Letter from George Cunnison
After publication of the Cunnison website, my cousin George got in touch with more information. Here is the covering letter which came with his information and reminiscenses.
Dear Isobel
We are indeed cousins but I was in my 17th year when you were born and at 18, off to National Service with the RAF (Gibraltar and the Suez Canal zone). I hardly remember you but I am looking now at a photo of your parents, dated 26th January 1941, and comparing it to your picture on your website and see that you look very like your mother, my Aunt Bertha. Bertha was my favourite aunt. She lived at my family home during the period in which our fathers went off to war.
The handsome young man wearing the KOSB Glengarry in the photo is your father, Tommy Robb. He was plucked from the water during the evacuation of Dunkirk and gained a modicum of fame on being pictured in a small group of soldiers who were the first liberators of the Normandy town of Caen in a book about the Kings Own Scottish Borderers. He was a very modest, self-effacing man, so it is unlikely that you ever heard of these things.
I am sending you some census records which may be of assistance in your research.
They go back as far as 1728. Here are a few brief comments to go with them.
I am hugely grateful to my friend, Michael Hodnett, for his persistence in tracking back all this way. I would still be in the dark without him.
Isobel, you mention the 1897 marriage certificate of John and Belle Cunnison. I have the original and had it backed as it was in a fragile state. Stamped on the certificate are the words, "Army Pay Office – 19 Dec 1899 – Berwick on Tweed". (KOSB connection here.)
Sorry, but I must take issue regarding your disagreement with the Scots Magazine's assertion that the Cunnisons are descended from the last Celtic Earl of Atholl via his "natural" son, Conan. The Scots Magazine is the world's oldest continuous journal still in production and highly regarded for the veracity of its records.
The magazine confirms, as you write, that the Ministers of Dull spelt their name Cunison.
A John Cunnison of Balnacree is recorded, serving as a subaltern with the Atholl Regiment in the 1715 Jacobite Rising. Further proof of our family loyalty to the Jacobite cause can be found in "The Dictionary of Scottish Surnames" (Harper Collins, 1989).
The Cunnisons are septs of (allied to) Clan Macfarlane (West Scotland) and Clan Robertson (Atholl in the east) which is where we are placed. The first chief was friend and ally to King Robert Bruce and the chief's first-born was named after him, Robert's son. In 1726 when Charles Cunnison married Girsel Robertson that significant bloodline was fused with ours. The Robertsons and their septs are recorded as ever active and loyal to the Stewarts.
Last but not least, I feel that more work should be done on some of the Cunnison wives.
George Cunnison
29th March, 2008
Go to Information and reminiscences supplied by George Cunnison