The Farm, Huntly                                    28th. Mch 1890. My dear Sir,             I have yours of the 26th. - Terpersie has not been forgotten, but I have been waiting on in hope of further information. There are valuable papers belonging to the Gordons of Park- hill & Pitlurg, which I have been anxious to see because they are said to contain reliable inform- ation of the pedigree of the Scurdarg & Riven families. I have asked the Sec. of the New Spalding Club to get hold of them & have them published, & he is to see what can be done. These papers are supposed to be the work of Gordon of Straloch, but they will speak for themselves.      It is a common idea that the present Craig is not a Gordon, but this is how I believe the relationship stands.-“James Gordon 12th. laird of Craig died in 1852 without issue. He was succeeded by his younger brother Francis Gordon of Kincardine (died 1859) whose daughter & heiress Mrs. Johnston Gordon held the property for some years. On her death in 1863 it reverted by the will of James Gordon to the great-grandson of his sister Barbara, & grandson of Alexander Shirrefs, advocate in Aberdeen, the present Mr. Shirrefs-Gordon of Craig. “This is extracted from “The Castles of Aberdeenshire” published by Wyllie & Son Aberdeen, & this special article is written by Mr. Dalrymple-Elphinstone who is pretty reliable. You should get a look of this book because it gives the history of the Craig family, & a short notice of Terpersie. You will find what I believe is true about Terpersie, that it was sold by Government to the York Building Coy, afterwards sold (probably under Chancery) to a (Sept.?1) of the Gordons who made money in St. Kitts, who again sold it to Knockespock, in whose hands I have no doubt it is (scanned?2) under such titles as he might have, unless you care to buy it!     I have a good many notes on charters &c upon Terpersie, which might be interesting if put together, but I would like to get the beginning of the story, which is, who was James Gordon 1st. laird of Lesmoir – who was his father & Grandfather. No body knows.   I wish you could give me a sketch of the Unicorn’s (?)3 head found at Lesmoir, & which is now built into the gable of your own house. Frank had a cast of it but it has disappeared & cannot be found. Something hangs upon it, but I can hardly say what, till I see it. Is it a crest or the head of a supporter, or merely an accidental ornament? If Lady Ann4 built Lesmoir she had no right to a crest or supporter, being a lady. If she intended it for her son he had no right to such arms. Crown vassals often had the Royal Arms in the place of honour, as at Craig; but the Lesmoirs were not Crown vassals but held of the Earls of Hy5. Therefore it follows, as I conjecture, that if this Unicorn is a fragment of the Royal Arms it must belong to a former Castle built previous to the settlement of the Scordarg family. A good deal of conjectural matter hangs upon it, but it may come to nothing.      By the bye I found, as I said was likely, that Terpersie was formerly spelled “Tirpressie” – that is the “bushy land.” I never mentioned this place except incidentally in my papers, because I confine myself to Strathbogie – still the place is so interwoven with the other Gordon Estates that it is always turning up.      I shall be glad to see you if you are in the neighbourhood, only please let me know before hand as I might be from home, & that would be disappointing.     I am getting quite rusty in photography – too old I suppose, or lazy. Last thing I did was to photograph the Tap a Noth6, but it was a dull day & the result therefore unsatisfactory.                                Yours very truly                                Jas Macdonald     Wm. Leiper Esq            Helensburgh

Notes

¹ Indistinct

² Likewise indistinct

³ The question mark in brackets on this occasion forms part of the text.

⁴ The same Lady Ann Stuart who is referred to in James Macdonald to William Leiper, 18 December 1889

⁵ ‘Hy’, presumably an abbreviation of Huntly

⁶ More conventionally Tap O Noth, an ancient hillfort near Rhynie, by Huntly, Aberdeenshire. A sketch of the same landmark, by Captain Douglas Wimberley, was made on a printed death notice, pertaining to Alexander Macdonald, wine merchant of Inverness, who died on 12^th May 1893. Is this an absolute coincidence or were James and Alexander related?

James Macdonald to William Leiper