In August of 2012, I realized a lifelong dream of visiting my ancestral home of Scotland to see for myself where my forefathers had come from and what kind of life they left behind. I was accompanied by my daughter, Alyson, who at the time was 20 years old. It was the summer between her sophomore and junior years of college. Knowing she would spend the next summer serving an internship for school, I thought this trip would be an ideal opportunity to spend some quality time with her before she struck out on her own once she graduated college.

After spending years researching my mother’s father’s side of the family, I learned a great deal about the Scott family. My great-grandfather, William Clapperton Scott, had emigrated to the USA in 1890, but he temporarily left his wife and three children behind in Scotland. They would follow him to America in 1892 and settle in Cleveland, Ohio. As I worked on the Scott family tree, I would always wonder what Scotland was like, what their little town on the northern coast was like, and why they made the difficult decision to leave everything they knew behind, including a rather large Scott family.

Alyson and I would begin our trip in Edinburgh, exploring the cobblestone streets of Old Town for three days. We visited the Edinburgh castle, ate lots of Scottish food and saw the sights this ancient city had to offer. We also attended the Military Tattoo one night which is an annual gathering of drum and bagpipe regiments from around the globe. It was thrilling! I literally choked back tears as I listened to the thunderous sounds of the bagpipes that I imagined my great-grandparents must have loved.

Since our destination was Buckie, a little town on the northeast coast, the only way for us to get there was to rent a car and drive ourselves. But the Scots, “drive on the wrong side of the road.” I learned that you should never use that term but instead to say they drive on the opposite side of the road. Regardless, driving on the other side of the road that I was accustomed to was quite an experience– for both me and Alyson. She was my navigator, and a good one at that. Countless times she’d remind me of which lane I should drive in. We had several close calls with curbs and other cars.

After spending a Saturday night in Aberdeen since it was about the halfway mark between Edinburgh and Buckie, we drove the rest of the way to our destination and made it to Buckie on a Sunday morning in time for mass at St. Peter’s church. This is the same church that my grandparents had been married in in 1883. I sat in the pew during the service and just couldn’t believe I was in Scotland, in the little town my family was from, and in the church that my grandparents had stood in for their nuptials. I was brought to tears.

The really cool thing about the entire experience was that I had made contact with a third cousin before the trip who still lived in Buckie. In fact, he was a very active member of St. Peter’s and was able to arrange to have the mass I attended dedicated to the Scott family. My third cousin’s name was George Gration and he very graciously spent most of the day with Alyson and me. He was a descendent of my great-grandfather’s sister.

While in Scotland, Alyson and I visited several cemeteries, or kirkyards as they are known in Scotland. We did manage to find several graves of ancestors, and drove past the old houses and an old folks home that my ancestors had once lived in. We also took the time to tour the Chivas Regal whiskey distillery in Keith.

After spending six days in Scotland, Alyson and I then travelled to Paris, France. She had persuaded me to add this city to our itinerary because, “If we’re going to go all that way, we might as well go to Paris.”. Alyson can be very persuasive ;-). We had a ball in Paris for another 5 days and saw the sights of that city as well. What a memorable trip with my daughter–one that I shall never forget.