Scottish Connections...

All it takes are a few chance triangulations of circumstances, blended with a little googlewikiing, and presto I have the makings of a new blog cocktail, or blogtale if you will... Today the main ingredients are Scotland and, well, Scottish things. I'll serve it up in a cup designed by an ancestor of mine, George Heriot, pictured above...

This week I'm at a new housesitting gig... It's a nice home up on Chena Ridge, the residential area west of the University where 3/4 of my academic committee live... aka "Snob Hill" to some. Everyone I know up here however are great folks... it's just their view of The River and The Range is a about a hundred thousand dollars better than mine. Right now, I'm typing while looking out on the increasingly slushy Tanana river and flats beyond. The folks I'm sitting for are a wonderful breed of people, the librarian. He is emeritus at UAF. They have fantastic book collections, with rich holdings in Alaskana, sailing/boatmaking, cookbooks, outdoor Americana, and literary fiction... he is a proud member of the ACLU and the NRA (he does his own handloading), and has a beautiful knife collection adorning an entire wall. The New Yorker, Sierra, Audobon, Wooden Boat, the American Hunter, Gray's Sporting Journal, and 4 or 5 national newspapers can be found on surfaces around the house. The couple has the most organized, densely stocked, well provisioned cupboard, bar, and cheese drawer I have seen. The spice shelf is alphabetized and exhaustive. Foremost among the themes of the house is Scotland. He is a prominent member of the Fairbanks Red Hackle Pipe Band. He has an impressive collection of single malt scotch whiskey: a few bottles, some unopened, were distilled when I was in diapers and bottled when I was in high school.

Something Scottish that caught my eye the other afternoon: a couple paperboard beer coasters on an end table in the entertainment room. Having two of them, I took a photo of obverse and reverse:



Notice anything? Yes, that's my surname, sans redundant lettering. Through a bit of googlewikiing I found that Edinburgh was home to the Heriot brewery from 1837 to, alas, the late 1990's. I'm not sure of the details, but it is no longer extant. Thanks to Goolge books, here is an entry from an 1869 book. I provide a colorful snippet...

The Industries of Scotland Their Rise, Progress, and Present Condition By David Bremner: ""


I know with some certainty that my "rr" "tt" progenitors were over in another hemisphere by this time in the 1830's. But what I'm not sure of is the relationship between the Heriot Brewery and the rather famous Scotsman George Heriot of Edinburgh two centuries prior, whose portrait hung in my grandfather's study during my childhood....

George Heriot was the oldest of ten, descended from the Heriots of Trabroun, a "family of some antiquity in East Lothian." From the 1877 book:

The Scottish Nation By William Anderson, William Holl, William James Linton: "HERIOT [is] a surname derived from a legal term hariot or heriot being under the feudal system a due belonging to a lord at the death of his tenant consisting of his best beast either horse ox or cow ... The name is old in Scotland ....William John and Gilbert Heriot safely conducted Robert the Steward out of the reach of his enemies when eagerly sought after by the English. The lands of Trabrown in East Lothian were granted by the earl of Douglas to John Heriot about 1423 ... Of this family was the celebrated George Heriot..."

George Heriot was, in highly abbreviated bio, was a goldsmith who became jeweler to Queen Anne of Denmark, and then to her husband King James VI in 1601. Apparently he sort of shifted from crafting gold to financing it, and made himself luxuriantly wealthy. This apparently wasn't uncommon. An official request by Queen Anne for a quick loan is interesting on a few levels (from "Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh," 1882 by James Grant)



"GEORDG HERIOTT I ernestlie dissyr youe present to send me twa hundrethe pundis vithe all expidition becaus I man hest me away presentlie ANNA R"

My rough modern translation:

"Geordie, hook me up with 200 Pounds, immediately, I gotta get outta here this weekend."

Isn't it interesting, and I'm no scholar on such things, how seriously loose spelling was back then? I like that she put an extra T in there though.

Heriot moved to London when King James became James I of England, and he died there in 1624. After a couple of wives (sad deaths at young ages), he had sired two sons, but no legitimate children were left in his will upon his death. A tragic death at sea of two brothers is inferred. A couple of young women were to be found in his will, and are presumably "natural heirs" (i.e. illegitimate). In any case, that particular line of the Heriot name ended with "Jingling Geordie" it seems (that moniker is from Sir Walter Scott's George Heriot character made famous in "The Fortunes of Nigel").

So George Heriot's name did not live on in flesh, but it did in stone. A sizable chunk of his change went to establishing an institution in Edinburgh called the "Heriot Hospital" for "faitherless bairns" (Scots for "orphaned children"), which still exists in a pretty prestigious way (http://www.george-heriots.com/HeriotsHome.htm). An old image of this place is found in "Cassell's Old and New Edinburgh." Notice again the loose spellings... "Heriott Orphanotrophium" vs. "Heriot's Hospital" right below.

Cassell's old and new Edinburgh By James Grant: ""


George Heriot's name also lent itself to Heriot-Watt University, also in Edinburgh. Yes, that Watt, as in the unit of power equal to one joule of energy per second. Not that the Scots were contemporaneous... Watt was born in Greenock Scotland a hundred years after Heriot's death. However, the nascent university chose those two for it's name... it's website today says that it was the worlds first "technical institute," and it stands as the 8th oldest University in the UK. It now has 17,000 students and four campuses, three in Scotland, and one in Dubai of all places.

So there's lots more history of George Heriot out there. I'm not really sleuthing anything new here... but this stuff is immensely interesting to to me though because I spent a lot of time gazing at George Heriot as a kid.

The picture in my grandfather's study was a black and white drawing in a gilded frame. I presumed that pretty much there wasn't much to be known more about this person. He wasn't in the WorldBook or any of the other books on my grandfather's shelves. This was in the late 80's, before the internet came to my home... Neither the Turlock nor Modesto libraries had much more info, at least to the extent an amateur historian of single digit age could find. So George Heriot was sort of a minor diety in my childish worldview... someone I was told I was related to in some sort of hazy way, in a sort of divine way in my head... meaning, not really a relationship that that can be figured out concretely, but nevertheless should be taken as granted and thusly revered, the way only things that haven't been figured out are supposed to be revered.

But whence this portrait? This portrait that I'll hang in my Alaskan cabin one of these days? Well... using my extensive art history research training (not), I've concluded that it was based on a painting by Paul van Somer, and copied John Scougall in 1698. The original is now lost. Most of the black and white prints are copies of Scougall's painting copy. The one from my grandfather's study is, I think, a reprint of a Scougall copy, published by John and Charles Esplens in 1743. It's a bit confusing though... the National Portrait Gallery (UK) has 6 portraits (only two of which have images online), which include those by: "John and Charles Esplens, after Paul Van Somer," (huh? I thought Wikipedia said Somer's was lost?), "David Scougall, after D. Lizars' (huh? Who is David, and is he related to John?), "John and Charles Esplens, after David Scougall" (What? Are we going in circles here?), "Robert Cooper, after David Scougall" (OK....) Interestingly, the Wikipedia article says "Scougal had a very extensive practice, which latterly led him into some hasty work, said to be observable in the portrait of George Heriot, which he copied in 1698 from the now lost original by Paul van Somer." If the original is AWOL, that judgment of hastiness must arise not from a failure of likeness, but I suppose in a failure of technique. Hmm... The same entry doesn't bash Scougall's portraits of William III, Queen Mary, or Queen Anne. In fact, Queen Mary's is "by far the best - well drawn, good in colour, and suggestive of the influence of Van Dyke's work."

Here's the painting attributed to Scougall, notice the gold he holds in his hand:



And here is the derivative drawing that is part of the imagery of my childhood:



Here is a portrait of Queen Anne, by Marcus Gheeraerts the Younger, c.1605-10. Meaning that the jewels she wears are perhaps crafted by Heriot...to my knowledge I'm the first to notice this, but it looks like maybe the pearl necklace in the two portraits is the same... not sure... Also... that picture of George Heriot's drinking cup from the beginning of this blog, designed by himself, and it occurs to me, probably crafted by himself.




In any case, a lot can change over the generations. The story of the Herriott's in America is very far removed from the Royal Court... My progenitor, David Herriott, appears came to New Jersey in the late 1680's... probably as an indentured servant to Lord Campbell... The story of the family in America is also colorful, though certainly not as highbrow... Stuff for another story...