Family · the lines · Doig
the Doig line — looms of Angus, ranches of Montana
This is the maternal grandfather's line, and it travels the farthest in the fewest steps: from the weaving sheds and shooting estates of Angus, on the cold east coast of Scotland, to a homestead under the Montana sky. Five brothers crossed the water in the 1890s; four of them are buried in American ground. The looms gave way to the rifle, the rifle to the plough, the plough to the wide West.
c. 1778 → now · Monikie & Monifieth, Angus → Broadwater County, Montana → Central New York
of the Angus parishes
The line's documented head, married to Marjory Peddie at Monifieth on 26 June 1803, their children baptised across the neighbouring parish of Monikie. His own parents are the Scottish wall, waiting on a register page; the line stands firm from him down.
linen handloom weaver
Of Guildymuir in Monikie — a linen handloom weaver in the 1841 census, in the last generation before the power looms of Dundee swallowed the cottage trade. He married Martha Batchelor of Carmyllie in 1838 and died a widowed labourer in 1868, in the parish where he was born.
assistant gamekeeper
His mother's maiden name, Batchelor, was given to him for a middle name. By his 1862 marriage at Panbride he was an assistant gamekeeper — the Doigs around Carmyllie and Panbride were a gamekeeping family, keepers of someone else's coverts and grouse moors. In 1892 he left it all for America.
to America, 1893 · rancher
Born at Barry on the Angus coast, married to Mary Gilchrist in 1884, he crossed to America about 1893 — two years at Helena, then a ranch home at Toston, in Broadwater County, Montana. His obituary called him "the last of five brothers… closely associated with the settlement of the west." The looms were a world behind him now.
born under the big sky
Born near White Sulphur Springs, in a small place called Sixteen — the first of the line to be born American, in the high cold country between the mountains.
Tim's maternal grandfather · USAF
Born at Butte, a Technical Sergeant in the United States Air Force through Korea and Vietnam — the gamekeeper's great-grandson, now keeping a different kind of watch. He died in 1976, far from both Angus and Montana, in Washington, D.C.
Tim's mother
She married Robert VanBenschoten, and through her the Doig name — and the long crossing behind it — joins the family of record.
— and then you
Who followed the Doigs out of the Angus parish registers, across the Atlantic, and onto the Montana census rolls — and carries the name forward, the looms and the moors and the big sky all folded into it.
From a cottage loom in Angus to a homestead under the Montana sky — the longest crossing in the tree.
VIII generations · Scotland → Montana → Central New York · 1778 → now
Drawn from Scottish statutory and parish records of Angus, US censuses, and Montana newspaper obituaries. Alexander Doig's own parents remain the Scottish wall, awaiting a register image.
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