David Octavius Hill: In Ayrshire Dairy (1822-1870)

"Geneology seems indistinguishable from vanity … "

My mother's maiden name was Wallace. Wallace ain't quite Smith, but it seems an uncommonly common name. People wondered if she was related to THE Wallace, the one depicted in Braveheart. There's plenty of genealogical information on the Wallace Clan, and I can employ the term 'clan' because it's an authentically Scottish surname, as Scottish as Burns or Bruce. The wealth of information brings both ease and complication. The fame has attracted hoards of researchers before me, and they've left the rough equivalent of a muddy trench where a path might otherwise lie. Almost every query quite naturally slipped into that trench. Before I knew it, I was twenty-eight uninterrupted generations back to the true Patriarch of every Wallace since: Elmerus Galeius of Wales around 1100. That such a quintessentially Scot hailed from Wales carries no wee dram of irony. I suspect such contradictions underlie some of what the world recognizes as the Scottish attitude.

I feel suspicious of my own research. If I could spend a few weeks in the Scottish National Library or, heaven forbid, The British one, I would doubtless find better documentation. Still, when a hundred thousand other seekers already trudged out such an obvious trench, I should not complain if I'm handed what I'll insist upon calling TheWallaceProblem. In most research, whatever's most apparent tends to be the most worthy of distrust. It's like science. If it's not counterintuitive, it should be considered questionable. Still, the evidence seems clear right back to around fifteen-thirty, when Sir Knight John Wallace ruled Craigie in Riccarton in Ayeshire. Peerage records carried me all the way back to the original. This means that THE Wallace, William, was a nephew of my 21st Great-grandfather, Malcolm. His son John was reportedly drawn and quartered in the Tower of London for some indiscretion in 1307, right around the time when nephew The William received a similar punishment. King Edward I was damned insistent that the English king should hold ultimate dominion over Scotland. Most Scots disagreed, though they eventually conceded and at least pretended to accede.

The Wallace Clan was in the middle of every damned uprising and turmoil in Modern Scottish History. By modern, I mean, of course, everything since the Romans started constructing Hadrian's Wall to contain those madmen from the north. It seems there was always something riling somebody. Between 1117 and 1588, our Wallaces continually inhabited Castle Craigie in Ayrshire, named the first through the seventeenth laird of Riccarton in unbroken succession. In the mid-seventeenth century, the situation finally turned terminally dicey when the English Civil War pitted Cromwell's Roundheads against the monarchy. Our Wallaces of that era, Archibald and Hugh, were well-known supporters of Charles I and the Church of England. Cromwell, more Calvinist and Presbyterian, beheaded the king and even managed to rule for a few years before Charles's son, popularly referred to as II, retook a much-diminished throne, and England inherited a Parliament. Our Wallaces used that transition to slip away from Scotland to resettle into County Langford, Ireland, probably as a part of what's known as the Plantation of Ulster, where Protestant Scots were resettled in Ireland.

Our Wallaces remained in Ireland until around 1800, when they showed up in good old St Georges Parish in Northern Maryland, the same Parrish plantation our Edward Teague had shown up in more than a hundred years before. I suspect our Wallaces had indentured themselves for passage. They didn't stay in Maryland for long. The next generation turned up further west, in Ohio County, Kentucky. Finally, somewhere around 1840, Our Wallaces arrived in Marion County, Iowa, just as my 4th great-grandmother Sara Jackson came of age. The Wallaces presented their then-current crown of creation, Evan, and sufficient sparks flew to move one step closer to creating the conditions necessary for me to appear.

Each marriage brings together unimaginably long tails, for every person drags just about the same number of generations behind them. Those of us with TheWallaceProblem just have more explicit baggage to carry on. There's no way there's ever enough space in any overhead compartment provided. TheWallaceProblem might be the exception that proves something, though the upcoming generation will fuse the over-long Wallace/Jackson spokes to one almost equally voluminous, the Van Schoiacks. The dimensions of these problems far exceed the merely unmanageable. Elmerus Galeius of Wales, the father of all Wallaces, lived 28 generations ago. How many 28th great-grandfathers do I possess? Two to the twenty-eighth power. That's an unimaginably immense number. And I genuinely feel as though old Elmerus significantly influences who I've become? He's exerting considerably less than one over two to the twenty-eighth power. That's an unimaginably infinitesimal influence, for sure. Genealogy seems indistinguishable from vanity, thanks in no small part to TheWallaceProblem.

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