Hello and welcome to my family history blog!

Last week I receive an email from Wikitree that said …

“WT News: 21 to Robert the Bruce | Research Challenges.”

Robert the BruceScotland declared independence on 6 April 1320 with Robert the Bruce as king. Is your family closer to Bruce — at just 21 family relationships spanning 700 years — or King Edward I of England, aka “Longshanks”, aka “Hammer of the Scots”?
Dawn Piercy to Robert the Bruce
Dawn Piercy to Edward Longshanks …

I’m direct shot from both!

I thought it was interesting. I don’t have much of my family tree done on WikiTree, but to much of my surprise, I found many people, distant cousins, and a few others included, had been working hard on my tree. THANK YOU!!! I have Family Search I work on regularly, and now Ancestry, but I’m way behind on WikiTree. Just being honest!

So it was a huge surprise and such a delight to open up to this!!

  Featured Connections for Dawn Piercy Declaration of Arbroath connections:

• 21 degrees from Robert Bruce King Robert Ist of Scots
• 23 degrees from Edward I Plantagenet
• 24 degrees from Roger of Methven
• 21 degrees from James Douglas
• 22 degrees from Alexander Fraser of Touchfraser and Cowie
• 21 degrees from Edward Keith Marischal of Scotland
• 22 degrees from Andrew Leslie VI of Leslie
• 22 degrees from David Lord of Crawford and Byres
• 19 degrees from Joan Countess of Strathearn
• 22 degrees from Agnes Randolph Countess of Dunbar and March
• 23 degrees from William Third Earl of Ross
• 22 degrees from Henry Sinclair IInd of Roslin

I had never heard of the Declaration of Arbroath before this email, and I certainly had not known of all these ancestors and family members!! How cool 😎 I’m so grateful to learn about it and the people involved. Thank you WikiTree!

Below you will find screenshots of my relation to each individual. I will add links for you to learn more about these ancestors of mine. And maybe yours too!

As you see, some are direct, some are not, but in laws and or great aunt’s and or uncles.

It was fun to go through all of them and learn about them as individuals. Up above I have linked the Wikipedia to each person. Just click on the photo and it will take you to them to learn more.

The Declaration of Arbroath (Latin: Declaratio Arbroathis; Scots: Declaration o Aiberbrothock; Scottish Gaelic: Tiomnadh Bhruis) is the name usually given to a letter, dated 6 April 1320 at Arbroath, written by Scottish barons and addressed to Pope John XXII. It constituted King Robert I’s response to his excommunication for disobeying the pope’s demand in 1317 for a truce in the First War of Scottish Independence.The letter asserted the antiquity of the independence of the Kingdom of Scotland, denouncing English attempts to subjugate it. (Via Wikipedia )

Generally believed to have been written in Arbroath Abbey by Bernard of Kilwinning (or of Linton), then Chancellor of Scotland and Abbot of Arbroath, and sealed by fifty-one magnates and nobles, the letter is the sole survivor of three created at the time. The others were a letter from the King of Scots, Robert I, and a letter from four Scottish bishops which all made similar points. The Declaration was intended to assert Scotland’s status as an independent, sovereign state and defend Scotland’s right to use military action when unjustly attacked.

Submitted in Latin, the Declaration was little known until the late 17th century, and is unmentioned by any of Scotland’s major 16th-century historians. In the 1680s, the Latin text was printed for the first time and translated into English in the wake of the Glorious Revolution, after which time it was sometimes described as a declaration of independence.

Thank you WikiTree! This was fun to delve into, and interesting to learn about the Declaration of Arbroath!! I love finding new ancestors and learning about how they lived, what they did, and or did not do in history.

~Dawn Piercy, PhD