Post a query (or information from any one of the above categories) on any BRUCE name or related family. Please give dates, and locations they lived. Try to give as much information as possible.
Family tradition says that while living in England, my wife's Clarke family intermarried with the noble family of Robert the Bruce.
Here is a little bit of information on Robert Bruce, the gallant Scottish patriot who led his countrymen against the English. After his great victory at Bannockburn in 1314, Scotland became independent.
“Robert Bruce (1274-1329), a gallant Scottish king, spent most of his life trying to free his country from English rule. A legend it told of Bruce hiding from his enemies. He was lying on a bed in a wretched hut. On the roof above him, Bruce saw a spider swinging by one of its threads. It was trying to swing itself from one beam to another. It tried six times and failed. Bruce realized that he had fought the same number of battles in vain against the English. He decided that if the spider tried a seventh time and succeeded, he also would try again. The spider’s seventh attempt was successful. Bruce took heart, and went forth to victory.
“Early in his career, Bruce, then Earl of Carrick, swore allegiance to Edward I, King of England. He occasionally changed sides and aided the patriot, William Wallace. John de Baliol won the throne of Scotland in a famous lawsuit against Bruce and 12 other claimants. Bruce was friendly with Edward until 1306. That year Bruce was involved in the death of “Red Comyn,” who claimed the Scottish throne. Then Bruce had himself crowned king, but the English defeated him. He dismissed his troops, went to Ireland, and let his enemies think he was dead.
“The next spring he landed in Carrick, and defeated the English. Within two years he had gained control of almost all of Scotland. Then he advanced into England, destroying everything as he went, and defeated the English in a battle at Bannockburn in 1314. Under Edward III, England finally recognized Scotland’s independence and the right of Bruce to the throne, as King Robert I, in 1328. Bruce died about a year later.”
--Source: THE WORLD BOOK ENCYCLOPEDIA (1962 ed.), p. 538.
In March of 1999 I had the thrill of hearing from a 2nd cousin whom we'd never heard of. He has supplied us with many, many missing links in the Clarke family history and has taken the lineage back into England and beyond. THANK YOU! to Karl Ahlgren, our new-found cousin at Richland Hills, Texas, for all your assistance on the Clarke and Bruce families!!!!--Glenn Gohr.
I know there is a Robert the Bruce Society for all descendants of Robert the Bruce. I used to correspond with a lady who was a member of this group. It would be interesting to know if they have this Bruce-Clarke family connection in their records somewhere and be able to tie up the missing links.
Here is my wife's BRUCE lineage as far as I've found out so far:
Post a query (or information from any one of the above categories) on any BRUCE name or related family. Please give dates, and locations they lived. Try to give as much information as possible.
An online genealogy forum for posting queries has also been set up specifically for the BRUCE family. It can be found at the following address:
***Note***During the Fall of 1998, GenForum combined with Family Tree Maker, which means that all queries and information posted to that site becomes the property of Family Tree Maker. This is still a good site to look up information and get contact names for the BRUCE lines you are searching, but be advised that if you now post a new query or a response to something on that site, chances are that sometime in the future Family Tree Maker will include that information on a CD-ROM which they will sell for profit to anyone who is interested. I do not like the idea of someone else using my hard researched information and ideas and selling them for a profit without my knowledge. This same practice is evident on all of the Family Tree Maker pages which are found on the internet, if you will read the disclaimer notices on those pages. I recommend the Family Tree Maker pages as good look up pages, but I don't recommend posting information there. Similar things can be said for Ancestry.com and MyFamily.com which are connected to each other and seek to make a profit from genealogical materials on the internet.
One good researcher who is tracing the BRUCE surname as well as the BRICE surname (I assume these are interchangeable) is: BRICE GENEALOGY which has additional information relating to the BRUCE family.
Last updated June 1, 2003.
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