When We Were Greers, Part XX

Searching for our Scottish Roots
by Glenn N. Holliman

In June 2011, my wife Barb and I ventured to the Lockerbie and Dumfries areas of Scotland searching for the homesites of my Grierson (Greer) family.  As readers of the blog I wrote at the time know, I have been writing about the Greers for some time.  This was a spirited family in North Carolina and a spirited one in Scotland!

In the Lockerbie Cemetery, there stands in the background a monument site to those who died in the Pan Am terriorist bombing of 1989.  In the foreground is a gravestone of a Margaret Grierson.  The family Grierson appeared in the lowlands of Scotland, north of Carlisle, England in the early 1400s according to my reading.

Below is a Maxwell monument (gravestones in the 19th Century Scotland were generally 4 to 5 feet tall for those who could afford them) who was married to a Johnston.  What do these names have to do with the Griersons?  My generation's 10th great grandfather married a Maxwell (my 10th great grandparents) and fought the Johnstone family at the Battle of Dryfe Sands in 1593.  Obviously, by the early 1900s, the Maxwells and Johnstons, earlier clan enemies, were mixing their DNAs.

Today it is difficult to imagine that Scottish extended families fought each other for land and cattle.  So weak was the central government that law and order was maintained by clan leaders and their families.  Near Lockerbie and Dumfries in 1593 at the Battle of Dryfe Sands, the Maxwells, assisted by the Griersons, took on the Johnstons.

Hundreds died in this conflict.  If there be anything good about it, the Maxwells and Griersons grew closer and a Maxwell lassie married a Grierson lad, my 10th great grandparents.  The same couple is also Winston Churchill's 9th great grandparents!

This display is at the Lockerbie Heritage Centre at the Cemetery.