Welcome to the homepage of the Clan Home Association

A message from our Chief and President of the Clan Home Association

There are not many families who can pinpoint with more accuracy the part of the world from which their ancestors came than the Homes, let alone have an eponymous castle so conveniently spelt that it neatly embraces the alternate and more popular spelling of the name with an U. Nor indeed can many families still visit the ancestral homes of the main branches of their forbears.

Following the very successful Clan Home Gathering which took place in August 2008 in Berwickshire, the Clan Home Association will be manning a stand at The Gathering 2009 in Edinburgh over the weekend of July 25th/26th. We hope that as many Homes and Humes as possible will be traveling to Scotland for this great event and all can be assured of a very warm welcome.

The Clan Home Association acquired Hume Castle in 2005 from the Berwickshire Civic Society and thus into Clan ownership, a very democratic initiative which gives every member a real stake in our worldwide family. It is 356 years since Oliver Cromwell’s Colonels came into conflict with my ancestor, the 3^rd Earl, and battered the Castle with their artillery. It was a key defensive point against the English invaders, so there is certain appropriateness that after a somewhat chequered history over those years, we should be able to share it amongst us all.

We aim to make belonging to the Clan Home Association a truly rewarding experience which is why your Council and other members are working internationally as a team to produce a website that will enable us all to have access to a whole range of information and links for family and historical research purposes. But that is only the start because we have already harnessed the help of family members in the U.K. the U.S.A and New Zealand whose existing painstaking work will also be available on line. We are confidently expecting others to come forward as we develop the functions of the site and establish links with other invaluable genealogical sites that assist in the task of tracing our ancestors.

But most importantly the concept of bonding with kith and kin in a more personal way through the Clan Gatherings and through meetings large and small in countries all over the world, through forming friendships that could never happen realistically if we had not taken the plunge to establish this central structure. This does seem to be the right time.

My late father Lord Home of the Hirsel was very relaxed about the role of Clan chief and he could not have known how much easier the world wide web would make it for me to take up the task, knowing that the CHA could at relatively low cost reach out to Homes and Humes in every corner of the globe.

Now we have this amazing communication tool at our fingertips let us use it to bind our family together more closely, to explore our roots and enjoy belonging to a family whose motto "True to the End" is such a fine one by which to set our standards.