When did your Clans and Scottish heritage start, when did you first wear the kilt.

[MacDonald of Glencoe]

When did you find your Scottish heritage, what started it.
When did you decided to get a kilt, again what started it.
When I was very young we knew very little about Scottish history, it was not told to us, we did get a lot on English Kings and Queens but not out own. I was older before finding out about Robert Bruce, we knew nothing.
I did see the film Culloden and this got me trying to find out about it.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TW8bhB5oxQI

Never knew about this to then.
This was in the Highlands where I lived, we were not to speak Gaelic in School or in the playground, if caught you were belted.
You were given a baton to hold, if you had the baton when the School was over you got belted. If another person was caught you have them the baton and so it went on. When School was over the person with the baton got belted, he got belted again if he didn't say what person he got it from, they got all of us that were speaking it.
It was to destroy the language and Culture of Gaelic, it was The education system we had.
We got what is called The Scottish Cringe, we were made to be embarrassed at being Scottish, even more so at having a Highland accent.
It did go away for a little while after i seen this film, I found out about my own history,

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=TcB0IFBwk-k

Again the Scottish Cringe got me. It wasn't to i was a lot older that I found out for myself the Scottish history i never knew about. The Scottish Cringe was still there, we miscarried to sound the same as Lowland Scots as our Highland accent was made to make you sound stupid and not educated.
Later after finding out about The Clans and Scottish history i started to be proud of the Highlands, people, and accent, The Scottish Cringe was gone.
I was older before I started to wear Tartan, I don't wear the kilt, I have The Great Kilt, you can't get me out of it.
The language and Culture is on its way back now, it's different now to way back. It is great this happening.

[Patty Logan]

im sorry to hear about your upbringing. but if you dont mine me asking, what year would that have happened?

[California Highlander]

When did you find your Scottish heritage, what started it.
When did you decided to get a kilt, again what started it.

I am sorry about your experience growing up.

When did you find your Scottish heritage, what started it: I always knew about it. My grandmother's family came over from Wick right before she was born. So some kids born in Scotland, some in Colorado. My other lines also have quite a bit of Scottish ancestry. I discovered much later that there is another Scottish line. My father thought that tree "might be French", but no, from Scotland. Listed on a US census as speaking Gaelic and English. Better online records now than in the 80s...

When did you decide to get a kilt, again what started it: I wanted a kilt when I was around 17, but lived in a fairly rural California town in the 70s, and the cost was prohibitive for me and my family. In the 80s I signed up for mail order catalogs and coveted kilts, but still couldn't afford one. I got my first kilt from Burnett's & Struth in 2011. A couple more from USA kilts (family clan Macintosh & a hiking PV kilt). Tangent: I was interested in and slightly obsessed with Skarabrae from about 16 when I found a book in the library. I visited in 2015, 25+ years later, and it was amazing.

[grizzbass]

The mormon church is very big on genealogy so we have always know our heritage which left Scotland in the mid 1800 to come to Utah. Both sides on my side had Scottish roots as well as Scandinavian English and Swiss.(we still apparently have cousins living in the Chalet built in the the early 1800s) We never really did celebrate it though.
I attended a scottish festival in Tulsa back in the 1990's and quite enjoyed it but we moved to a small Idaho town and it was put on the backburner.
When we moved to California we started attending the festivals and the kids started participating in the games. First kilt was McKenzie and then Anderson. My wife's side goes through MacArthur and Jardine.
I do know a little about schools breaking people's natural nature. In kindergarten and the lower grades when we lived in Nebraska they broke me from being left handed. It did effect me in a weird way. For years I switched tenses. I'd say go for went and went for go etc.

[Patty Logan]

For me it started when i was a 13, all my school friends were joining cadets.(the military's version of scouts, for all you people who dont live in a Commonwealth Country) when i was there i saw that there was a group of people my age wearing skirts or kilts playing a weird octopus looking instrument. being a person who like to push boundaries especially when it come to the dress regulations i decided to join. It was perfect timing because the majority of the group was leaving do to being to "old" for the program and in order to get funding from are sponsor the local R.C.A.F ( royal canadian air force) pipe band we had to have a full band. (one snare, one base, one piper, and one tenor drummer) from that moment on I when to play with several bands at several highland games in my area, that made me realize that the kilt is not just a band uniform, its part of a cultural identity. So looked up my family tree, found out I have scottish ancestors and the rest is history!

[LANCER1562]

I had always had a passing interest interest in my Scottish heritage when my dad would jokingly refer to himself as being all Scotch with a little bit of water. I didn't realize at the time that it was because he was a heavy drinker. When I would go to parades and see the pipe bands, something would stir in me. I have always liked the sound of the pipes. When my mom died in 2003, she left me a rather large sum of money and instructions to buy something that made me happy. So I bought a made to measure kilt in the Kerr Modern tartan and several bagpipe CDs much to my then wife's chagrin. Over the years I have purchased more kilts and attended Highland games.

[MacDonald of Glencoe]

This was the early 60s that this was still happening Patty1059, the unsteady erosion of The Gaelic language and Culture had been going on since Culloden, then it was kept going through The Highland Clearances to the Eduction act of 1871 in Scotland that put Gaelic as a language not to be used in Schools, to destroy a Culture you must first destroy its lanquage, they almost did it.
It was the same over most of The Highlands, some stricter than others. In the Islands where Gaelic was mostly still spoken some Schools did do some Gaelic and allow it but they weren't supposed to.
I have a video on another of my posts called The Gaelic Labquage that shows what was happening to Gaelic and the Culture in Skye, it is very similar to where I am from.
This is what is great about American Scots, they know their heritage and history very early, we were denied it.

California Highlander, Its great that you knew your own ancestry, and From Wick in Caithness, I am from Canisbay in Caithness not that far from it. I know people with those names you mentioned, what was your Grandmothers name, you should still have relatives here.

Grizzbass, Again like other American Scots you knew about your Culture early. They tried that here about using the left hand, most kept using it and they didn't try again after that.


Lancer1562, You also like other American Scots knew your Culture and history early, it's great that it stirred you and you participate in it.
Have you seen this,


https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=J_KfeKhXEI0&t=5s

This should stir you up.

[Holcombe Thomas]

Like a number of others posting, I knew of my Scottish ancestry early on. I am not sure of a time when I did not know. (Southern Americans and genealogy.) My grandmother subscribed to "Scottish Field" magazine and passed her copies on to me when I was something like 11 or 12. I read it now.

I started wearing the kilt 18 or 19 years ago.

Holcombe

[OC Richard]

About the Scottish Cringe, one thing that's nice to see is Scottish actors and Scottish accents becoming seen and heard more in the worldwide media.

Sean Connery was dismissed by the English powers-that-be in the London film industry as being

"too tall, too dark, and too Scottish"

and when he won the role of James Bond he had to create the hybrid accent that he's used ever since.

The London film industry is full of Scottish actors who have had to adopt English accents to work, as recently as David Tennant (Dr Who), several of the Games Of Thrones cast, and Martin Compson (Line Of Duty).

The first step is allowing Scottish actors to use their own accents in English shows, as David Tennant did in Broadchurch.

It seems that finally here in the USA we're getting quality TV programmes filmed in Scotland with Scottish casts using their own accents such as Outlander, The Nest, The Loch, and Deadwater Fell. Practically every TV programme my wife and I have been watching features Scottish actors and/or is set in Scotland with a Scottish cast.

About my own ancestry, as you've seen genealogy is huge here in the USA. Many US families have a family story, a family Origin Myth as it were, and online databases and DNA testing have fed our fascination with where we come from.

I was raised not knowing much about our family history. My father tried to pass what he knew on to me, but I was a stupid kid and didn't pay attention. It's taken me decades of research to piece together all the stuff he knew! (He passed away when I was in my 20s.)

Now I know much, and just last month my son and I travelled the old stomping grounds in West Virginia, the epicentre of the Cooks, where we've been since the 18th century. A man in the first Cook generation born in America intermarried with a Stewart woman in the first generation to be born in America (the four parents of this couple were born in Scotland, Scotland, Ulster, and England) and the Cooks and the Stewarts continue to intermarry to this day, there in southwest West Virginia.

I've only found out the Stewart connection recently. I think my father always knew about it!

About wearing the kilt, that came not from knowing about any Scottish ancestry but because at the age of 17 I took up playing the pipes.

My grandmother made my first two kilts.

Here's the first photo of me piping. I'm wearing my first kilt, that my grandmother made from ordinary plaid wool I found at a local fabric shop. This would have been 1975.



Here by 1977 I had acquired more kit! I won an art contest and spent the prize money on a feather bonnet. The sporran was an old one I bought for $15 and restored. This is the second kilt my grandmother made for me, from real Scottish tartan, in Macdonald Of the Isles Hunting. I made the doublet and plaid myself.

[EagleJCS]

Growing up, I didn’t know much about my heritage on either side of the family. We didn’t really celebrate any cultural/ethnic heritage stuff because “We’re Americans”. For my father's family's part, it was a subject that was ‘not to be discussed’ – I found out why just a few years ago, and it was something Dad didn’t really know about either. His father didn’t discuss it. I’m going to leave it at that. When I was around 11-12 years old, Mom got a packet from a distant cousin which shared several generations of her father’s family history, largely German, which Mom never knew about being 4th generation American and her father having passed when she was still young. That sparked an interest in me to find out more, for both sides, but I didn’t really have much of an opportunity back then.

At around the same age, I developed an interest in bagpipes and decided I wanted to learn how to play them. Fast forward about 15 or so years. I found a piping instructor which eventually led to my finding out about Clan Scott (my surname), which I had never heard of. I was told then that even though there are Irish and English Scott’s in addition to the Scottish Scott’s, all are welcome to join the Clan Scott Society. That led to a drive to investigate my paternal line to find out our origins and if I could find where we came from and when.

With the help of the internet, I came across a cousin’s published research into our family (my grandfather’s cousin’s son, my second cousin once removed). I contacted him to correct what he had published about my branch, which he thanked me for, but he hasn't stayed in touch to share anything further. I have yet to be able to trace my paternal line myself far enough back to make the connection across the Atlantic, though one of the wives’ family (Prees/Preece/Price/Priest) goes back to Wales. His research goes back to about 1774 or so, still here in North America. As far as I know, that’s our “brick wall” for published records.

I do know now that I am basically an ‘American mutt’ – I have direct ancestors from several places in Western Europe. Wales, Ireland (my ggm, the most recent immigrant on my tree, came over at age 11 with her family in 1903), Germany (lots on both sides, mostly from the Rhine valley in the mid-1800’s), England, Luxembourg, Belgium. If you wanted to put a ratio to it, my ancestry is probably more German than anything, but all of the lines have been here in the US for well over 100 years now, so we're American.