OUR DEWARS

The Dewars descend from Picts who lived in the central highlands of Scotland. Their ancestral home is Glendochart (the valley of the Dochart). The name Dewar derives from the Gaelic deoir or deoreach meaning pilgrim or stranger. Hereditary custodians of religious relics were called "Dewars" and the word subsequently evolved into a surname.

The relics of Saint Fillan, who died in Glendochart in the 8th century, were entrusted to five custodians or Dewars, all living within a few miles of one another but not necessarily related. These five families entered written history as hereditary custodians in the 13th century. The Dewar Coigerachs had custody of St Fillan's staff or crozier. The Dewars Na Bernan kept St Fillan's bell. The Dewars Na Man had custody of the bones of St Fillan's right arm. The Dewars De Meser kept the saint's missal, or some say, portable altar. History does not record the relic kept by the fifth family, the Dewars Na Ferg.

St Fillan's crozier and bell were used to spur on the Scottish army prior to the Battle of Bannockburn in June 1314. In the battle, Robert Bruce (King Robert 1st of Scotland) thrashed an English army under King Edward 2nd, thus reaffirming Scottish sovereignty.

In 1818 Archibald Dewar took Saint Fillan's crozier with him when he migrated to Canada. It was later found in Ontario and returned to Edinburgh's Royal Museum in 1876. Crozier and bell were both prominently on display in Edinburgh in September 1996.

Dewars assert they are the principal branch of the McNab clan, but are also claimed by the clan Menzies. McNab means son of the abbot, and the clan had a long association with the abbots of Glendochart. The name Menzies derives from de Meyners, a Norman family that acquired lands in Glendochart and elsewhere in the 13th century. The Menzies (and some Dewars) supported Robert Bruce in his struggle to become king. The McNabs (and some Dewars) opposed Bruce. Bruce's victory led to a decline of the McNabs and the expansion in Glendochart of the Menzies.

During the Reformation, which took place in Scotland between 1557 and 1592, our Dewars became Protestants. The wars of the 17th and 18th centuries, which usually pitted Protestants against Catholics, split both the MacNab and Menzies clans and presumably killed more Dewars.

The first written reference to individual Dewars appears in The Ragman Roll when in 1296 Thomas and Piers de Dewere paid homage to King Edward 1. Thomas and Piers lived at Dewar in Midlothian, 20 miles southwest of Edinburgh. [Gloria (Dewar) and Harold Murphy visited the site in 1996.] This branch of the Dewars continued over several hundred years, however in 1693 the Cranstouns acquired the Dewar estate. In 1890 Joseph Young Trotter-Cranstoun of Dewar reaffirmed the arms that can still be seen over the door of the Dewar farmhouse. Not that any true Dewars care, but the pedigree is in Burke's Landed Gentry (1914).

Numerous other Dewars appear throughout early Scottish history, often with the Christian name of Malise and in association with the Crozier of St Fillan. However a continuous line of descent cannot be established for any existing Dewar family until the 16th and 17th centuries from when several lines may be traced. These include the Dewars of Vogrie from 1599; Dewars of Lassodie, 1603; Dewars of Doles, 1620; Dewars of Cambuskennneth, 1671; Dewars Coigerach from 1734; Dewars of Jamaica, 1744; Dewars Forteviot (the whisky Dewars) 1764, and Dewar-Duries, 1791.

Our Dewars belong to the largest of the Dewar families, the Dewars of Cambuskenneth, as described by a family member, Peter Beauclerk Dewar, in his book The House of Dewar.

As the Dewars drifted down from the highlands many settled in and around Stirling, located at the historic crossing of the River Forth, which is itself just 50 miles from Glendochart. Cambuskenneth -- today a small, prosperous village lying across the Forth from Stirling -- takes its name from the Augustinian Abbey Cambuskenneth, founded in 1140 but, except for its bell tower, long in ruins. The first known member of this branch is Patrick Dewar recorded living in Cambuskenneth in 1671.

Patrick's first son, John, was fined fifty pounds in 1710 for "blood and riot", and in 1714 his house in Cambuskenneth was taken over by his younger brother pursuant to a "Charter of Alienation and Sasine".

Patrick's second son, born before 1671, and also named Patrick, was a cordiner (shoemaker), and is mentioned numerous times in the Minutes of the Royal Incorporation of Shoemakers of Stirling from 1699. He erected a tombstone in 1705 at the Church of the Holy Rude, Stirling, on which he inscribed the arms of Dewar, which were later confirmed by the Lord Lyon King of Arms. (The mentioned book has a picture.) He married twice, his second wife, Janet Dickson, giving him one son and three daughters. He died in either 1727 or 1728.

Patrick's son James Dewar was baptised in Cambuskenneth April 9th 1721. Also a cordiner, he married Elizabeth Gillespy in 1753 and died March 11th 1810.

James' only son, Patrick (Peter), baptised 1756, was first a cordiner at Cambuskenneth and later a farmer at Cornton near Stirling. He married Anne McLay of Alloa in 1790, and registered his ownership of the family tombstone in 1836.

Patrick (Peter) Dewar left four sons but, for reasons unknown, the third was declared heir and went on to found a large and affluent branch of the family. The first son, James, baptised in 1791 was apparently disinherited. He married Mary Russel in 1813 and died before 1850.

James Dewar left five children, one of them Alexander of Cambuskenneth, a weaver, born in 1816. Parenthetically, the Industrial Revolution led to the growth of a large weaving industry employing many thousands of weavers and spinners along the north side of the Forth. Alloa, mentioned previously, was a major textile port.

Alexander married Catherine Cherry in 1839. The noted book shows one child, James, born in 1840. Although a search of parish records has not revealed the birth of William A Dewar, Alexander and Catherine were undoubtedly the parents not only of James but also of William A Dewar and another son, Peter. Alexander and Catherine (Cherry) Dewar of Cambuskenneth are noted as parents in the record of the marriage of William A to his second cousin Helen Dewar in 1869.

The Dewar book deals mainly with the principal heir of each generation. Siblings and especially daughters receive short shrift. Accordingly, we cannot tell from the book in what way William A. Dewar is a second cousin to his wife Helen. There are too many possibilities to wager a guess. Some day an interested descendant may initiate the necessary enquiries.

Descendants of William A and Helen Dewar descend not only from the Cambuskenneth Dewars but also from a union between Alexander Dewar and Helen Gilchrist. The evidence for this couple being the grandparents of Helen Dewar was tenuous until Malise Dewar of Wainwright confirmed the existence of a great-grandmother Gilchrist. Moreover, he recalled that Helen Gilchrist's father produced illicit whisky, and that on one occasion his daughter concealed the evidence from "revenuers" by draping her long skirt over it.

What is not known is whether or not this Alexander Dewar is also descended from the Cambuskenneth Dewars. It seems likely but has yet to be proven.

The A in William A Dewar's name appears to have been added after his marriage: whether the A stood for anything is unknown. His family was associated with Cambuskenneth, Bannockburn, St Ninians, and Whins of Milton. The last three villages, located to the south of Stirling, have grown in recent years into one continuous community of close to 10,000 persons. The country is gently rolling farmland, and even today, traversed as it is with a busy motorway, an appealing area. Never blighted by factories, Bannockburn and environs retain the charm of another era. One has to wonder at the feelings of the Dewars who exchanged this relatively moderate clime for the extremes of rural Alberta.

In the years 1905/06, William A Dewar, his six children, daughters-and son-in-laws, and grandchildren moved from Bannockburn to Wainwright, Alberta where they settled on five homesteads (a total of 5 sections/ 5 square miles) as follows:

William A and Alexander: S 1/2 12-45-6-W4th.

James: SE 1/4 11-45-6-W4th.

William: NW 1/4 12-45-6-W4th.

Peter: NE 1/4 14-45-6-W4th.

William Paterson Dewar and Maggie: S 1/2 18-45-5-W4th.

The first years in Alberta were excruciatingly hard, the winter of 1906-7 one of the coldest on record. The Dewars survived the first year in small shacks made of sod. As Malise Dewar described it in a letter dated March 1994:

There was no railroad then and after they arrived in Edmonton they joined forces with the Bill Morrison, Donald McDougal and Alex Murray families. The women and children stayed in Edmonton and the men came to their homesteads in wagons. Misfortune struck shortly after they got started. Their wagon broke an axle but McDougal cut down a birch tree and with a drawknife made an axle that carried them to their homesteads and back to Edmonton again. The men folk returned and erected sod shacks and the women and children came to Vermillion forty miles north of Wainwright by train and the rest of the way by wagon. Their homes were protected by fireguards, as there were always prairie fires to contend with. The men worked the first summer helping to build the railroad grade east of Wainwright.

Though many hard years followed, the Dewars persisted to achieve considerable success as growers of grain. On a visit to the remaining family in the 1950s, Gloria and Harold Murphy found the Dewars enjoying an unpretentious, contented life, and were impressed by the family’s encyclopaedic knowledge of world grain conditions and prices. The original homesteaders had few descendants however and as they and their children died or left the Wainwright area the farms were sold. Today the Dewars no longer farm in Alberta and the only one of the farming branch still living is Malise Dewar now (2001) in a Wainwright nursing home.

James Dewar and his wife Catherine (Kate) Chalmers were the first to abandon Alberta. They gave up their homestead after 6 years and in 1912 moved with their two sons William Dewar and James Brown Chalmers Dewar to the more salubrious Victoria, BC.

William A's grandson, William (Bill) Dewar, was christened in the Parish Church Bannockburn in 1903 but as an adult turned his back (as did his father) on the religious beginnings of the Dewars to become a freethinker[i]. While still a teenager, he left Victoria to work in many parts of Canada and the United States. He joined the US Army Air Corps and in March 1923 was a member of 46th Squadron, Brooks Field, near San Antonio, Texas. He served as an air mechanic there and in Florida. He returned to Canada to become a barber, first in Merritt and later Victoria. He was an independent person, a man with a mind of his own, and living in BC and operating his own barbershop suited his individualistic temperament. He married Freda Haddad in Merritt, and for two weeks less than 65 years they were inseparable. He was fond of sports (ice and roller figure skating, golf, swimming, fishing, hiking, camping) and, especially, dancing, and shared these enthusiasms with his wife and his daughter Gloria Catherine Dewar. He took great pride in his two grandchildren and lived to know two great-grandsons.

William (Bill) Dewar's parents and brother are buried near Victoria at Hatley Memorial Park, Colwood, BC. His own ashes were scattered on Indian Arm, near Vancouver BC.

Only one of William A Dewar's descendants remains who bears the Dewar name: Malise Dewar in Wainwright, and he leaves no children. Accordingly, this branch of the Dewars will soon end; however other branches of the Dewars of Cambuskenneth continue to flourish in Canada and elsewhere. And, happily, many of the Dewar strengths live on in our Murphys.

Sources: recollections of Gloria Catherine (Dewar) Murphy; papers of William and Malise J. Dewar; The House of Dewar written and published by Peter Beauclerk Dewar, London, 1991; and reports of the Scots Ancestry Research Society on our Dewar family, dated August and December 1996.

Updated November 2001.