Re: Origin of Sinclair

["Spirit One Email" <laurel@spiritone.com>]

Dear Richard,
    A few more comments on Aunt Janes clipping:
1. Rollo's son William was called William Longsword and he had another
nickname.
2.  My information names the wife of Walderne as Margaret instead of Mary.
This is perhaps the difference between French and English.
3.  Your clipping says that William St. Clair s/o Walderne, did not like the
Conqueror so with some other discontented barons, went to Scotland and
placed himself in the service of King Malcolm III and his Queen St.
Margaret.  Since they did not marry until 1070 this puts William St. Clair
into Scotland long after the conquest of 1066.  So one assumes that St.
Margaret was just added to the story as a fact that happened after 1066.
Malcolm returned with help from England's King Edward the Confessor around
1056 to drive out MacBeth.  He was coronated on St. Patrick's Day 1058.

 William's son, Henry the Crusader, was born at Rosyln about 1060.  This
means that by 1060 William was already there in Midlothian Scotland.  Pete
Cumming's article (Spring 1995 Yours Aye) says "The first of the St. Clairs
came into the area during the reign of Malcolm Canmore (1057) and were
granted lands of the Barony Rosline during this time.  During the reign of
Malcolm's son David I (1124-53), the Sinclairs moved into Roslin."
Now if you are to look at these last 2 sentences, there seems to be a
conflict of facts.  The problem is probably resolved if the Sinclairs,
during the reign of David I, moved into a new building at Rosslyn.

Laurel
Portland, OR
-----Original Message-----
From: David Quarterman <dlq@mail.rath.peachnet.edu>
To: sinclair@jump.net <sinclair@jump.net>
Date: Thursday, June 03, 1999 6:38 AM
Subject: Origin of Sinclair


>
>
>Aunt Jane found this newspaper clipping, it was old, yellowed and very
>hard to read. I keyed it in so it could be printed so she could read it.
>Since I have keyed it John says we might as well post it here for general
>information. The source is unknown.
>
> David Quarterman
>
>The Sinclair Family
>
>English Hermit Who Gave His Name to the Norman St. Clairs.
>
>By Frances Cowles
>
>Clan Crest was here
>
>Clare was an English hermit in Normandy, who was martyred in the year 834,
>and became St. Clair. The town of St. Clere is near the hermit's retreat,
>and nearby castle also. took the name St. Clair.
>
>The family which took the castle's name is of Norse origin, and like
William
>the Norman Conqueror trace its descent through Rollo the Viking. In the
>year 912 Charles the Simple, King of France met Rollo, who had ravaged the
>coasts of Normandy, at the castle of St. Clair, and there made him Duke
>of Normandy.
>
>Rollo, thus made the first Duke of Normandy, was the son of Rogenwald the
>Rich, a favorite of Harold the Fair Haired of Norway. Rollo had a son
>William Longwood, whose son, Richard, is the direct ancestor of the
>Sinclairs of Norman blood, and also of William  the Conqueror.
>
>Richard's son, Richard, was the father of Robert, father of the Conqueror.
>Richard's son Malger, Robert's uncle and the Conqueror's great-uncle, was
>the Earl of Corbueil, and he is the ancestor of the Sinclair faimly, after
>it leaves the royal line.
>
>The Sinclairs soon multiplied to such an extent that they could not all
stay
>at the castle of Sinclair--or St. Clair, as it was always called in
>Normandy. So they were given various other castles about France. About the
>year 1006 at the Castle of St. Lo, was born Walderne, Earl of St. Clair, a
>descendant of Malger, Earl of Corbueil. Walderne, married his cousin Mary,
>a daughter of Richard, Duke of Normandy and had three sons. Richard,
Bretel,
>and William, all born in Normandy.
>
>However, they all went to England with the Conqueror. The youngest of the
>three sons, William, did not like the Conqueror, so with some other
>discontented barons, he went to Scotland and placed himself in the service
>of King Malcolm III, and his Queen St. Margaret. William married Doratha
>Dunbar, a daughter of the Earl of March and had Sir William St. Clair of
>Roslin. Sir William's great-grand-son, his namesake was sheriff of
Edinburgh
>county, and in 1284 was a member of the Parliament of Scone. He had three
sons.
>One of them Sir Henry, a supporter of Robert Bruce when he claimed the
>throne, was the ancestor of William St. Clair, third Earl of Orkney, first
>Earl of Caithness, and High Chancellor of Scotland from 1454 to 1458.
>
>The first earl of Caithness, it is said lived like a prince. His wife,
>according to an old chronicler, was ``served by seventy-five gentlewomen,
>whereof fifty-three were daughers of noblemen, all clothed in velvets and
>silks, with their chains of gold and other ornaments and was attended
>by two hundred riding gentlemen in all journies''. They lived at Roslin
>castle.
>
>George, the fourth earl of Caithness, their great-grandson, is the supposed
>ancestor of the Norman St. Clairs, or Sinclairs, in this country and the
>known ancestor of Gen. Arthur St. Clair, one of Washington's generals, and
>of John Sutherland Sinclair of North Dakota, who in 1891 became the
>seventeenth earl of Caithness.
>
>The descent of Gen. Arthur is traced through one of George's sons, John who
>was the great-grandfather of General Arthur St. Clair.
>
>The descent of John St. Clair, who as John Sinkler appears in Exeter, N.
H.,
>in 1656, is not certain, but it is established to the satisfaction of many
>who have given careful research to the subject. It is said that John, son
>of George, fourth earl of Caithness, had two sons James and Henry. James is
>the ancestor of Gen. Arthur. Henry is the probable ancestor of John Sinkler
>of Exeter.
>
>The first known settler of the name of Sinclair, or St. Clair, on the
>shores of North America was Salamon, who came on the John and Sara, from
>London in 1651. John Sinkler, as he called himself, who was, born in
>Scotland about the year 1630, was in Exeter, N. H. by the year 1658; and is
>the second known settler of the name in America.
>
>He married twice. His first wife was named Mary. His second was named
>Deborah. From all accounts, Deborah was a woman ahead of her time, for she
>formed a business contract with her husband before marriage. John respected
>this contract, as the first clause in his will testifies. It reads: ``I
will
>that my debts of charges shall be paide and discharged and all my contract
>with my wife before marriage be performed by my Executors.''
>
>John had James, Mary Sarah, another daughter, and John. These sons, James
>and John, are the American ancestors of most of the Sinclairs in America
who
>once lived in Normandy.
>
>Not all the Sinclairs in America, however are of Norman stock. Some of them
>came from Germany. One family of German descent lives in New Jersey, and
was
>founded there at New Holland by Peter Cincleare, who chose yet another way
of
>spelling this variously spelled name. He was born in Germany in 1719, and
>arrived in Philadelphia in 1753 in the St. Michael, from Hamburg. He
>settled on a tract of some eight thousand acres of land and for thirty-one
>years worked the ground as a renter. He had three children, John, Peter,
>and Mary.
>
>John, born in Germany in 1743, eleven years before his father came to
>America, bought the property his father had worked, and additional lands at
>New Holland, and became a prosperous former. He served as a teamster in the
>Revolutionary war. His wife was Anna Ahlbach, or Alpock, daughter of Johan,
>who came from Holland in the Hope in 1743. John's son Samuel also married
>a young woman of Dutch descent, Permelia Vancamp, and Samuel's son, Jesse
>Sinclair, teacher, farmer and man of affairs, married for his first wife
>Catherine Welsh, also of Dutch descent.
>
>In early days the name was variously spelled, Sinclare, Sinkler, Sinklaire,
>Sinclair and St. Clair; in the case of the German Peter, Cincleare.
Nowadays
>it is generally spelled either St. Clair or Sinclair, although in parts of
>Virginia Sinklers are still found.
>
>The arms of Sinclair, earl of Caithness are blazoned: Quarterly, 1st azure
>a ship at anchor, sails furled, oars erect in saltire, or, within a double
>tressure flory, counterflory of the last, for Orkney; 2 and 3 a lion
rampant
>gules for Spar; 4th, azure a ship under sail or for Caithness. Over all a
>cross engrailed sable dividing the four quarters for Sinclair. The crest is
>a cock proper armed and crested or. The supporters are two griffins sable
>armed and beaked or. The motto is ``Commit thy work to God.''
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