Aberdeenshire, home to the Cairngorms, the Braemar Highland Games, Balmoral, famous whisky distilleries and Angus cattle, is unlike anywhere else in Scotland. It is dominated by oil-rich Aberdeen, known as the Granite City after the local stone used in so many of its buildings. The city is a busy urban island, surrounded by sea and sparsely-inhabited countryside, and yet its miles of often empty golden beaches can give it the feel of a peaceful seaside resort.

Aberdeenshire was home in succession to Picts, Gaels, Anglo-Saxons and Vikings. Several Anglo-Norman families established themselves here including the Comyns and Bruces, and the Gordons were settled here by Robert the Bruce. The Romans fought the locals at the Battle of Mons Graupius, and Malcolm killed Macbeth near the Mounth, a range of hills. The area was heavily involved in the Scottish end of the Civil War between King and Parliament and in 1644 the army of the Marquis of Montrose subjected Aberdeen to three days of rape, pillage and murder. In 1685, 167 Covenanters (who refused to acknowledge the King’s authority over the church) were held in ‘the Whig’s Vault’, a cramped dungeon in Dunnottar Castle near Stonehaven, some dying of starvation and torture.

On a more cheerful note, in 1794 Lord Byron attended Aberdeen Grammar School, one of the oldest schools in the country. Byron wasn’t the only poet with Aberdeen associations. One old anonymous poem went:

“Here lie the bones of Elizabeth Charlotte
That was born a virgin and died a harlot
She was aye a virgin till seventeen
An extraordinary thing for Aberdeen
”

Aberdeenshire families
Aberdeenshire family trees generally show most ancestors marrying within the area with just a few outsiders from England and elsewhere. We also see that people increasingly moved into Aberdeen from the surrounding countryside. Some came from the small historic town of Old Deer. Saint Drostan founded a monastery here in the 6th century, and in the 13th century William Comyn founded Deer Abbey. The famous Book of Dear, mostly in Latin, contains the earliest written Gaelic. There are no more native Gaelic speakers in Aberdeenshire, the last dying in the late 20th century.

Aberdeen was an English-speaking burgh established by King David I (1124-1153), the city growing from the merger of Old Aberdeen, a university and cathedral town, and the Dee Estuary fishing settlement of New Aberdeen. Until 1996 Aberdeenshire and Aberdeen City were parts of the then local government region of Grampian, but they now constitute two distinct council areas. Aberdeenshire’s headquarters is based in Aberdeen City, making it the only Scottish Council with its base outside its jurisdiction. In addition to the historic county of Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire also includes what were previously Kincardineshire and some of Banffshire.

Many surnames are especially prominent in north-east Scotland and may suggest an ancestry here. They include Barclay, Brodie and Keith. Comyn is also found as Cummin or Cummins, Farquharson as Furquhar, and Mackie as McKie. The name Cruikshank may derive from the River Cruick and Murray from Moray while Fraser is predictably associated with Fraserburgh. Grant may come from a nickname meaning ‘giant’, while Rennie is a shortened form of Reynold and Watt a shortened form of Walter. The rare surname Guyan was once largely confined to Nigg and Aberdeen.

Local trades
Many will find that their ancestors further back in time were crofters and agricultural workers whose descendants moved to Aberdeen or the larger towns. They may have worked on the granite quarries in Aberdeen, most of the city’s emblematic buildings, such as Marischal College and Provost Skene’s House, being made from local granite. Granite was also important in Peterhead and Balmoral.

A great many turned to work in Aberdeen’s flourishing sea-fishing industry as fishermen, fishmongers and fish smokers. There has long been a fish market here and a fish market porter was a sought-after job. A more common employment was as a fish gutter. In the herring boom (late 1800s to early 1900s) ‘fish quines’, women fish gutters, followed herring boats from port to port as far as Yarmouth and Lowestoft, gutting the fish when unloaded.

Shipping was important with Aberdeen especially famous for its clippers, and the city remains a major port. Whaling was important in Aberdeen and Peterhead and herring fishing in Aberdeen and Fraserburgh.

Whisky manufacture was important, both legal, with many prominent distilleries found in Aberdeenshire, and at illegal distilleries or bothies .

There was a strong military tradition in the area particularly with regard to the Gordon Highlanders, and many prominent academics found work at Aberdeen’s prestigious university, Scotland’s third oldest, with Bishop Elphinstone founding King’s College in 1495. Some will have found employment with the Shore Porters Society, founded in 1498, perhaps Britain’s oldest company, still found today specialising in removals, storage and haulage. Comb making was a huge industry in the city in the 19th and early 20th centuries with several factories producing millions of combs annually, one factory alone employing over one thousand workers. The combs were initially fashioned out of imported animals’ horns, tortoiseshell, ivory and wood.

It is the oil industry that dominates Aberdeen today, but you can still glimpse old Aberdeen at Footdee or ‘Fittie’, the subject of a recent BBC documentary. Its small distinctive houses were purpose built to re-house the local close-knit fishing community. Laid out in 1809, the two squares of ‘Fish Town’ originally contained single-storey thatched houses, but extra storeys and dormers were added as were the ‘tarry sheds’ originally made of driftwood. These sheds have been repeatedly rebuilt in a variety of sometimes eccentric ways. The North Square Mission Hall, known locally as the ‘the schoolie’ is the local meeting place.

Entertainment
A favourite Sunday pastime for past generations of Aberdonians was ‘walking the mat’ on Union Street. Groups of young men and women would dress up and stroll up and down its length, chatting and flirting, until the time of the last bus home. This was definitely a night for pedestrians, as the shops, pubs and cinemas were closed on Sundays.

Aberdonians also entertained themselves in other ways. There was a long tradition of ‘doing turns’ with friends and family expected to sing or do something entertaining at gatherings, and you can find articles in old newspapers about local entertainments in the early 20th century. Various editions of the Aberdeen Journal 1931-46 have stories about parties, events and concerts – including one ‘smoking concert’ (live music before an all-male audience) – featuring local singers, yodellers, dancers, impressionists, accordionists, conjurers and bands. One of these early bands was actually called the Rolling Stones! At the upper end of Aberdeen’s entertainment world, a 1941 edition notes one George Elrick topping the bill. George Elrick (1903-1999) was born in Aberdeen, one of eleven children, his father’s family coming from Newmachar and Belhelvie just outside of Aberdeen.

He was known as the ‘smiling voice of the radio’ and, starting in his teens as a drummer for a dance band, he became a popular musician, impresario, band leader and radio presenter, well known for hosting Housewives’ Choice in the 1950s and 1960s. His nickname derives from his association with the song ‘When You’re Smiling’.