As Destinies Entwine....Is there More waiting in the Wings?

Life is filled with secrets. You can't learn them all at once. 
                                                 -Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

Coincidence was a concept he did not entirely trust. As someone who had spent his life exploring the hidden interconnectivity of disparate emblems and ideologies, Langdon viewed the world as a web of profoundly intertwined histories and events. The connections may be invisible, he often preached to his symbology classes at Harvard, but they are always there, buried just beneath the surface.

-Dan Brown, The Da Vinci Code

Our word 'clue' is derived from the Anglo-Saxon clew, meaning a 'ball of thread'. The most famous ball of thread in Western culture belonged to Ariadne, the beautiful daughter King Minos of Crete, who fell in love with Theseus...sent to the great Labyrinth of Knossos to be sacrificed to the Minotaur. 

-Anthony Stevens, Ariadne's Clue, p.3

This reflection arises really from the previous, "As Destinies Entwine....A Love Story". The story is ongoing. The Garvie-Adam connection may yet have a sequel one day. There may be more to this thread that has yet to disclose itself to us.

When we first visited Scotland in 2004 we homed in on Aberdalgie about three miles south-west of Perth. Several generations of my Garvie ancestors lived there. My great grand father Laurance Garvie was born at West Lodge, Dupplin Castle, Aberdalgie in 1845. His father, John Garvie, was a forester on the Dupplin Estates. John Garvie's parents, James Garvie and Janet Hutton were also from Aberdalgie. Though I know of no know connection, the Rev William Garvie was the local minister at the time.

Cousins Ken and Colin Garvie

Descendants of John and Janet Garvie

Aberdalgie

The primary object of our visit to the Aberdalgie Church was to see the Garvie graves in the church graveyard. The one grave of immediate interest to me was the grave of Janet Luke, John Garvie's wife and several of their children. It was this grave that pointed us to the Cemetery in Balgay.  The monument read...

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

JOHN GARVIE

DIED 21ST AUGUST 1898 AGED 79

INTERRED AT BALGAY CEMETERY, DUNDEE

AND JANET LUKE HIS WIFE

WHO DIED 15TH MAY, 1884 AGED 66

ALSO THEIR CHILDREN

MARGARET WHO DIED 16TH JULY

1875 AGED 21

ELIZABETH WHO DIED 26TH APRIL

1881 AGED 33

AND

CHARLES, JESSIE & MARY ANN

WHO DIED IN INFANCY

JANE GARVIE DIED 29TH JULY

1928 AGED 83 YEARS

---

ERECTED BY HER DAUGHTER JANE

PEACE PERFECT PEACE

-=O=-

John Garvie's father was James Garvie who we believe was a son of James Garvie and Janet Glass. (It might be that the two James' are the same person and Janet Hutton was a second marriage. Janet Glass had died early in 1812. In September 1812 James Garvie married Janet Hutton. Unfortunately the records are incomplete.) Whatever, the James Garvie of Janet Glass was born 15 Oct 1753 in Scone.

The Garvies of Scotland proliferate around the legendary Scone near Perth in Perthshire. According to a letter from J C Garvie Macleod to the editor  of  the Oban Times, Spenthorn, West Park, Leeds (date unknown) it is said that the Garvies of Perthshire "are descended from John Garbh, seventh Maclean of Coll, through one of his sons, probably John of Totaronald." According to him, John Garbh was wounded at the Battle of Inverkeithing, Fifeshire (1651) and did not return to Coll. His three sons (or grandsons) rented Upper Balgarvie, Lower Balgarvie and the Mill of Balgarvie in the Perthshire, Parish of Scone from the Earl of Mansfield.  Their descendants were tenants of Muirton, Haggis Hall and other farms near Perth.

In Scots the prefix "bal" means "place or town of" so "Balgarvie" means "Garvie's Place". "Balgay" means "Place of Breezes".

Walking around the small Aberdalgie cemetery we came across two mysterious Adam family memorial stones side by side....

Sylvia Adam between the two Adam Memorials

Aberdalgie, Perthshire

The memorial stone of the first read in part...

IN MEMORY OF

JAMES ADAM

WHO DIED AT BALGARVIE, SCONE

5TH FEBY 1934 AGED 44 YEARS

BELOVED HUSBAND OF

ANNIE ANDERSON

WHO DIED

2ND FEBY 1972 AGED 80 YEARS

.....

The second stone read in part...

IN LOVING MEMORY OF

JAMES ADAM

BELOVED HUSBAND OF

JANET NIVEN

WHO DIED 3RD JUNE 1925

AGED 63 YEARS

.....

Other than the reference to Balgarvie, Scone there is no other indication that there is any link between the Garvies and Adams of Aberdalgie except that from other records, James Garvie and Janet Niven came from Lundie is a small hamlet 10 miles northwest of Dundee. They had Dundee connections too, Dundee where John Garvie and Elizabeth Fawns are buried (see previous blog).

The coincidence of "Balgarvie" may simply serve as a symbolon,  a pointer. Anthony Stevens explains this beautifully in his Ariadne's Clue (p.12):

The Greek noun symbolon referred to a token or tally which could be used as a verification of identity. An object, such as a bone, would be broken into two halves and each given separately to two people...who could then identify each other by producing both halves and checking that they fitted together. Each tally-holder knew his own half to be genuine. If perfect fit occurred between the two halves of the symbolon, a Gestalt was suddenly created out of the familiar (known) and the strange (unknown) parts and the bona fides of each individual was established as sharing the same allegiance.

Synchronicities work in such a way too. It is the "Adam Affect", the “Wow Moment”, when Adam first met Eve he exclaimed, "This one at last is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh!" (Gen 2.23). Diese endlich! The word Gestalt or “wholeness” is a good one in this context.

Stevens continues...

The conjunction of sym (together) with ballein (to throw) emphasizes the idea that the strange must be 'thrown together' with the familiar to construct a bridge of meaning between the known and unknown. In psychological terms, something unconscious is connected with consciousness, resulting in the experience of new meaning.

As the one monument stone pointed me to Balgay so the other was directing me to Balgarvie. Together they were the symbolon building a bridge from the known to the unknown.I am inclined to the "doctrine of the more"!

Further Reading:

Henry Z Jones Jr, Psychic Roots, Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy, Genealogical Publishing Co. In. Baltimore
Henry Z Jones Jr, More Psychic Roots, Further Adventures in Serendipity & Intuition in Genealogy, Genealogical Publishing Co. In. Baltimore
Anthony Stevens, Ariadne's Clue, Princeton University Press, Princeton

©Colin G Garvie HomePage: http://www.garvies.co.za