![]() Last month, another Munro decedent (Noreen Rent) and I reflected on the main historical problem of Daniel Munro, namely (literally and no pun intended) whether his name is actually Daniel or Donald. Or, could it be, that two separate people, Daniel Munro and Donald Munro, served in Montgomery's 77th Highland Regiment and remained Loyalists? If so, these threads need to be untangled. Here are the points we landed on. 1. The name Donald is commonly passed down in the Munro family, unlike Daniel. Donald appears once in 1910, where Daniel is used at least nine times. 2. The 1765 land grant lists Donald Munro. An additional source, Calendar of New York Colonial Manuscripts, corresponds that 200 acres of land were surveyed to "a late corporal Donald Munro in the 77th regiment." There is no listing for a Daniel Munro in this source. 3. Was there a documentation error in the land grant? One family story is that Daniel was illiterate which led to the name error. Another idea that has been offered is that Daniel is a variant of Donald. The Scottish Gaelic for Donald is Dòmhnall, Domhnull and Dòmhnull (1). Is it possible something was lost in translation? 4. The story that emerges is that the 1765 land grant was entrusted to Daniel/Donald's son, Solomon Munro (1772-1845), carrying the document from Nova Scotia through upstate New York, to London, Canada. Upon Solomon's passing, it was kept by his wife Sarah (1782-1857) until she carried it to Bloomfield, Michigan, spending her last days with her son Bedent Baird Munro (1804-1871). From Bedent, the land grant and important family papers were given to James Leonard Munro (1840-1935) who built his family home in Novi, Michigan. James's daughter, Via (1877-1963), when writing the genealogy of the Michigan Munro family in the early 1900s, referred to this land grant, identifying a Donald Munro. The question that begs to be answered is would the Munro family pass this invaluable document along from generation to generation, if it didn't belong to their family patriarch, Donald Munro? 5. Muddying the waters a bit, the Sons of the Mountains: the Highland Regiments in the French and Indian War, 1756-1767: Volume II, provides Scottish regiment muster rolls. The name Donald Munro is listed in the return detachments of the 42nd and 77th in "Company Number 6" but as a sergeant, not corporal, and also as a private in Captain Simon Fraser's Company. The name Donald again appears but in the 78th as a drummer in Captain Alexander McLeod Balmaneach's Company, and lastly as a private in Captain John Fraser Culbokie's Company. The name Daniel however never appears in any list. (2) The search continues! NOTES 1. See, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald 2. See, Sons of the Mountains : the Highland Regiments in the French and Indian War, 1756-1767
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![]() The 1765 Munro Land grant has been released from its month-long incubation in a humidity chamber and pressing stack. It has never looked better, discounting of course its first two-hundred years (see Sources and Documents for pre-conservation images). The archivist is quite pleased at what she described as "the planarity achieved." After some minor repairs, the document's new home will be an archival storage box to protect it from light and moisture. More to come! ![]() The big news: the 1765 land grant is now laying flat on its own! The conservator is happy with the progress and notes, "I am now trying to work out some of the worst distortions along the folded areas so they can be read easily, and also so those areas don't get squashed or abraded when stored." Not bad progress considering over 200 years of being folded. More to come! ![]() It was last year that historical fortunes led me to a 1765 land grant belonging to the Munro family of Michigan (see March 2020 Blog posts). The document was ready to be conserved at a state university when the Covid-19 epidemic shuttered most of the state. There the parchment waited again. I am happy to report that the document is currently being restored by a free-lance paper conservator who does work from home. Again, time will be the first factor in its treatment. The examination report states, "Based on the pattern and severity of discoloration...the document has been folded for a very long time." Indeed! In order to unwind time the document will go through a process of humidification in a "room temperature humidity chamber" to loosen the parchment and "once sufficiently relaxed" it will then be placed in a pressing stack for several weeks to "ensure the parchment becomes as planar as possible." More to come on this as the process, shall I say, unfolds? ![]() My birth-mother's Scottish maiden name is Munro, passed down to her from her father, John Brent Munro. His father Burton Munro of Novi, Michigan (1887-1963) was raised by his father James Leonard Munro (1849-1935). James as a young man moved to Novi from his father's farm, Bedent Baird Munro (1804-1871), in Bloomfield, Michigan. Bedent had come west earlier by way of London, Canada where his parents Solomon (1772-1845) and Sarah Baird Munro, lived. Solomon is said to be the son of Donald Munro (1738-1806) whose 1765 land grant from King George III, buoyed and carried along the stream of time, ended up in my hands. What does this document from 1765 reveal? Colin G. Calloway's The Scratch of a Pen describes Donald Munro's pre-revolutionary America as one of uncertainty. Despite the certitude of this piece of parchment emblazoned loudly with King George's name securing Donald Munro a patch of land for his service in the French and Indian War, Calloway describes a 1763 America as "a crowded and often confused stage." (Calloway, p. 17). To set this historical stage, just in a period of 30 years France would hand North American territories to Great Britain, transfer Louisiana Territory to Spain, Spain transfer Florida to Britain, and Britain recognize the former thirteen colonies as the Untied States. All this was done with Native Americans scrambling and securing their own future on a contested land they knew as home. As for Donald Munro's gifted land, Calloway confirms that the "British Government provided land grants for veterans, and many disbanded Scottish soldiers staying in America after the war." (Calloway, p. 58) These were given "on a graduated scale according to rank: 50 acres for privates, up to 5,000 acres for those holding the rank of major and above." (Calloway, p. 94) However despite this administered system, this profit "from the greatest land boom in history" was not based on free land (Benard Bailyn, p. 23). These were disputed lands that were occupied and identified with the Indians of the Six Nations. Donald Munro's land claim would be stitched and tethered to a mangled patchwork of speculative land claims most of which would be ultimately wiped-clean with the creation of the United States. It would be within this speculation of the future that Donald Munro laid his quantum of hope. It is perhaps remarkable for Donald Munro to have made it this far. If his past in the 77th Regiment of Foot was anything like what is described by historians, Donald Munro overcame quite the gauntlet to secure this uncertain future. The British army was "notorious for the brutality of its discipline even in a brutal age." (Calloway, p. 84) Specifically the 77th Regiment that Donald Munro served in, encamped on Staten Island at the end of the French and Indian War, had "an appalling causality rate" and suffered from a litany of health issues: "diphtheria, scarlet fever, dysentery, broken bones, rheumatism, venereal disease, wounds, coughs, chest pains and smallpox." (Calloway, p. 83) If Donald Munro is the same person that is linked to a Daniel Munro in stories circulating on Ancestry.com, Donald would eventually leave the former colonies a banished Tory, a loyal subject of England, finally settling in Nova Scotia, a place which was inflicted with its own "British initiated" diaspora of French Arcadians between 1755 and 1763 of which over 3,000 sought refuge in France. (Calloway, p. 161) In this sense, Donald Munro, an exile himself would make home on land of exiled people only affirming the fickle winds of fortune during this time, blowing indiscriminately on the landscape. If there is one constant in the story of the family Munro it would be not much like any other family story- one of trying to find and secure a home. More to come. SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION
![]() Transcribing, word-for-word, a 1765 colonial land grant from King George III may not be everyone's cup of tea but for this history teacher it was like pealing a multiple-layered historical onion but without the tears. This sheet of parchment laying on a folding table in my living room was older than the Declaration of Independence and may have belonged to my 5th great grandfather, Donald Munro. According to the transcription, Donald Munro a "disbanded non Commission Officer" from the "Seventy Seventh Regiment of Foot" fought in the French and Indian War and was granted a tract of land somewhere in the Hudson River Valley for his service to the crown. The transcription of also revealed tangential histories: what was the "Feast of the Annunciation of the Blessed Virgin Mary, commonly called Lady Day", who was the "Trusty and Well-beloved Cadwallader Coldon Esquire and Lieutenant Governor and Commander in Chief of our Province of New York"? While my focus was the document's connection to Donald Munro, I could not but help to investigate these historical rabbit holes embedded in this primary source. Donald Munro's land grant was singed on May 14th, 1765. Just a handful of months later this trusty and well-beloved 77-year-old Cadwallader Colden, Lieutenant-Governor of the colony of New York, would not be so "well-beloved" but reviled, embroiled in the widely known pre-Revolutionary War Stamp Act of 1765. (Engelman, p. 560). While Donald Munro clasped the parchment detailing his new found bounty, was he in New York witnessing the evening mob of 2,000 that gathered outside Fort George on a Friday night of November 1st, burning Cadwallader Colden's likeness in effigy along with his coach? A 1772 portrait of Colden presents him with a quizzical expression but still resolute with right arm firmly akimbo, left hand resting on an official document. In the background, masts, most likely from the Royal Navy, punch the sky. Confirming the British Royal Navy's world supremacy in the 18th century, an exclusion in Donald Munro's land grant, aside from gold or silver mines, was also, "ALL WHITE or other Sort of PINE-TREES fit for Masts of the Growth of Twenty-four Inches Diameter and upwards, at Twelve Inches from the Earth for Masts for the Royal Navy." In the decades to come, Donald Munro's New York, along with twelve other colonies would become unhinged from the crown, also putting his land grant into jeopardy. How would he navigate a time where power and social structures would be radically transformed? For Cadwallader Colden, a polymath during his lifetime, and an intriguing historical figure, would be overshadowed by the more celebrated historical narrative of the emergence of the United States. As one historian noted, "Except for this twilight of his life, when he was called upon to serve his king with faith and loyalty, at a time when such service met with bitter opposition and hate, he might have been enshrined in American history." (p. 560) Cadwallader Colden would die in 1776, yet another notable year. SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION/LINKS
Engelman, F. L. “Cadwallader Colden and the New York Stamp Act Riots.” The William and Mary Quarterly, vol. 10, no. 4, 1953, pp. 560–578. JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/1923595. Accessed 26 Mar. 2020. ![]()
It was there in Gilbert's Novi, Michigan home, a day after Thanksgiving, that I was introduced to him and his wife but also to a plain, dark-brown, secretary desk with a hinged top that may have been built at the turn of the 18th century by my 4th great grandfather. What lay inside was pure treasure. Opening the top I immediately found stacks of family letters, tax receipts, photos, some dating from the 19th century, all opening their world to me. And then, within a nondescript yellowing hand box, I unfolded an aged sheet of parchment. In the the top left hand corner, in large all-caps letters declared the name, "GEORGE". I continued reading, "...The Third, by the Grace of GOD, of Great-Britain, France, and Ireland; KING, Defender of the Faith, and so forth: ...". So ends a rather nuanced but important introduction to the 1765 Land Grant given to one Donald Munro by King George the III of England. This back story serves as a type of provenance or origin of this historic document that I can physically trace back to my 2nd great grandfather, James L. Munro. As for Donald Munro, whom this document belonged to, he is only mentioned twice in passing in Via's narrative. How it came to James Munro involves some speculation. In the upcoming blogs Donald Munro's history will be investigated as well as the document's historical context and other lines of evidence affirming its authenticity. As for today, what remains with me is how two people, who were once strangers to me, made separate initiatives to connect and in doing so became my family. The serendipity their actions opened an invaluable door, showing me that I sit at very large historical table. I am blessed and honored to share it. SUPPLEMENTAL INFORMATION/LINKS
![]() I have been teaching U.S. History for over ten years in the public schools and also have been a director for a local history museum. One can posit that my interest in history is due to being an adoptee (see my first post "Beginnings"), that my desire to learn the tools of research to interpret the past is really a veiled unconscious drive to reclaim my own past and identity. Perhaps. It can also be that I just found history to be fun. And nothing is more fun than working with primary sources. The National Archives calls primary sources, or original sources, "History in the Raw". What a great phrase. "...they are real and they are personal; history is humanized through them." Finding the cache of Family Munro primary source documents in November of 2019 was overwhelmingly personal. One document was a 1765 land grant from King George to Donald Munro of the "Seventy Seventh Regiment of Foot" very possibly my 5th great grandfather. Holding a document older than the Declaration of Independence, I imagined the numerous family hands and obstacles the document overcame through the centuries only to lay in my hands. Primary sources however are not infallible. They are very fallible. A piece of paper can hold any lie. Here is a personal case in point. In the early 1990s I began to search for my birth family. Michigan adoptees from closed adoptions such as myself were limited to only non-identifying information however I was one of those who wanted to know my past, no matter the limits on that information. My initial search landed me at the doorstep of the Catholic Social Service of Washtenaw County in Ann Arbor, Michigan, where my adoption originated. The office at that time was in a craftsman style house from the early 1900s. It was at this homelike structure, where 20 plus years before I was a week-old infant waiting for placement, that I returned to receive a typed, one-page fact sheet of my past, all information being non-identifying, the closest thing I would get as a primary source about my past. On January 7th, 2019, I read that form to my birth mother during our first phone conversation. It reads that my birth father had "knowledge of the pregnancy." She confirmed for me that night that he did not. As the fates would have it, he would pass away in 2016 without knowledge of his first-born son. Primary sources are the bread and butter to any research. One must take caution however. Documents are made with an intent and sometimes an intent to distort or cover facts. Granted, the 1765 land grant has more legal precedent than that typed-up fact sheet given to me in the 1990s. But with this cautionary tale in mind, what can be learned from this invaluable document that has stayed in my mother's family for over 250 years? More on the 1765 Donald Munro document to come. |
John A. StempienJohn A. Stempien maintains the blog and website, Family Munro and is the co-editor of The Liberty Hyde Bailey Gardener's Companion. He lives in west Michigan with his family. Archives
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