The Celtic Mormaer aka The Huntsman Dunlop of Dunlop - Problems in the top of the Dunlop Tree

Do you have any evidence for the connections of fathers and sons above. James?

Yes, connections between generations, for people from this time period, are mostly found in inquests, land grants, court documents, and the like.

It seems clear that such documents do not exist. They may have done at one time, but been lost to history.

The problem with tradition is that it’s often at variance with reality — this appears over and over.

The policy on Geni is to detach unsupported connections — we put links to the previously connected profiles, and explain the situation in the Overview and curators notes.

The Dunlop sites are giving no more citations to primary sources than we have seen already. The clan chief will not have any documents that haven’t been shown already; such documents are fragile and vulnerable and have been given to various archives.

The Dunlop sites are not stating the connections, simply that the early known Dunlops existed. No assertion that they were fathers and sons.

That the Scots are and were Celts is not at issue — of course they were. The issue is that on Geni we have been working hard in the early Tree to keep connections between generations documented and non-speculative.

It looks like all the evidence to hand has been assembled -- I will detach and profiles that can't be verified as connected; certainly if evidence does appear we can put them back!

If you would like changes made to a locked profile, the method is to contact the curator.

I will add that link to the Overview — thanks!

The reason that the early Dunlops have been locked is that they are vexed profiles — those are the ones I locked. Later ones were locked by a different curator, because that is his method of working.

The locking of profiles in the early tree is common practice, when the profiles are vexed. By this I mean that there are problems that either have led to editing issues, or are likely to lead to editing issues.

So they are locked to keep them safe.

In the case of the early Dunlop tree, several people had been linked as father and son where there is no evidence that they were related in that way (or any other); and photos had been added that represented people from different times and places, and after I pointed this out, a couple were replaced, but they were replaced by stills from the movie Braveheart, which are under copyright.

You’ve added a map into the media section of the Huntsman profile, and it is in the public domain — I checked — but when I uploaded it, only a tiny piece showed, so that’s not working.

Oh! Unless you wanted only Huntshall to show!

In that case, I’ll set it as profile picture again.

One of the foundational issues in the early Tree is that it is extremely difficult to work in the medieval tree. Even primary documentation can be unreliable; and even when it isn’t, it’s of course hard to work in unless you can read Latin, or, occasionally, the vernacular language of the place the documents come from. (That, for instance, is why you see Sir William de Dunlop called Gulliemus — it’s his name in Latin, which is what the only document we have that mentions him is written in. His name isn’t Gulliemus, even if the clerk involved were to be spelling it correctly, which he isn’t — it’s William. To the Anglo-Normans. Who were writing the record. Was his name really Ulleam? Mayhap! But we don’t know, Because Anglo-Normans wrote the document.

My point being that this is a very difficult area to work in, and it helps a lot to have specialized knowledge, and specialized sources.

Which are both very hard to come by.

So!

That is why we lock up profiles in the early Tree which are vexed, or in vexed territory.

Please message me if you have changes you would like to see in the locked profiles.

The Branan line is sourced, as far as I can tell — it only goes back into the late 18th century — but please let me know if there are Branans that aren’t sourced.