The Courier & Advertiser (Angus and Dundee)
University pair’s links to Declaration of Arbroath
Strathclyde lecturer and student found to be descendants of letter’s signatories
Descendants of signatories of the 700-year-old Declaration of Arbroath have been discovered at a university.
Relatives included a current student and lecturer at Strathclyde University in Glasgow.
The Declaration of Arbroath, signed on April 6 1320, was written by Scottish barons and addressed to Pope John XXII, proclaiming Scotland’s sovereignty during the First War of Scottish Independence.
Among the descendants is Dr Julie Mcfarlane, director of learning at Strathclyde’s Hunter Centre for Entrepreneurship.
She is descended, through her mother, from Walter Stewart, a signatory who served as the sixth High Steward of Scotland and whose son went on to become King Robert II.
The descendants also include Philip Stead, a postgraduate student at the university, whose ancestor, Alexander Seton, was steward of the King’s household and placed his seal on the declaration.
Dr Mcfarlane knew little about her family history but decided to take a DNA test through genealogy website Ancestry.
It led to her being contacted by a distant relative who had been identified as a descendant of the Stewart clan in Strathclyde University’s previous Bannockburn Family History project.
Dr Mcfarlane’s more recent ancestry also includes a miner who was one of 207 killed in the Blantyre disaster of 1877, the worst mining accident in Scottish history.
Philip found that he is descended from a child of George Seton, the fifth Earl of Winton, a Jacobite supporter who was imprisoned in the Tower of London before escaping to mainland Europe.
The earl, in turn, can be traced back to Alexander Seton.
The work was carried out by genealogy researchers at the university,
“An exciting area of research for genealogists and historians
as part of the Declaration of Arbroath Family History Project.
Findings have been made possible by advancements in the genealogy sequencing and analysis of Y-chromosome data and improved Next Generation Sequencing tests, which allow 40% more coverage than previous tests.
An article about the study, published in History Scotland, states: “The linkage of documented descents such as (these) with genetic data inherited down multiple generations is an exciting area of research for genealogists and historians.”