Boston Public Library - Electric Scotland

24 FAMILIAR NAMES.
fourth in Bent in Avonclale ; a fifth in Allarstocks, in Avondale
; and some as far west as Cessnock, Cumnock, and
Ochiltree, in Ayrshire ;
all of whom are mentioned as suffer-
ers for tlieir faithfulness to the Covenanting cause.
Even Cairnduff itself passed from Alison to Cochrane,
because the female proprietor of the estate from 1620 to 1630
married Mungo Cochrane, a son of Cochrane of the Craig.^
Cairnduff was then and is now divided into a great many
farms, and in 1893 a Cochrane lives on one of them. The
Cochrans of Cray and Brownside claim to be the oldest
family in Avondale, and the name is still very common. The
Cochranes and the Alisons of Avondale are well known to
each other still, and have been for three hundred years.^
The history of the Alisons now becomes transferred from
Cairnduff to Windyedge, which was one of the farms belonging
to the original estate of Cairnduff. Windyedge, in
Avondale. County Lanark included then the farms of Windyedge,
Couplaw, Heuk, and Heuklaw, all of which in 1893
belong to Alisons, together with the farms of Muirhead,
Letham, and Blackmoss. It was there that Sir Robert Hamilton,
Balfour of Burleigh, Hackstone of Rathellet, Brownlee
of Torfoot, and several others met after the victory of
Drumcloy, to consult as to their future procedure. It M'as
then that they resolved to continue the fortunes of war
which ended in their sad discomfiture at the battle of Both-
1 That same Mungo Cochrane is frequently mentioned in these persecuting
times as a zealous Covenanter.
"' In tracing the history of the Alisons of Cairnduff, it is an interesting
fact to notice their allied families. The Alisons came from the McAllisters,
and are united by marriage with the Cochranes, the Morrisons, the
Steeles, the Jamiosons: most of these families are reproduced in the
Scotch settlement of Aghadowey, county of Londonderry, Ireland, and
all are dupli( ated in the Scotch settlements of Londonderry, and Windham,
New Hampshire, United States. We have seen that Michael
Alison fled to Londonderry, Ireland, after the light at Airsmoss, Scotland,
where he remained many years, and left several children. The family
of McKeen, the Morrisons, and the Alisons, and others of Agadowey
and adjacent parishes, settled there about the same time, and for the
same cause, and later came to Londonderry, and Windham, N. H. In
the latter settlements are the McAlistcrs with their kinsmen,
the Alisons, with the Morrisons, the Cochranes, the Stceles, the
.Jamesons, and the Wilsons, with many of the Scotch families with the
same christian names wliicli are found in the Scotch settlements of
Pennsylvania and in the states farther south, found also in the Scotch
settlements in Ireland, and tracing them again across tlie narrow belt of
sea to the fatherland, Scotland, we find them there in the old liomes. All
are of the same blood, witli the same characteristics, and all are Scotch
still. They are not yet Aveaued from " the land of brown lieath and
shaggy wood," although more than two centuries have passed since their
ancestors lied from jiersecution there.