Tom gets a Gold Star in his Permanent Record, wins another free ride on the Merry Go Round, and deserves a pat on the back from the rest of us. His maps show detail other online maps lack; they reveal clear patterns of migration otherwise obscured in text; and they carry our imaginations back in time, like H.G. Wells time machine.

It is not that the maps are old that makes them valuable, but they tell us where the treasure lies buried in distant lands.

Just as our ancestors told oral histories to new generations, Tom is carrying on a deeply rooted Scottish tradition of honoring everyone under the same roof, at the same well, in the same region, where ever the Caldwell kinfolk and clan are found.

There was a time when the Church and Monarchy sought to repress honoring ancestors as paganistic or incompatible with subservience to the King.

But from the Declaration of Arbroath in the 1300's, if not before, the Scots have displayed pride in their genealogical history.