Inquiry Concerning the Boss Family and the Name Boss; Correspondence Between W.G. Boss and H.R. Boss (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated.1902 Excerpt: ... last Disposition and Settlement, executed at Dunfermline on the 23d September, 1836, when he was about eighty years of age. The settlement is too long to quote here with its various provisions for the disposition of his estate and provision for his wife. But his signature may interest sorne of his descendants on your side of the great pond. A genealogical account of the Boswells of Balmuto, Fifeshire, formerly the chief of the name here, was given by Sir Robert Douglas, in bis Baronage of Scotland, published in 1798; but in the early generations, besides other errors, there is no proof of the succession as given by him. Although their numbers, so far as recorded, are not great in the twelfth, thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, they are found in sufficient numbers, and in a variety of positions, to give rise to doubt in family succession, in absence of written evidence. But there is no doubt that those of the name in the south of Scotland belonged to the same family stock. From an examination of the name Boswell in Scotland it appears that our abbreviation of the name was simply an adoption of the ancient practice of contracting the name in written records, and anciently it was also a heraldic practice for bearers of the name to carry on their shields an allusive figure, as denoting the first syllable of their family name, But this will be better understood if I give a sketch of the name from its first appearance in our island, and it will be seen that changes in the name are not a new thing. Like the Bois family and many others, the Boswells are descended from one or more of the numerous adventurers who came over with William Duke of Normandy in 1066, or soon thereafter. This was a land for colonization at that time, and doubtless many would arrive at int...