Chapter 10: From Newhall to New England
The longboat had become a sailing ship, and the New World was calling earlier than many realize.
My 8th great-grandfather, John Urquhart of Newhall, was born in 1658 in Kinloss, Moray (Elginshire), Scotland. He was the son of the Covenanter minister James Urquhart and Agnes Brodie. As a young man in his late teens, during the fierce persecution of Presbyterians after the Restoration of the monarchy, John made the courageous decision to seek a new life across the ocean.
By early 1675 he had already arrived in the American colonies and settled in Oyster Bay, Nassau County, New York (on Long Island). His daughter Margaret Urquhart was born there on 8 January 1675. He had married Jean Mackenzie of Redcastle, and together they began building a life in the New World. They also had a son, Col. Alexander Urquhart of Newhall (1680–1727). John lived to the advanced age of 73, passing away on 31 October 1731 in Oyster Bay.
From this brave immigrant the line continued through his daughter Margaret Urquhart (1675–1720), who married into the Wright family. Their daughter Elizabeth Wright (1703–1782) married into the Weeks family. My 9th great-grandfather Jacob Weeks (1736–1791) is DNA-proved in our tree. His son Simon Weeks (1768–1840), Simon’s daughter Maria (Mariah) Weeks (1810–1890), and her son John Galloway Brown (1833–1915) carried the bloodline forward through the birth of the American republic and into the 19th century.
Abraham Lincoln Brown (1864–1948), born in the hopeful years after the Civil War, and his daughter — my maternal grandmother Lydia Corinna Brown (1891–1971) — became the living bridge between the old world and the new.
Lydia was born at the close of the Victorian age and lived to see America transform from horse-and-buggy days into the jet age. She rocked on her front porch telling quiet stories of “the old country,” never knowing she carried the blood of Orkney sea-kings, Robert the Bruce, Lords of the Isles, and Highland earls. But that same ancient roar still echoed in her grandson.
From the peat bogs of Orkney to the shores of colonial New York, the noisy jarl’s blood had crossed an ocean and taken firm root in America. These were no longer earls and sea-kings, but hardworking pioneers who carried the same fire — quieter now, yet still burning bright.
The saga had crossed the Atlantic. Only one more colorful chapter remained to be told on American soil.
Chapter 11: Great-Granddad Was an Outlaw with a Bounty on His Head
Well, at least that’s the way Hollywood tells it.
In early 2021, while the world was still locked down and I was spending forty hours a week digging deeper into my Scottish roots, Ancestry.com dropped a bombshell: nearly fifty percent of my DNA was Scottish. Then came the discovery that made me laugh out loud and shake my head in disbelief.
My 20th great-grandfather was Robert the Bruce — the outlaw king himself.
Netflix had just released Outlaw King, starring Chris Pine as the young Robert de Brus, the man who killed his rival in a church, was excommunicated, lost everything, and still rose to hammer the English at Bannockburn. The trailer called him an outlaw. A fugitive. A man with a price on his head. And there I was, staring at my family tree, realizing that Hollywood’s “Outlaw King” was quite literally my great-granddad — twenty generations back.
The lineage is rock-solid and runs straight down to me through the Macdonald Lords of the Isles:
- Robert I “the Bruce,” King of Scotland (1274–1329) — 20th great-grandfather
- Marjorie Bruce (1297–1316) — daughter
- Robert II Stewart, King of Scotland (1316–1390) — son
- Margaret Stewart, Princess of Scots (1342–1410) — daughter
- Lord Donald MacDonald of Islay, Lord of the Isles & Harlaw (1359–1423) — son (my 17th great-grandfather on Dad’s Sleat line)
- And on down through the Earls of Ross, the MacDonalds of Sleat, and eventually to my great-grandfather Allen McNeill.
On Mom’s side the same Bruce blood flows through Matilda Bruce to Jonet Isaac, the MacDougalls, the Black Knight of Lorne, the Earls of Atholl, the Mackenzie–Urquhart line that crossed the Atlantic with John Urquhart of Newhall in the 1670s.
So yes — my great-granddad (twenty times removed) really did have a bounty on his head. He was hunted, excommunicated, and driven into the hills with a price on his life. He lost brothers, a wife, and a daughter to English prisons. Yet he refused to quit. He watched a spider try, try again in a cave and decided to do the same. He swung his axe at Bannockburn, sent his heart on crusade with the Black Douglas, and changed the course of a nation.
That same stubborn fire — the noisy jarl’s roar mixed with the Bruce hammer — made it all the way to Oyster Bay, New York, in 1675 with John Urquhart, through the Weeks and Brown families, and finally to my maternal grandmother Lydia Corinna Brown rocking on her porch in the American heartland.
She never knew she carried an outlaw king in her veins. But every time I feel that restless urge to chase one more dream, laugh a little too loud, or refuse to stay quiet when something matters, I know exactly where it comes from.
Robert the Bruce wasn’t just a distant ancestor.
He was family.
And if Hollywood wants to call him the Outlaw King, I’m perfectly happy to call him Great-Granddad.
The saga that began with Eystein Glumra shouting across a Norwegian fjord in 775 had crossed eleven centuries, two oceans, and countless battlefields — only to land in the heart of an American cowboy who still hears the roar on the wind.
The longboat never stopped sailing.
Epilogue: The Roar Still Sings
The longboat has come ashore at last.
More than eleven hundred years ago, a thunder-voiced jarl named Eystein Glumra stood on a windswept hillside in the Norwegian Uplands and let out a roar that carried on the cold north wind. That roar rolled through the dragon-prowed ships of Torf-Einarr, through the raven banner at Clontarf, through the crushing axe-blow Robert the Bruce delivered at Bannockburn, through the secret conventicles of a Covenanter minister preaching on rain-lashed moors, and across the gray Atlantic in the hold of an immigrant ship that docked at Oyster Bay, New York, in the winter of 1675.
It crossed oceans, survived civil wars and Reformation fires, rode with Lords of the Isles on Hebridean galleys, and echoed through the halls of Blair Atholl and the rocky fields of New England. It refused to be silenced by English armies, royal dragoons, or the vast Atlantic itself.
And it is still singing.
I am Jerry England, and that roar is in my blood.
Thirty-six generations stand between Eystein Glumra and me. Sea-kings and outlaw kings, earls and Covenanters, Highland chiefs and American pioneers. The blood of Orkney Vikings, Robert the Bruce, the Lords of the Isles (on both my father’s Sleat line and my mother’s Clanranald line), the Black Knight of Lorne, the Earls of Atholl, the Mackenzies, and the flamboyant Sir Thomas Urquhart all flows straight to my maternal grandmother, Lydia Corinna Brown (1891–1971). She rocked on her front porch telling quiet stories of “the old country,” never knowing she carried an outlaw king, a mariner earl, and a noisy jarl in her veins.
But I know.
In 2020 a simple DNA test cracked the door wider and showed me just how deep those Scottish roots really run. In 2021 I discovered that my 20th great-grandfather was quite literally Hollywood’s Outlaw King. The same restless fire that once sent longships west, won Scotland’s freedom at Bannockburn, and built a maritime empire in the Hebrides now runs through me — a drifting cowboy from the American West who still laughs too loud and dreams too big.
That fire lives on in my grandsons as well.
The Presbyterian Reverend carries the faith of the Covenanter minister who preached in secret on the moors.
The Bio-Engineering PhD carries the restless curiosity of the mariner-prince Henry Sinclair and the scholar-knight Sir Thomas Urquhart.
And the Artist — ah, the Artist — carries the creative spark of a man who once translated Rabelais with wild flair and claimed descent from Adam and Eve.
The saga is not over. It is only beginning a new verse.
To every ancestor who kept the longboat sailing — from Eystein the Noisy to Lydia Corinna — I raise a horn (or a coffee mug) and say thank you. You refused to stay quiet. You refused to quit. You carried the roar across eleven centuries and two oceans so it could echo in me, in my children, and in my grandchildren.
The noisy jarl’s bloodline still sings — clear, strong, and full of life.
And somewhere on a windswept hillside, or perhaps on the deck of a modern ship, or in the quiet of an artist’s studio, I like to think Eystein Glumra is still laughing.
Listen.
You can still hear it.
The End
By A Drifting Cowboy aka Jerry England
(with narrative collaboration from Grok xAI)
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