From the information about my mother plus the Buckley and Muirden family lines I have added in the Penny line material Making Family Connections to produce a Muirden, Laing, Buckley and Penny family tree – this brings these plus the Gossip, Pirie, MacKay, Buchan, Truscott, and Small strands together.
I have added Alexander Sydney Muirden from information sent to me by Harry Charap in Buenos Aires in July/August 2022.
It is believed that the original connection between the Penny and Muirden families is between my paternal grandmother (Maggie Buchan 1881 – 1969) and maternal great grandmother (Marjory Laing 1863 – 1944 who was called “Grandie”). Whether that original connection was in Aberdeen or in Argentina is speculative but there was a butcher’s shop in Kittybrewster owned by Reuben Laing who is my great grandmother’s brother; their father James Laing founded the business in 1850 at the age of 24. I recall my mother saying she had holidays with Grandie in Inverurie and also in Muchalls (about 12 miles south of Aberdeen).
It looks as if the Pennys went to the Argentine around 1907. By that time Alexander and Marjory Muirden could have been in the Argentine 14 years (leaving Australia in 1893) but it appears that route was via London as Norman Muirden was born in Hadley, London in 1898. A face-to-face connection in Aberdeen or the Argentine being made before 1908 can be ruled out. Although I was told the families met in the Argentine I thought that might have been Buenos Aires but my father was born in Bahia Blanca and I think my grandfather may have emigrated here from Aberdeen, later to move to Mendosa. The only time slot I can see my father and mother having met as children was in Aberdeen between 1919 and 1924 when she was 7 to 12 and he 10 to 15. My big assumption is that when my mother was at school in Aberdeen she stayed with her grandmother (Marjory Muirden i.e. Grandie) and my father was with his parents in Kittybrewster. Back to the addresses and a very speculative connection – all home addresses are in the area of Kittybrewster near the railway and a number of Reuben Laing’s butcher shops.
Norman J Penny - Family 