A history of a single kin group, expanding from an Anglo-Norman whose seal is on the Ragman Roll 1296, to 150-odd families of the mid-19th century - a different approach from most family histories written backwards from a present day single unit. Novel aspects include: •The concept of an "expanding historical torrent" and the importance of kinship in ensuring survival over the long-term.•Local history (Roxburghshire and Berwickshire, East and Middle Marches) from the Earls of Douglas to the Age of Improvement as a camera obscura, giving a comprehensible slant to wider Scottish history over 600 years.•Lairdship over time, changing lifestyle, nature of land holding, farming, occupations, tower houses, etc.•Social metamorphosis and decline, fragmentation of laird class, younger sons, urban middle class merchants, professionals and artisans, as well as agricultural workers.•Migration and the pressures which caused it, rural to urban, Scotland to northern England, and overseas.•Sense of identity: what kinship and the name (under several spellings) and the transition from the old church to the new kirk conveyed in the context of Border locality; Scotland and Scottishness, then Britishness and the Empire to World War I.