When you're young and have your relatives all around, you've no particular interest in who went before them. You live in the present and it never occurs to you to ask all those questions you should have until it's too late. 

It's only later in life when they've all gone and members of your own generation begin to "topple off the perch" that you realise your own mortality and start looking back to your roots.  That's when I realised I had, indeed lost my Grandfather and for that matter my Grandmother too!

You see, my Grandfather on my father's side died in the 1923 long before I was born.  My Dad died in 1943 during the year I was born and the two remaining members

of the McLaren side of the family, an aunt and uncle, died in the late 1950s early 1960s.

I'd always known they were a fairly prominent family in the village, with a sawmill business, employing joiners and other men in a sawmill and the woods in the surrounding area.   

Their base was the house known as Viewfield up the Manse Brae.  As the business prospered the house was developed into a 2 storey building with joiners shop, byre and other outhouses together with a sawmill on the east side.  That was burnt down about 1914 but they recovered from that and rebuilt it down at the Station where it remains, under other ownership, to this day. 

A McLaren gravestone in the old churchyard allows me to trace the family back to 1788 without breaking sweat.  What I didn't appreciate until fairly recently was

that the old gravestone didn't contain my Granny and Grandad's names, nor did any of the others in the graveyard. 

So where are they?  As yet I don't know but I will find out in time.  The lair records for the old churchyard have not survived well and don't help.

What did they look like.  I have a photograph of my Grandmother, sent out to Australia about 70 years ago and returned recently but none have survived of Grandad although I did see one when a boy and remember it vaguely.

From here on the detective work started and is continuing.

This photograph  was taken in 1910 at the inauguration of the first piped water supply in the village, paid for by the then minister the Rev. Robert Stevenson DD (shown in the small circle).

From it I knew my granny, Robina Deuchar McLaren (nee Mailer) was third from the left in the small group in the rectangular box.  Surely on an important occasion such as this my Grandad would be there too, but where?   

The mystery looked set to remain a mystery until recently I unearthed an old letter written by Dr Stevenson in the 1940s to the Rev. William Turner in which he identifies the small group on the right of the platform as…….

Mr and Mrs McIntosh (Church organist and wife) - Will McLeod Alec - Jack McLaren -Annie McNeil (over Mrs McIntosh's shoulder

So what does that mean?  Was he naming them from front to back?  Mr and Mrs McIntosh first then the three behind, "Will McLeod Alec - Jack McLaren - Annie McNeil."

So who is Alec? Why does the name appear after Will McLeod and with no hyphen between?  Why 6 names when there are 5 in the group?  No matter, I had already decided that the figure with the bowler hat set at a jaunty angle was similar to that half remembered photograph from years ago.  That was my grandfather John (Jack) McLaren at last.  (I hope!)

But that's not all.  McLaren senior was born in 1860. In the 1881 census return he is shown as a 21 year old joiner living in the family home, Owlet Hall, locally nicknamed Houlet Ha' and now known as Viewfield, up the Manse Brae.

His relationship to the head of the household is one of nephew to uncle but none of the surviving McLaren brothers and sisters is married and his birthplace is shown as England!  Hmm, do I detect a family skeleton in the cupboard here somewhere?
Watch this space for further details.

And here are further details.  A few days after writing the above I tried the Mormon Family History Database on the Internet (www.familysearch.org)  Don't ask me why they should have recorded details of so many non-Mormons in their database, they just do and although it's not perfect or complete it's worth a try.

From that I have determined  that apparently the John McLaren in the pictures above had a father also called John who married an Isabella Hepburn on 18th may 1856 in Stirling and they later had their son, John, christened on 3rd Feb 1861 in Tilton, near Leicester, England.  That's unusual in itself as normally a fertile, married woman in these days produced children continuously for twenty years or so, hence the big families.  So there is no skeleton in the cupboard after all (apart from having a technically English grandfather) but I still need to demonstrate the link through to the tribe of McLarens on the big gravestone in the churchyard. 

Although John is shown as the nephew of one of the brothers thereupon, there is no sign of his father, John, on it.  The Mormon database, however has thrown up an additional child of the family called Alexander so there might yet be a John to be discovered.  There's also an Australian connection somewhere still to be defined.

Anybody beside themselves with excitement over all this yet?  Watch this space for yet more details.

Still with me? Then read on
One piece of information I did glean very quickly, though was my grandfathers date of death.  Armed with that a quick visit to the Registrar in Stirling for an examination of his death certificate revealed that my great-grandfather was in fact Alexander McLaren.  So much for the Mormon database?

So are the mists of time beginning to clear just a little?
Was Alexander the only male child of the original family to marry and move away (perhaps to England for a time and does he not appear on the gravestone because he was the one who erected it in memory of the family?

I remember, many years ago, seeing a large black metal box in my lawyers office with the McLaren name on it.  I was sure that it contained old documents which might now be of interest or of use in my quest for family history.

So I contacted my lawyer who searched the archives and sure enough produced the very old, very dusty box I remambered.  I took it home, dusted it carefully, opened it and there, before my eyes, a treasure-trove of old title deeds, wills, business documents etc.  About 60 of them, most are hand-written in legal language, the earliest one on semi-transluscent vellum partly Scots English, partly Latin and dated 1726.  It'll take years to go through them properly.

There's obviously much more mileage in this one yet.

Left - The dusty box with the 60 or so documents waiting to be examined in detail.

Stop Press - The latest

John More, farmer at the Beild farm stopped me one day and gave me a telephone number to ring to discover something interesting.  It turned out to be a Hugh Ramsay who was researching the history of an old horse drawn cart he had bought for renovation.  The enamel name-plate on it gives the makers' name as John McLaren, Sawmiller, Gargunnock and he reckons it was built about the same time as the above photograph was taken.

We're going to meet soon and I shall take lots of photographs of the cart.  Even better is the fact that Hugh knows of another McLaren cart owned by a collector at South Queensferry!  Is there no end to my good fortune?

And more

April 2001 - Following a meeting with Hugh and inspection of the his cart I followed the trail to the other chap who turned out to be a collector-extraordinaire with about 14 carts including 2 McLarens, all restored to the highest possible standards (8 coats of paint) in a large workshop using nothing but the best materials and techniques.  And this collector knows of others which have been sold in Ayrshire during the past year or two! 
More details to follow when I have time.  (Who am I trying to kid!)