The Honourable Coutts Marjoribanks and his brother, the Honourable Archibald, were the younger sons of Dudley Marjoribanks, the First Baron Tweedmouth, and like most younger sons of the Victorian era, were a trial to themselves and their family.
Edward, known as Teddy, the eldest son and his father’s heir, inherited the title and the property, married the Duke of Marlborough’s daughter (Winston Churchill’s aunt) and had a distinguished political career, serving finally as First Lord of the Admiralty.(See The Marjoribanks Journal No. 4)
The elder daughter, the beautiful and fashionable Mary Georgina, known as Polly, married the Viscount Ridley. The younger daughter, Ishbel Maria, married the Earl of Aberdeen and became herself a powerful force in the affairs of the Empire.(See The Marjoriban~ Journal No. 5,)
But what was to be done with the little brothers? Coutts and Archie had no titles to facilitate an advantageous  marriage, no call to the Church, not much enthusiasm for a career in the Army or Navy, and no head for business.
Their father, like many fathers in that time, solved the problem by dispatching them to the colonies or, in this case, America. Lord Tweedmouth who raised Aberdeen Polled Angus cattle on his model farm at Guisachan, his estate in Inverness-shire, bought the 200,000-acre Rocking Chair Ranch at North Elm Creek in Texas and set it up as a private company. Archie went out to be the assistant manager. He got no pay from the company but Lord Tweedmouth gave him an annual remittance of £400.
For Coutts, Lord Tweedmouth bought the much smaller, 960-acre Horse-Shoe Ranch near Towner, North Dakota for £3,040. Coutts ran 500 head of cattle there, with the help of a foreman and a similar annual subsidy of £400.
Lord and Lady Aberdeen visited them both in the summer of 1887. They travelled for thirty hours by train from Kansas City to the end of the track and, after spending the night sleeping on the floor of a wagon, mounted a buckboard for another three days’ travel, stopping overnight in the cabins of hospitable ranchers.
They found Archie living in a one-bedroom frame house which he shared with Mr. Drew, the manager. The Aberdeens took over the bedroom and Archie and Mr. Drew slept on the verandah.(It seems that Coutts was also visited in 1887 by Rev. Thomas Stirling Marjoribanks, a younger son of Rev. Thomas Marjoribanks of that Ilk who died itt 1868. In an account of his travels in North America, published in a local newspaper, he tells of meeting in North Dakota a group of Scots which included “a namesake of my own, Mr. Marjoribanks.”)  Shortly after their visit, at Archie’s suggestion, the nearest small town to the ranch was renamed Aberdeen. From the Rocking Chair Ranch they travelled 1,500 miles north to visit Coutts at the Horse-Shoe Ranch in North Dakota. Coutts and his neighbour E.H. Thursby, the banished son of an English baronet, had formed the Mouse River Protective Association to look after the interests of the local cattlemen and the organization was still flourishing in the 1950s.They were the first to introduce pure-bred stock into the district. Unlike many British remittance men who were regarded with ridicule and contempt by by the real cowhands, Courts seems to have won their admiration and respect.
Coutts and Archie tried hard but they were untutored, not only in American cattle-raising practices but in rudimentary business management. They were generous and hospitable and extremely popular in the local saloons on the day their remittance cheques arrived but, within a couple of years, both ranches were losing money and were up for sale.
In 1890, during a visit to Canada,( See “Through Canada with a Kodak,” The Marjoribanks Letter No. 10, September 1995)  Lord and Lady Aberdeen took over from Lord Tweedmouth the task of settling Coutts in a gainful occupation. He rode up from North Dakota to meet their train in Winnipeg and there was a joyful reunion. When they reached Vancouver, Lord Aberdeen bought a 480-acre ranch in British Columbia’s Okanagan Valley which they named Guisachan, after Ishbel’s father’s highland estate, and which was primarily intended to provide a job for Coutts.
The scheme was that Lord Aberdeen would buy the property and Coutts would be engaged as the manager at salary of £300 a year. However, he would draw no salary for the first two years and, at the end of that time, would be deemed to have invested the £600 and would become a partner with Lord Aberdeen and would share the profits. The Aberdeens had a house built on the property in the style of an Indian colonial bungalow. There were about seventy head of cattle, some horses, pigs, chickens, a vegetable garden, a few acres sown to wheat and one thriving apple tree.
Having installed Coutts in his new domain, the Aberdeens went home and returned the following year. They travelled from Vancouver to the town of Vernon on the first passenger train to run over the newly-laid rails. In Vernon they were met by Coutts who, because of the primitive telephone and telegraph services, had been waiting there for a week. After officially opening the district Agricultural Exhibition and buying a prize-winning team of horses, the Aberdeens, accompanied by Coutts and two servants, boarded a small boat for a four-hour moonlight voyage down Okanagan Lake to Okanagan Mission, the site of the present town of Kelowna, from where they walked two miles to Guisachan.
The business plan was to plant 200 acres in apples, pears, plums, cherries, strawberries, raspberries and blackberries. They would then build a jam factory whose output, Lady Aberdeen believed, would rival that of the famous British firm Crosse & Blackwell. A “remarkably fine building” was erected in Vernon for the purpose but never produced a jar of jam. Instead, It was the site of a memorable party held by the Aberdeens for the local population of Vernon.
The society reporter of the Vernon  News was overwhelmed:
“… never before in the history of the city has such a large and brilliant company been brought together as that which thronged the jam factory last night in response to the invitation of Lord and Lady Aberdeen.”
The apple trees they had planted expired in Guisachan’s wet and alkali soil and the orchard was given over to the raising of a herd of forty pigs which were fed the wheat that couldn’t be sold at a profit. Their 800 cattle couldn’t earn the price of the hay they ate during the winter.
Lady Aberdeen wrote wistfully in her diary: “It would be nice to see poor old Coutts a rich man after all!”
In their unquenchable optimism, however, the Aberdeens expanded their holdings in the Okanagan by purchasing, for £50,000, the 13,000-acre Coldstream Ranch near Vernon from Hon. Forbes George Vernon, the British Columbia Minister of Mines and Works, after whom the town was named. The deal included about 2,000 cattle, seventy horses, pigs. farm implements, the crops in the fields, furniture and everything movable.
From the beginning, things did not go well at Coldstream. There were protracted arguments about the terms of sale and Lord Aberdeen’s solicitors were convinced that he had paid far too much for it. There was a dispute about how many cattle were actually on the ranch, and Lord Aberdeen’s agent was accused of accepting commissions from both the buyer and the seller.
The troubles continued. Lord Aberdeen’s solicitor observed that “the cattle were not well managed and their sale was injudiciously missed and a great many died owing no doubt to Mr. [Coutts] Marjoribanks and Mr. [Eustace] Smith [the Coldstream manager] being new in the country and having no one to advise them.”
After getting a lot of conflicting opinions from advisers in both Canada and Scotland, the Aberdeens decided to commit the Coldstream property to the growing of fruit and hops. Then they discovered that there was not enough water on the ranch to irrigate the crops. The cost of erecting kilns to dry the hops turned out to be prohibitive. Returns from the sale of fruits were discouraging and the ranch became an intolerable drain on the Aberdeen finances.
Poor old Coutts did his best and won the grudging respect of the people of the district. He was a colourful character even in that unconventional environment and his reputation survives. Some of his public appearances are recorded in a book by Mark Zuelke: “Scoundrels, Dreamers & Second Sons. British Remittance Men in the Canadian West.”(Whitecap Books, Vancouver/Toronto, 1994) . Coutts was a remittance man, and a second son, possibly a dreamer, perhaps a wastrel, but he never was a scoundrel.
Coutts was a familiar sight in Vernon, mounted on the big black horse he called Cap, which he was known to ride up onto the verandah of the Kalamalka Hotel.
He was haunted by the halo of virtue that surrounded his sister Ishbel, Lady Aberdeen. He was herding cattle onto a train one day, urging them forward, as was the custom of the country, with loud obscenities. On being reproached by the Presbyterian minister, he replied, “Hell, man! I’m not teaching Sunday school, I’m loading cattier’ Then, turning to a friend, he explained, “You know, my sister has so much godliness that there wasn’t enough to go round the rest of the family.” When he heard that Ishbel was coming to visit, he was afraid that she might take exception to some of the pictures decorating his house. He persuaded a local artist to come and look at them so that, if Ishbei raised any objections, he could tell her, that he had consulted “that artist fellow and he said they were all right.”
They weeded out any that could possibly be construed as displaying an unwarranted amount of flesh.
“You know,” Coutts said, “my sister has such infernally straight-laced ideas about modesty that she thinks all the figures in life subjects should be dressed from the ankles right up to the neck.”
Coutts eventually settled down and became a respectable citizen, one whom even his high-principled sister must have admired. In 1895 he married Agnes Margret, the daughter of Col. Kinloch of Gourdie and widow of Commander Jasper E.T. Nichols R.N. They had a daughter Ishbel Agnes who married Allen Villier Surtees of Okanagan Mission. A son died in infancy.(Ursula Surtees, director of a museum in Kelowna which has extensive records of the Aberdeens’ life itt ttle Okanagan, married John, the son of lshbel attd Allen Surtees. Ursula spoke to the 1994 Marjoribanks Gathering in Ottawa)
The Okanagan properties, far from being a source of wealth for Courts, became just a pleasant holiday retreat for the Aberdeens. Coldstream was sold in 1920 to Lord Woolavington and G uisachan, in 1903, to a dairy farmer named Paddy Cameron who sold it to developers. The Kelowna Heritage Committee helped to negotiate an arrangement with the developers and the City of Kelowna to ensure that the restored house and a about two and a half acres would be designated Guisachan Heritage Park and it was officially opened in 1990 by Alistair Gordon, the Sixth Marquess of Aberdeen, the grandson of Ishbel, Lady Aberdeen.
Coutts died 31 October 1924 at the age of 64 and the Vernon News took due note of his passing:
“His death will be particularly regretted by those of the older folk who were acquainted with him, and who speak in the very highest terms of his fine spirit of good-fellowship and his high sense of honour.”
Lord Aberdeen was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1893 by his friend and patron Prime Minister Gladstone. He and Ishbel, however, had to turn their attention from affairs of state to rescue Archie. The Rocking Chair Ranch in Texas had failed and Archie was out of a job and in poor health. Lord Aberdeen’s solution was to give him a temporary appointment as an extra aide-de-camp on his staff. Archie’s salary was paid out of Lord Aberdeen’s pocket. Much to Lady Aberdeen’s dismay, Archie became engaged to be married to Myssie Brown, of Nashville,Tennessee, the daughter of Judge Trimhie Brown. Ishbel did not approve of the ladies of Nashville society whom she found frivolous and empty-headed. compared with the sober-minded Scotswomen. Nevertheless, Archie and Myssie were married in high style, and, after a honeymoon in California they went to England to live at Bath, near Lady Tweedmouth, Archie’s widowed mother. On his return to Britain, Archie was distinguished by an appointment to the Royal Company of Archers, the Queen’s Body Guard for Scotland. He and Myssie had had two children, Edward and Isobel.
Archie died at Bath in 1900 after a long illness and five years later Myssie married Archie’s cousin(Dudley Coutts Marjoribanks, the First Baron Tweedmouth, married Isabel Hogg, daughter of Sir Janles Weir Hogg, Douglas’s grandfather) , Douglas Hogg, then a junior barrister, who later became the First Viscount Hailsham and Lord Chancellor of England.

Elizabeth Trimble Brown – Archie’s Southern Bride

      The wedding of Elizabeth Brown, the wealthy daughter of a politically conspicuous Nashville family, and Hon. Archibald Marjoribanks, son of a Scottish baron, was a spectacular occasion.. One journalist wrote of it, “In international importance, the event has scarcely been equalled in the history of Tennessee.” Thirty extra policemen were assigned to hold back the curious crowds
Lord Aberdeen, Governor General of Canada, and his wife Ishbel, Archie’s sister, travelled from Montreal for the ceremony in a private train. The bride, a vivacious, grey-eyed beauty, carried herself with stately grace, wearing diamonds and aquamarines, a gift of the Aberdeens. Archie stood straight and tall in the kilted uniform of a highland regiment. When the bride entered the reception hall a military band struck up “God Save the Queen” and then, in tribute to her Southern ancestry, “Dixie!”   Elizabeth Trimble Brown, throughout her life, was known in Nashville as “Myssie,” a name fondly bestowed upon her as a child by her black nurse. (The unique spelling may have been her own invention or a fancy of her mother’s)  Her father, Judge Trimble Brown, died of a stroke at the age of thirty-six in the midst of a campaign for election as the Tennessee attorney general. Myssie then went to live with her grandfather, Neil S. Brown who, at thirty-seven, was the youngest man ever to be elected Governor of Tennessee and, from 1850 to 1853, the first United States ambassador to Russia. He was descended from Scots-Irish stock, North Carolina farmers who moved to Tennessee in the early part of the 19th century. His grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War.
Growing up in her grandfather’s house Myssie acquired an interest in politics that lasted throughout her life. Despite Lady Aberdeen’s disparaging notions about Southern women, Myssie was extremely intelligent and articulate. After Archie’s death and while living with Lady Tweedmouth at Bath, she was enlisted in the Liberal cause and, like Lady Aberdeen herself, was widely admired as an eloquent speaker on political issues. After her marriage to Douglas Hogg, her lively interest in politics continued but she now embraced the Conservatives, whether out of conviction or in loyalty to her new husband.
She suffered a stroke in 1923 and much to the distress of her family, this vivacious, light-hearted woman became bad-tempered, irritable and severely critical. She recovered her sweet and lively nature for a few weeks in the Spring of 1925 and died in May of the same year.
She was buried among the hundreds of graves in London’s St. Marylebone Cemetery. As he stood over the open grave, Douglas, Lord Hailsham, who had never been heard to refer to his wife by her nickname, said, “Poor Myssie, she always hated crowds.”

Edward was born 14 February 1900, just eight months before Archie’s death. Myssie’s second marriage produced two more sons, Quintin, born in 1907 and Nell (Named for his American great-grandfather Governor Neil S. Brown of Tennessee) , in 1910, and the four children were raised together, sharing the nursery in Douglas Hogg’s London house. They were waited on by eight live-in servants: a butler, cook, kitchen maid, nanny, nurserymaid, two housemaids and a lady’s maid. Edward and Elizabeth Marjoribanks received their elementary education from a governess in their own schoolroom. The children’s activities were strictly regulated: lessons, playtime, exercise, meals and, at certain stated intervals, they were tidied up and presented for inspection and interrogation by their parents and their parents’ guests in the drawing room. The routine was punctuated by visits to the seaside at week-ends and a for a few days in the Easter holidays. During the  summer vacation they would tour the more congenial capitals of Europe.
Edward, tall, slim, poised and elegant even as a boy, was worshipped by his step-brother Quintin, eight years his junior. Quintin modelled himself and his career on Edward’s, following in his steps to Eton, Oxford, the Bar and to the House of Commons. Edward’s political career was cut short but Quintin, after succeeding his father as Viscount Hailsham, went on, like his father, to be Lord Chancellor of England. Nell later served in the Foreign Office and, by chance, was the official who escorted the Duke of Windsor out of England to France, following his abdication of the throne.
Like other boys of his class, Edward followed a well-marked educational path. At the age of eight, he was separated from his parents and sent off to Sunningdale, one of the private preparatory boarding schools which imparted to children barely out of the nursery a solid grounding in the Greek and Latin classics and whose Spartan rigour was designed to imbue the ruling class with the moral strength required for a life of public service.
He won a scholarship to Eton where, in addition to Greek and Latin, he was exposed to British history, the Bible, mathematics, physics, chemistry and French. (German and Russian were optional.) He served as Captain of the School and was a member of the exclusive Eton Society, known as Pop, whose members formed the student aristocracy. He distinguished himself in Eton’s demanding curriculum, and won a scholarship to Christ Church, Oxford.
Edward had an impressive intellect but he did not by any means coast through his university career. Quintin remembers seeing him in the summer at the family’s country house in Sussex studying all day long in the garden and then making furious notes in his bedroom long into the night. He took a first-class degree in both “Honour Mods” and “Greats,” the two sets of examinations leading to the Bachelor of Arts degree. Among his distinctions, he was elected president of the Oxford Union, the world-famous debating society and mock parliament.
After graduation from Oxford and admission to the bar, Edward was elected to Parliament in 1929 for the constituency of Eastbourne, not in the Marjoribanks tradition as a Liberal but, perhaps under the influence of his step-father, as a Conservative. He was a useful member, formed valuable friendships–with Winston Churchill, among others — and would likely have become a member of Cabinet, except for his untimely death.
His reputation survives, not so much as a lawyer or a politician, but as the author of legal biographies. His most notable subject was his good friend Sir Edward Marshall Hall, an eloquent defender and the victor of many famous criminal trials.(For the Defence. The Life of Sir Edward Marshall Hall. The MacMillan Company, 1930)  It was said that, although Marshall Hall’s career was impressive, his legendary reputation owed more to Edward’s talent as a biographer.The book is dedicated to his uncle, Myssie’s brother, Major-General Lytle Brown D.S.M., C.B., Chief of Engineers, U.S. Army.
He also wrote a biography of Lord Carson, the famous lawyer and Irish statesman who defended the Marquess of Queensbury against a charge of libel brought by Oscar Wilde.(Carson The Advocate. The MacMillan Cornpatty, 1932)
Edward’s handsome appearance, his natural charm and grace, and his ready wit allowed him to move easily in London “s most fashionable society. He had a romantic nature and was readily susceptible to the attractions of of the many pretty girls who sought his company.
As a reward for winning his scholarship to Oxford, Quintin’s father had promised him a  Mediterranean cruise on which he embarked in 1926. As he was settling into his cabin at Southampton he was astonished to see Edward appear at the door. As it turned out, Edward was in hot pursuit of another passenger, Pamela Beckett, with whom he was having a tempestuous on-again-off-again courtship. Pamela was travelling with Patricia Herbert and Patricia’s father, a Yorkshire banker. Edward and Quintin were frequent guests at their table for dinner and Edward’s romance seemed to be progressing until they got to Athens when there was a quarrel, Pamela renounced him, and Edward left the ship in a fit of anger, half way through the cruise.
In the years that followed Edward was romantically involved with a number of other clever and attractive women and, in 1932, he fell desperately in love with the beautiful daughter of the president of his constituency association. She was overwhelmed by Edward’s charm and his growing reputation as an author, lawyer and a future statesman. They became engaged to be married. As time went on, however, his high spirits, his romantic ardour, and his imposing intellect were more than her bourgeois nature could cope with and she called the marriage off. Edward, who had scarcely recovered from Pamela’s rejection, was desolated and became ill. Quintin suggested that he stay with his mother and his step-father at the summer house in Sussex to recover. One afternoon, while he was alone in the house, he took a shotgun from the gun cabinet and killed himself.

Pentland, Marjorie: A Bonnie Fechter, the Life of Ishbel Marjoribanks, Marchioness of Aberdeen. B.T. Batsford Ltd., London, 1952
French, Doris: Ishbel and the Empire. A Biography of Lady Aberdeen. Dundurn Press Limited, Toronto, 1988.
Aberdeen, Lady ishbel: Through Canada with a Kodak, White & Co., Edinburgh, 1893. Reprinted 1994, The University of Toronto Press.
Middleton, R.M.: (ed.) The Journal of Lady Aberdeen. The Okanagan Valley in the Nineties. Morriss Publishing Ltd, Victoria B.C., Canada, 1986.

Lord Hailsham: A Sparrow’s Flight. Memoirs. Collins, London, 1990
Lewis, Geoffrey: Lord Hailsham. Jonathan Cape, London, 1997
Zuehlke, Mark: Scoundrels, Dreamers & Second Sons. British Remittance Men in the Canadian West. Whitecap Books Ltd., Vancouver/Toronto, 1994.
Rev. T.S. Marjoriebanks (sic) Gravel Sketches: Notes From America1887. Reprinted in The East Lothian Courier, 5, 12,19 January, 1996.

People who collect and record names, dates and anecdotes about their family and put them in a safe place for the benefit of their posterity perform an invaluable service. Boling Feltz Marchbanks was one of those people.
He was born in 1839, the great-great-grandson of George Marjoribanks who was captured in the Jacobite uprising of 1715 and transported to Virginia, whom Boling Feltz calls “the Adam of the Marchbanks family in America.”
Boling Feltz’s grandfather, Josiah Marchbanks, dictated an account of the early Marchbanks days to his son Harold D. Marchbanks who wrote it down in his “fine business handwriting.” Boling Feltz added details that he collected from many of his relatives and produced a manuscript of 117 somewhat rambling and incoherent hand-written pages which were typed in 1977 by Ira Don Marchbanks and his wife Reba, of Mandeville, Louisiana. The typescript has been photocopied and passed from hand to hand ever since.
Boling Feltz in his manuscript expresses the hope that his story would “perpetuate the names which are passing out of history and memories of the living descendants of honourable, true and honest ancestors.” He offers the assurance (without educing any evidence) that “our male ancestors were honest and the women all virtuous.”
Grandfather Josiah, unfortunately, didn’t get the beginning of the story quite right. He was led to believe that George Marjoribanks, who later called himself Marchbanks, went to America along with his two sons, George Jr. and William. It’s too bad it didn’t happened that way because Boling Feltz was prepared to make a moving story of it.
“Perhaps,” he writes, “the great-great-grandfather of the writer was a widower and, broken-hearted, he left the mother in the land from which they came, sleeping her long last sleep, and came over to this wild country to seek the solace America offered to him.”
The fact is, of course, that George went to America alone, met Ann Echolis whom he married in 1723, and the two sons — as well as six other children — were all born in America. The two older boys, George Jr. and his brother William, seem to have done some wandering after their father’s death but at an early age they had settled in South Carolina and, soon after, were raising families. George had at least two sons and a daughter but William, as Boling Feltz says, obeying the commandment that God gave to Adam to be faithful and multiply and replenish the earth, was faithful and multiplied and produced fourteen children. He married three times, each time to a woman named or nicknamed Molly.
Josiah was born in 1772 in Tyrone County, North Carolina, to William’s first wife, Molly Smith. While they were still young, Josiah and a brother, also named William., crossed over into Overton County in Tennessee. and occupied farms, about three miles from each other. While still in his twenties, Josiah married Ellen Binum with whom he had two daughters, Mary and Elizabeth. Sadly Ellen died in 1802, leaving Josiah to care for the two girls, both under two years of age. Josiah carried them on horseback back to South Carolina, presumably to leave them in the care of his parents, William and Molly Marchbanks. A year or two later he married Margret Sophronia Cannon, whose grandfather, Simcock Cannon, had emigrated from England to Pickens County, South Carolina.
Josiah and his new wife returned to Tennessee with his two young daughters. They had thirteen more children, twelve sons and a daughter Among their sons was Thomas Calvin Marchbanks, born in 1808, the father of Boling Feltz Marchbanks.
Boling Feltz was born at Sligo, Tennessee, on the Cumberland River, in 1839. Rural people in those days were constantly menaced by the forces of nature and Boling Feltz remembered that, when he was just three years-old, a big flood swept away all the stables and out-houses, leaving only the main dwelling house standing, a large, two-storey log house, anchored by a heavy stone chimney.
His brother Newton, about three weeks old, and his sick mother, were taken through a window onto the roof of a shed and into a ferry boat. in which the family escaped to safety. After this experience, Boling Feltz’s father sold his property and moved his family to a farm in Smith County, near Lancaster “where he would not again be subjected to such destitution by high water.”
Boling Feltz remembered his grandfather Josiah as an “old primitive Baptist, Hardshell.” “For forty-five or forty-six years he continuously toiled and struggled in that new country, felling trees, building cabins to shelter his little brood and their dear, faithful mother. Facing the battle of life in the hot sunshine and the cold blasts of winter, with poor implements to cultivate the soil, with no strong hands to aid him or skilled tutor to advise and instruct him, this little man fought bravely the battle of life … and won a victory. In 1850, grandfather owned 200 acres of land … He built a comfortable home, had a fine apple orchard and many other things to compensate him for his hard struggle.”
It’s not clear why but, in the middle of the 19th century, the Marchbankses living in Tennessee decided to sell up and to begin a new life in Texas. There were two migrations, in 1850 and 1851, both led by matriarchs of the family.
In the spring of 1850 Josiah decided to sell his house and property and move to Ellis County, Texas. Soon after the sale of his land, however, he died and his widow, the former Margret Sophronia Cannon, who was then nearly seventy years of age, took charge of the expedition, to Texas.
She took with her, eight of her sons: William, James Calvin Claiborne, Jonathan, George, Ransom, Alexander, Jasper and Josiah Bailey, all in their late twenties or thirties, Also travelling with her were her daughter Ellenor (Mrs. Thomas W. Fowler), and Ellenor’s children Margret Ann, 14, Sarah Jane 10 and William, 8.
The second exodus was led by Ann Feltz Sullivan, then about sixty-five years of age, Boling-Feltz’s maternal grandmother. Her grandfather, James Sullivan, was an Irish soldier who fought in Washington’s army in the American Revolution. For his services he was awarded a large tract of land on the Cumberland River in Tennessee which became known as Sullivan’s Bend.
Ann’s caravan included, in addition to “several negroes:” Thomas and his wife Pauline Sullivan and their five children, Boling Feltz, aged 11, Newton, 8, Victoria Ann, 5, Alfonso Calvin, 3, and Josephine, a few weeks old; Burton Marchbanks and his bride Mary Emmeline Vance; and P.A. Thomason, who had married Ann’s daughter Amanda, and their young daughter Elizabeth Ann.
Boling Feltz describes the equipage in which Ann and her followers made the journey:
“My grandmother came in an old-fashioned barouche, drawn by a good-sized iron-grey horse driven by Uncle Jim, an old Negro man.” in addition she had one four-horse team driven by “old Uncle Jacob, one of the best men I ever knew, also a Negro.”
The others rode in all-purpose vehicles called “carry-ails,” drawn by a variety of horses, ponies and mules. The overland trip to Ellis County, Texas took thirty days.
“Without any serious accident,” Boling Feltz writes, “we crossed the Trinity River at a little village called Dallas. The great City of Dallas of today was then in embryo.”
On about October 15, they reached a point on Red River Creek, now called Red Oak, where they were reunited with grandmother Margret Sophronia Marchbanks whom they found in a little cabin, with all her children living nearby.
Margret had bought about a thousand acres on the south side of Waxahachie Creek, about three miles from the town of Waxahachie. She sold this property two or three years later and she and the children who had come with her from Tennessee moved to Johnson County where she bought a tract of land near Cleburn. There she built a small brick house in which she lived for several years. Later she sold the house and lived with her children. She died in Jasper’s house in 1874, more than ninety years of age.
Ann Feltz Sullivan, the other migrating matriarch, on arriving in Texas in 1851, bought a 300-acre farm, and died there a year later.
Most of Josiah’s children lived to a good age in Texas, some of them into their seventies. Burton, ( Button’s Confederate uniform is in the Layland Museum in Cieburn, Texas, the gift of his great-grandson, Roy Howell in 1977. There is a photograph of the uniform in the book, “War on the Frontier,” published by Time-Life Books. Another Time-Life publication, “Echoes of Glory: Arms and Equipment of the Confederacy,” shows both Burton and his uniform.)  however, died at thirty-three of wounds suffered during the Civil War. Alexander drowned in the Trinity River before he was forty. Jonathan died at 50. Jasper, who married four times, died a few days short of his fiftieth birthday. Ransome died at 52 after being thrown from a wagon drawn by runaway horses. Josiah Bailey died of blood-poisoning at 74. William moved to Arkansas where he lived to be 75. George, who ran a store in Waxahachie, died of heart failure at 76. Russell, who never married, lived with his brother Thomas and his family on a 100-acre property in Johnson County which they bought for a dollar an acre. Thomas lived to be 76. His wife, Pauline, died of typhoid fever, six months after the birth of their child Augustus Donnelly Marchbanks, in 1859.

Of the next generation, Boling Feltz and his brother Newton Blackstone Marchbanks joined the Parson’s 4th Texas Cavalry in 1861. After the Red River raid of 1864, Newton was sent home to procure clothing for his company but he took ill along the way and died. Boling served until the company was disbanded 23 May 1865 He married twice: first to Mary Hodge of Chatfield, Navarro County, Texas, with whom he had five children; and second, to Lida Hall with whom he had four more. He died at the age of 92.
Among Boling Feitz’s papers are letters he exchanged with Mary Hodge (known to her friends as Mollie) whom he first met at the home of his uncle Harold D. Marchbanks in Waxahachie while he was home on furlough and Mollie was visiting school friends there. Boling and Mollie did their courting by mail throughout the war, employing all the tricks that lovers use to keep the flame of interest alive. Boling could be eloquent.
He writes, 16 August 1864:
“Is it unsoldierly to feel sad at lonely hours? Should the pale moon as she moves so majestically through the starry heavens never remind one of of the happy past — of the many quiet promenades and the gay dances where youth and beauty are one? If so, I fear I shall never be a perfect soldier.
“Near over four months have passed since I have heard from you but I hope you have been, since that time, borne softly and sweetly on the wings of time, that each passing moment has brought to you an increased happiness.”
Just in case Molly should take him too much for granted, however, he adds that he enjoyed himself very well during his recent leave:
“I formed the acquaintance of several very nice and interesting young ladies, also that of very dashing young widow.”
But Boling archly professes no wish to “weary your patience with matters of such little consequence”
Mollie gives in her reply an account of her social comings and goings and is not above inciting a little jealousy herself:
“I forgot to tell you that I caught seven fish yesterday and also I had the finest looking beau in the crowd.” But she adds the warning’ “You have the right, and also my consent, to wait on the young ladies as much as you may please but remember it is not right or just to break hearts and this, I think, is practiced a gooddeal in these war times.”
Five months later, the correspondence continues in the same vein. Molly writes: “I have just returned from a visit to Corsicana. i had a lively time there and formed the acquaintance of half a dozen young men but did not fall in love.”
“Oh!” Molly adds, as if the idea had just occurred to her in passing, “I must tell you something I heard not long ago. It was news to me and surprised me very much. It is that you and Miss Lizzie McDaniel (I believe that is her name) were engaged and would marry the first time you came home. I am very sorry I have never yet had the pleasure of seeing this lady. As I am a good friend of yours, I am anxious to see what kind of young lady you intend marrying.”
In spite of ali this coquetry, Boling and Mollie were married at the end of the war, 18 October 1865. Their five children were Florence, Mary, Boling Ford, Will Henry and Mary Bessie. Mollie died three weeks after giving birth to Mary Bessie, April 3, 1883.
Boling wrote about Mollie:
“She had the qualities that most adorn a self-sacrificing woman. In God she trusted and walked by the side of his Son to the door of His Father’s house and here her star shines upon her old home and those she loved so well who still abide.”
The four children of his second marriage, in 1886 to Lida Baker Hall, were : Jewel, Francis, Jo Van Francis, and Katie.
Jo Van Francis Marchbanks served with the U.S. infantry during World War I. He was wounded and captured in France during the last days of the war, and died a month later in a German prison camp at Metz, Germany, after great mental and physical suffering.
A publication called “Texas and Texans” that appeared in 1914 provides some information about the descendants of Harold D. Marchbanks, Boling Feltz’s uncle, who moved to Texas with his wife, Hixie Strather, and seven children shortly before the first expedition led by Margret Sophronia Cannon.
Their youngest child. Arthur H. Marchbanks was born 18 April 1914 and was reported to be “a farming man and a stock raiser who has prospered in his business activities” and was still living in Ellis County. He married Elizabeth Harlan and they had seven sons and one daughter. Five of their children were still living in 1914: Harold Jr. was a publisher in New York City; Homer D. was in real estate in Mineola, Texas; Nannie, the only daughter, was the widow of Ed. C. Driscoll; Owen Smith Marchbanks was working for the International Correspondence Schools in Dallas; and Edward Horton Marchbanks was in the insurance business in Denison where he was regarded as one of the most “progressive and successful younger businessmen.”
After leaving school, Edward worked for ten years as a “tinner,” then was employed for another eight years as a decorator by a general store, tried farming for a couple of years, before before finding his true calling in insurance.
In 1896 he married Sallie E. Pattie, the daughter of a locomotive engineer and they had three children, Flora, Pattie and Arthur Henry.
According to the author of Edward’s biographical sketch, the Marchbankses, a little more than sixty years after their arrival in Texas, were a dying breed:
“Mr. Marchbanks comes of a family that is not widely represented in this state. His paternal ancestry is Scotch and, beyond his immediate family, there are none of the name in Texas.”
It seems unlikely that all those wagon loads of Marchbankses who trekked to Texas from Tennessee in 1850 and 1851 would disappear without a trace. There are members of the family in El Paso, Houston, San Antonio and in Texas towns called Arlington, Angleton, Victoria, Irving, Katy and McKinney and there’s even one in Waxahachie — although they’re not all descendants of the Tennessee pioneers.
One known surviving descendant of that gallant band, whose family has lived continuously in Texas, is Colt W. Yancey of Fort Worth. His mother, Ida May Marchbanks, was descended from Josiah’s son James Calvin Marchbanks.

R.C.M.

      Unpublished MS. Boling Feltz Marchbanks ca. 1926 Correspondence: Ira D. Marchbanks, Mandeville, Louisiana, U.S.A. Phyllis Vance, Topeka Kansas, U.S.A.

Nothing certain is known about George Marjoribanks before he was captured by the English at Preston in the Jacobite uprising of 1715 and transported the following year to to the town of York in Virginia.
A good deal of research has been conducted in the Public Record Office in London and among old parish registers, sasines (records of property transactions), testaments and other documents held in Edinburgh. He is likely to have been about the same age as his wife, Ann Echolis, who we know was born about 1689, so that his birth fell perhaps in the decade 1680-90. This would give him an age of fifty to sixty at death.
This should make the search for him easier — but not a bit of it. The Scottish Registers for this period are very patchy; only those of Edinburgh are at all comprehensive while others are incomplete or even non-existent. Those of the Marjoribanks homeland of Kirkpatrick-Juxta, for instance, do not start until 1700.
A thorough search of the parish records available confirms that he could not have been born in Edinburgh, like so many of the senior line, or in Perthshire, like Samuel Mandeville Marjoribanks who emigrated to South Carolina late in the 18th century.(See “The Banks Of Perthshire”, The Marjoribanks Journal No.4)
The senior branch of the family held the the barony of Ratho up until 1614 and it is known that at least one Marjoribanks family stayed on there after the lands were surrendered by the second Thomas of Ratho (1550-1620). Thomas had five sons: John, Thomas, James, George and Alexander. A George Marjoribanks, probably the son or grandson of Thomas’s son George, is known to have been active in the area in the 1680s and — by eliminating other possibilities — it seems likely that he was the father of George Marjoribanks (Marchbanks) of Virginia. Unfortunately, the parish registers of the Ratho are are incomplete and no documented evidence can be produced.
Whatever his ancestry, George Marjoribanks arrived in York 14 January 1716 on board the Elizabeth and Ann of Liverpool, Captain Edward Trafford, master. The ship carried 112 (One, Duncan Mackfale, died at sea during the voyage. Another prisoner, James Irquhart, swore that the Master allowed a number of prisoners to escape while the ship was docked at Cork in Ireland) “rebel prisoners” of whom 29 were listed as “indentured,” that is, in return for their passage, they were committed to work for a designated employer for a period of seven years. George Marjoribanks was listed among those who were not indentured.
Before the ship arrived, however, James Starthope, the British Secretary of the Colonies, sent Governor Spottiswoode of Virginia a message saying that, as soon as the prisoners landed, they were to be placed under guard and that those who were not indentured “are not to be set at liberty until they have engaged themselves by indentures in the same way as the others.” (On their arrival at York, some of the prisoners protested to the Governor that they shouM not have been transported and indentured since they had not been convicted of a crime. They said their indentures were intended to provide a sum of money for Sir Thomas Johnston, Member of Parliament for Liverpool, “who pretends a right to us,” and for “some other merchants concerned with him in this matter.”)
So, George Marjoribanks would have been indentured as soon as he arrived in Virginia. The historian, Dr. Jerry Oldshue of the University of Alabama, has said (In a speech to the Marjoribanks Gathering in Charleston, South Carolina, itl 1996)  that his indenture seems to be confirmed by the fact that there is no record of his having owned land of his own for about seven years after his arrival. Dr. Oldshue speculates that he might have been indentured to John Echolls, the father of Ann whom he married in 1763 1723, the year in which his indenture would have ended.
George had four sons and four daughters between 1720 and his death in 1740.

The story of the descent of Samuel Mandeville Marjoribanks and his American progeny does not in fact begin in Perthshire at alt, but many miles to the south west, in the ancestral homelands in Annandale and very likely at our point of origin, Marchbank Farm itself. Samuel was a fairly rare name in seventeenth century Scotland but not uncommon among Marjoribankses; and in 1676 the inventory of Jean, wife of Jon Marchbank in Marchbanktoune names Samuel as her son and another Samuel as “cautioner.” (This word means guarantor for the equitable division of the dead woman’s property) It is not possible to say with any certainty that the ultimate ancestor of our Samuel was either of these, but the dates are perfectly consistent with his having been Jean’s son.
South-west Scotland at this time was a ferment of religious struggle; many of the local inhabitants embraced a fervently “democratic” form of extreme Protestantism which the government was anxious to suppress. In 1679 an ill-armed rabble of “Covenanters,” as the rebels were often called, met a government army at Bothwell Brig, some miles north of Marchbank. The result was never in doubt; the rebels were scattered and ruthlessly hunted down. Samuel Marjoribanks, however, succeeded in making good his escape with his wife and two small sons and fetched up in the parish of Kilmadock in Perthshire, where he died in 1790 1690 at the early age of 38.
Kilmadock, though set in fine countryside (Robert Burns’s lyrical song, “Ye Banks and Braes ‘ o Bonnie Doune” is set in this area), offered little but rather poor farming land as an economic resource and this Samuel duly seems to have become a farm labourer. His elder son David is listed as having occupied a labourer’s cottage in the farm of Boighall in 1694 and presumably his younger brother Thomas shared it with him.
David appears not to have survived long but Thomas married a Janet Roberton (This name is spelled in several different ways and may actually have been Jean Robertson) in about 1698 and after the birth of his eldest son Samuel moved to the slightly more promising neighbouring parish of Kilmadock Kincardine-by-Doune in about 1700. Here his remaining three sons, James, Dugel and John were born in 1701, 1703 and 1705 respectively.
There is no further trace of Dugel and it seems likely that he died in childhood, as so many did in that era. Nor is there any indication of Thomas’s further fortunes. The other three sons, however, seem to have achieved a modest competence, though they do not appear to have owned property. They all married and James had nine children with Margaret Stewart, John had four with Isabel Leckie (he moved a few miles away to Isabel’s home town of Port of Menteith) and Samuel had ten with Mary Wright.
James’s eighth child and Samuel’s tenth were both named John and, to make matters more confusing still, both were born within a few weeks of each other in 1743. This, as “Banks of Perthshire” (See The Marjoribanks Journal No. 4) rightly pointed out, is of some importance to all subsequent descendants of Samuel Mandeville Banks (as he renamed himself in America), since he was the eldest son of John Marjoribanks with Helen Murdoch, whom he married in 1769. However, a careful scrutiny of both the names given to the children and of the (rather few) witnesses named at their baptisms makes it virtually certain that Samuel was the grandson of Samuel, the eldest brother, and not of James, the second.
This John was a man of some consequence in Thornhill (the main village in the parish), being the dyer (and possibly fuller, or cleaner) of the locally produced cloth. His cottage, still known as “the dyester’s house” was still in existence in the early years of this century and a photograph of it still exists. The market for this service would have been purely local, supplying everyday working dress, possibly in plaid design, within a circle of perhaps ten miles or so. in 1785 this livelihood was threatened by the foundation of the Deanston Cotton Works at Kilmadock which was likely to kill the local cloth industry and it may well be that it was in an intelligent and enterprising response to this threat that he left for America. However, the story is also told that he emigrated in response to a specific offer from White’s Mill, presumably from a man who had been his neighbour in Perthshire and knew the quality of his work. The earlier article expressed some doubt about the date of his emigration but his daughter Catherine was baptised in Thornhill on 1 November, 1787, which suggests that he left in 1788.
Meanwhile, his eldest son Samuel had reached the age of 18. It is said that he made his way to London, where he obtained a clerkship with the Bank of England in 1790 and indeed that he was on his way back to resume his post when his bride persuaded him to stay.
One further point of mystery remains: the name Mandeville. Samuel was not baptised with this name. It is a most unlikely name for a working class Scotsman to assume, for it is in origin Norman and aristocratic. Possibly he adopted it as a compliment to a patron or sponsor, perhaps the gentleman who obtained his Bank of England post for him. Possibly, having decided to shorten his name to Samuel M. Banks, he realised that the M. could hardly be proclaimed as standing for Marjorie and chose the most impressive he could think of as a middle name.

*Much of the evidence for the above comes from the Old Parish Registers of Kilmadock and Kincardine-by-Doune and from “Monumental Inscriptions of South Perthshire,” both unimpeachable sources as far as they go. The mention of David as resident in Boighall is taken from a summary of the Hearth Tax return for 1694 included in the latter.
*The evidence for the earliest stages is more speculative. Any identification of the first Samuel with any particular individual in Annandale in the mid 17th century is frankly guesswork; I merely mention one possibility. The evidence connecting this first Samuel with Bothwell Brig and a subsequent flight to Perthshire is interesting. In “Monumental Inscriptions” it is recorded that “The following stone is no longer extant but is recorded by Rev. George Williams (minister in Kincardine around the turn of this century):- Samuel Marjoribanks 14.3.1690 28.” Presumably this records the date of death followed by Samuel’s age. To this he has added the cryptic note, “Marjoribanks, ancestor of – Bothwell Brig 1779.”
Since Bothwell Brig should be correctly dated 1679 we may assume that the good minister was a little cavalier with figures and may have misread the age on the tombstone. An age of only 28 at death will not quite fit, whereas 38 would fit perfectly and could easily be mistaken on a tombstone 200 years old. It may be said that this still does not prove that Samuel came from Annandale, and indeed it does not, but on the other hand where else on earth could he have come from? There had been no previous connection between Marjoribankses and Perthshire whatever and as far as is known there were no other Samuel Marjoribankses on the planet at the time beside those in Annandale. Furthermore, the Low letters, mentioned below, state that the family came from Dumfriesshire and left at the time of the “Covenanters feud.”
*There is no direct proof that the first Thomas was David’s younger brother, but again there seems no other reasonable explanation (and “younger” because it was David who was listed as the tenant in Boighall). There is likewise no certain proof that Samuel (11) was Thomas’s eldest son, for there is an unfortunate gap in the Kilmadock baptismal registers from 1699 to 1701, (and no marriage register) but the names fit excellently with this supposition and, yet again, there is no sensible alternative.
*The evidence for Samuel the emigrant derives mainly from two letters written by Misses Jessie and Jeanie Low, the granddaughters of Samuel’s sister Mary, to Howard A.Banks in 1909; they are supplemented by anecdotes told by Alex R.Banks (which may not form a source completely independent from the Low letters), by his tombstone and by an obituary printed in the local paper shortly after his death (both of which have his age at death wrong). There are also some letters written during Samuel’s lifetime, though they give little evidence of his earlier life. Records of his various property transactions, etc., suggest that he was by no means penniless when he arrived; the figure of £36 is mentioned – a modest but distinctly useful capital sum. The Low letters, where they can be checked, are completely reliable, the remaining sources less so.
*The major problem concerns his supposed clerkship in the Bank of England. There is no reason why he should not have come to London and even found work in a bank. My own great-great-grandfather did just that, and at a very similar time, owing to his brother’s friendship with the bank’s proprietor. And there is a little supporting, though indirect, evidence for it. The obituary tells of the church he worshipped at, without mentioning the Bank: the Scots Kirk at London Wall, minister Rev. Dr. Hunter, all of which checks out. On the other hand, the Bank has no record of his employment and the story seems less likely in view of the fact that in America he remained a farmer all his life and that there is a very vivid account of his having appeared at church on his first Sunday in America in full Scottish dress, a little unlikely for a London bank clerk. There is also on his tombstone a discrepancy as to his date of birth but if he had not kept papers it would be an easy mistake for his heirs to make.
However, the story of the Bank of England post comes from a firm statement in the Low letters which, as stated above, have proved on examination to be thoroughly reliable, even though they are apparently relating oral tradition passed through three generations over more than a century. It is likely, too, that the Bank of England’s records for that period would be rather sketchy and might not including a day to day list of “hiring and firing.” On the whole, then, one should be inclined to believe it unless and until proved otherwise, and simply hope that some miracle will throw up decisive evidence one way or another. Presumably, since he was in America for three years before attempting to return, he gave up the post when he decided that this would be his last good opportunity to go in search of his father. The Lows say that he was worried at not having heard from him, though he may well have been assured that he would be able to return to it. I also incline to believe that, having already stayed for so long, he may have been distinctly receptive to his wife’s wish to stay in America, being more able from his background in a farming community to identify with his new friends’ way of life than the one to which he had been about to commit himself.

*Samuel Marjoribanks, b. Annandale 1652, d. Kilmadock 1690
Generation 2.
*David, farm labourer in Boighall.
*Thomas, m. Janet Roberton c. 1698 in Kilmadock, of whom issue:-
Generation 3.
*Samuel, b.c. 1699, Kilmadock; m. Mary Wright 1726; 10 children (see below).
*James, b. 1701, Kincardine-by-Doune; m. Margaret Stewart 1727; 9 children.
*Dugel, b. 1703, Kincardine. Presumed to have died young.
*John, b. 1705, Kincardine; m. Isabel Leckie in Port of Menteith; 4 children
Generation 4.
*John, 10th child of Samuel above, b. 1743, Kincardine; m. Helen Murdoch, 1769; 8 children. Dyer & fuller in Thornhill. Emigrated 1788. D. before 1794.
Generation 5.
*Samuel, eldest child of John above, b. Thornhill 1770. Emigrated 1794. D. 1851.
*Mary, b. Thornhill 1777, m. Mr. Wallace c. 1800-05, grandmother of Jessie & Jeanie Low.
*3 other sons & 3 other daughters.