This family tree is presented as an elucidation of a mystery: what was the genealogical connection between the first Lord Strathcona and his stepson, Jamesie? It shows that, by affinity, James Hardisty Smith was grandnephew by marriage of Davina Grant. She was Lord Strathcona’s second cousin. (She was also a first cousin of the Canadian hero, Cuthbert Grant, Warden of the Plains. That, however, has no place on the table, but see Mergers in Messengery, p.22 and note 74.) By consanguinity, this is the connection: Jamesie was a great-great grandson of James Grant, the younger brother of Lord Strathcona’s great grandfather. Lord Strathcona and his stepson were thus third cousins, once removed.
The person of Davina Grant of Kincorth connects the Grant and Macpherson sides of the table. When Davina Macpherson was baptized in 1819, Davina Grant was a witness.
The great Donald Alexander Smith’s title in the peerage, Baron Strathcona and Mount Royal (created in Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee), suggests the Ossianic or Macphersonian theme: for Cona, as the river through Glencoe, is from James Macpherson’s Ossian. Mount Royal is Quebec’s Montreal. I have noted, as the last person on the table, that my great grandfather’s brother, Alexander, left Glasgow for Montreal in 1910.
The Smiths and Macphersons in the table might have even more in common, if Lord Strathcona’s father’s paternal grandfather was indeed the George Smith who (see Beckles Willson, Life of Lord Strathcona and Mount Royal (1915), page 183) ‘was out in the ’45’, and was famous for his strength and courage. He afterwards served with Clive in India.’ One George Smith who fits perfectly that description was from Croftmore, Kincardine. (Knockando also has its Croftmore, which might explain a mistake.) Whatever the truth of that, the photograph shows the back of my Macpherson family’s stone at the door of Kincardine church, right beside the Croftmore Smiths’ tablestone. Niel Cromb, ‘the Stooping Smith’, third son of Muriach, founding father of Clan Macpherson, has long been supposed the ancestor of many a Highland Smith.
To see the Genealogical Table, please click here.
Background
