The following is from pages 3 and 4 of a booklet titled GENEALOGY of the LIDDLE FAMILY, authored about 1920 by Martha (Liddle) Gifford of Vineland, N.J.

“Liddesdale Scotland is the much contested district of the border and forms the wedge-like termination of Roxburghshire, running a little into Dumfreshire. Thomas Wake claiming Liddesdale caused a long border warfare in 1566. Liddesdale belonged to the crown and the most notable of its fortresses or Peel Towers is the Castle Hermitage, where Queen Mary visited Bothwell in 1566. Hermitage Castle is said to have been built by Lord Nicholas de Sules about the year 1244, who then owned all of Liddesdale. This castle is the best existing example of a border fortress in Scotland. Its remote position in the midst of a stretch of desolate country and on the edge of a deep morass bears out the grim character of the tales associated with it. The Sules family forfeited their estate in 1320 and Hermitage went to the Grahams’ and then by marriage of Mary Graham, to the Knight of Liddesdale, William Douglas. In 1492 Patric Hepburn, first Earl of Bothwell, exchanged Bothwell Castle on the Clyde, for Hermitage and Liddesdale. On the forfeiture of Francis Stewart, the last Earl of Bothwell, Hermitage went by grant to the Earl of Buccleuch, and is still owned by his descendants. Not far from Liddesdale, was fought the battle of Flodden Field where on September 9, 1513, so many Scotsmen perished. The ancient name of the river was Lid. The modern name of Liddle or Liddal includes both the name of the stream and the dale or del through which it flows. The addition of dale to Liddel, is a pleonasm, del and dale meaning the same. However, the name Liddle, Lyddel as applied to the river appears to have been established by the year 1250 or possibly earlier, through the ancient name sometimes appears much later. The manner of spelling the valley’s name varied so much in different localities and epochs of history that derivatives are bewildering. The spellings most frequently found are, Liddisdaill, Lyddesdale, Liddersdale, etc., with Liddesdale being the present established form. Documents have not been found recording the direct line of lineage from the family of Lord Sules to the Liddle ancestry, but in A. Jeffrey’s History of Roxburghshire, Vol. IV, is recorded a Randolph de Sules of the family of Lydal, who was made Provost of Roxburgh in 1296. That family of Sules Lords, as they were named Sules, built Hermitage Castle and were later Lords of Liddesdale. These Sules Lords are buried in a small enclosure beside Hermitage Castle. It is hardly disputable that the Liddles are other than a branch of this Lydal family of Randolph de Sules, because both the names Liddle and Liddesdale have undergone many different forms of spelling since the thirteenth century. In official records and historical documents there are numerous instances where the same parcel of land or family name is referred to with a variation in spelling. In Vol. IV, History of Roxburghshire, Jeffrey also records a Richard de Sules whose family name was Lydal marrying in 1279 a Muriel Lobdel of Robertson. This town is about two miles from New Castleton, and it was here that John and Robert Liddle, first recorded in this book, were born.”

On page 6 of her booklet, Martha (Liddle) Gifford also states:

“In 1727, Sir John Liddle owned an estate near that of sir William Johnstone’s, Westerhall, Lagholm, Scotland, and it is likely that this estate is the tract associated with the tale handed down of a grant having been lost to the family of Liddle’s resultant from numerous border insurrections at that time. It is related that the title to an old Scottish estate was in dispute and that the contending Liddle heirs had collected the necessary records and proofs of inheritance to establlish their claim indisputably. The courier with the documents was traveling on horseback through a wild and rugged section of the country to present the credentials to the proper authorities when he was murdered, the documents stolen and his body thrown into a well where it was later discovered. All evidence indicated that the deed had been committed by an employee of the rival claimant, who was later adjudged the entitled heir by the courts. It seems probable that Sir John Liddle who owned the above estate in 1727 was the father of Robert and John Liddle, our first American ancestors, because their birth dates of 1741 and 1748 respectively correspond with the period when Sir John would be rearing his family. This is further substantiated by the fact that they lived on the same grant of land and bore the same Christian name. There was trouble in Scotland over property at the time Robert and John came to America and according to facts or tales, handed down to the present generation, from father to son, it was the cause of their emigration.” Martha (Liddle) Gifford cites as references, the Encylopedia Britannica, XVI, 588 - Alexander Jeffrey, History and Antiquitus of Roxburghshire. She states also on page 10 that the Brothers John and Robert came to America in 1775 and settled New York State: John in Montgomery County and Robert in Schenectady County.

The Liddle family in her booklet is very probably related to ours, but as yet the connection has not been established. Neither her research nor mine have positively identified the ancestry of the emigrants.