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The Brunning Family

Genealogical Information

This element comes from my maternal grandmother who was born and raised in Montrose where the family farmed, fished and dealt in coal.  Other associated family names  are Bain, Stuart, Millar, Rickart and Smart, all from the Angus, Kincardine area of North East Scotland.

The scenery of the area is quite stunning, going from mountains, through rolling  hills and plains down to the sea, why would anyone want to leave here?  My grandmother ended up marrying an Englishman from Liverpool, one Edward Arthur PARTON originally from Shropshire: we don’t know how a young girl from NE Scotland met this Liverpudlian, but there is no evidence that he went up to Scotland to work and he was not a sailor.

One of her brothers was the master of a boat plying from Liverpool; he was a single man at the time and it is possible that this took my grandmother to Liverpool where she met and married Edward Parton.  His first wife, who died a couple of years after the first child was born, was Irish, but as she is not a blood relation to me, I don’t claim to have any Irish ancestry.  Edward was left with a two year old girl to look after - could my grandmother have gone to be a nanny to this child? However, she ended up marrying him even though there was an 11 year age gap between them.

I have no recollection of my grandmother going back to Scotland at all, or of hearing of her Scottish family, even though she never lost her accent right up to her death at the age of 94.

One of her daughters married a Scotsman, but I have no real knowledge of his origins or family: perhaps this was a meeting as a result of family holidays in Scotland, or just coincidence that he was Scottish.

The Scottish Connection