Quote Originally Posted by Scratchy's Lass View Post
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Certainly it may mean absolutely nothing, the Skidhamyrr/Skida Muir/Skitten Moor angle. OTOH, knowing that many centuries ago people sometimes took their names from where they were born or lived, the name similarity was just too interesting to ignore.

For whatever reason, perhaps stemming from the conflict between both sides - which lasted until nearly everyone was dead - exploring family histories was never important at my parents' level. What little we were told as kids was hardly more than a few lines of summary and was related by my father as though it were humorous.

He seemed to think that his father having had the family "traced back" was silly (and a goofy attempt to find a connection to someone 'important'), and in that vein told me about the 'criminals and sheep herders' - which are terms he used in his summarization of the report given to his father...
Nothing wrong with having criminal ancestors. I find them usually much more interesting that law abiding citizens who behaved themselves. One of my favorites is a Theophilous Hill who in the 1790's cruelly and wantonly murdered a man in Camden County, Georgia, then escaped to East Florida, which was Spanish at the time. I have a photocopy of his arrest warrant, offering a reward of 50 pounds in specie for his capture.