Today at the Museum

[mbhandy]

There were Scottish Trappers out here in the 1820's. Going this afternoon to Fort Bridger for Rendezvous. Will be in buckskins.
http://www.fortbridgerrendezvous.net/

MrBill

[blackbeard]

A kilt in Utah in 1865... that's pretty far west by 1865 standards.

The Caledonian Club of San Francisco (the host of the recent Pleasanton Games) held their first Highland Games in California in 1866.

[Highlander31]

A kilt in Utah in 1865... that's pretty far west by 1865 standards.

My Great-great grandfather arrived in California in 1857 at the urging of his brother, who had been in San Francisco since 1839 (after having been in Wisconsin in the coal business for ten years previous.)

[macwilkin]

A kilt in Utah in 1865... that's pretty far west by 1865 standards.

Besides the aforementioned Caledonian Club of SF, there were quite a few Scottish converts to the LDS faith beginning in the mid-19th century, mostly from the Industrial Central Belt...I have seen a picture, for example, of a Scots Mormon who survived the explosion of the Steamboat Saluda in Missouri River near Lexington, MO dressed in full Highland regalia. I'll have to track that down.

There is also a well-documented story of a Scottish immigrant in 1850s era Texas being buried in a kilt -- the tartan, which was discovered when the grave was opened as part of landscaping work on the cemetery, was subsiquently registered with the STA as the Laing family tartan.

And finally, don't forget the "Scots Piasiano of Los Angeles", Hugo Reid, who dressed his two boys in kilts, circa the 1830s.

T.

[Morris at Heathfield]

Well, isn't the official state tartan for Utah based on the Logan tartan? I believe he was an early settler in the area. Possibly pre-Mormon days?

The Utah state tartan is based on the Skene tartan, which was formerly associated with the Logans. This particular tartan was selected to honor the early (1820s) Utah fur trappers Ephraim Logan and Peter Skene Ogden.

I'd certainly be interested in learning more about 19th-century Utahns who wore the kilt, although I don't hold out much hope that my own ancestor was among them.

[Galician]

From the website of the Utah Scottish Association:

The Utah Centennial Tartan shall have a pattern or repeating-half-sett of white-2, blue-6, red-6, blue-4, red-6, green-18, red-6, and white-4 to represent the tartan worn anciently by the Logan and Skene clans, with the addition of a white stripe. The tartan honors the first Scots known to have been in Utah and those Utahns of Scottish heritage. The Lieutenant Governor shall register the tartan with the United States branch of the Scottish Tartans Authority in Skippack, Pennsylvania, 19474.

*The first American of Scottish descent who left a permanent mark upon Utah was Ephraim Logan. Logan was a mountain man who visited Cache Valley in northern Utah, and named the river that ran through the valley after his ancestral Scottish clan in 1824. When the settlers came to Cache Valley the settlement was called after the Logan River. A year after Logan's visit, Hudson Bay Company Cmdr., (out of Fort Vancouver, Oregon) Peter Skene Ogden, a fur trapper, and great explorer of the West, came to a place he called New Valley. He had in his company 70 trappers with wives and children. Ogden wrote, "I only wish we could find a dozen spots equal to it (later called Ogden)." Also in 1824, came another Scott explorer, Charles MacKay, also of the mountain-man genre. He recorded in his journal, of standing on a mountain and seeing the Great Salt Lake.

The Logan tartan was one of the original 19 tartans of Scotland in 1819, recorded in the weave book of Wilson & Son of Bannockburn. The Logans discarded the sett in the 1830s and was adopted by the Skenes in the 1850s until they discarded it during the 1880s. Utah's tartan resurrected this sett of Red, Green and Blue, and added a white strip for differening. It is very symbolic.