The following story is an excerpt from the book "A Genealogy of the Shobe, Kirkpatrick, and Dilling Families" by Franklin Dilling Shobe, Publication 1950; pg. XV:
The Kirkpatrick family originated more than eleven hundred years ago, and its history includes the names of knights, soldiers, teachers, ministers, musicians, doctors, lawyers, judges, professors, editors, publishers, statesmen, princes, dukes, baronets, diplomats, and at least one empress, who, for eighteen years, held the most conspicuous place in the history of the world.
She was the Empress Eugenie, a granddaughter of William Kirkpatrick, born at Granada, Spain, on May 5, 1826. On January 30, 1853, she married Napoleon the Third and became Empress of the French. Her only child, Louis, was killed in battle by the Zulus of South Africa in 1879. Eugenie lived to be ninety-four years of age.
The Kirkpatrick family originated in Albin, now called Scotland, and possessed an estate in Nithsdale, ten miles north of Dumfries and four miles southeast of Drumlarig. The old castle took its name “Closeburn” from Clota, near the source of the River Clyde, where the founder of the family was born. He was Donald Kirk, a soldier in the service of King Donald I of Scotland, who took the throne in the year 860 A.D. One Day he saved the life of the king, who, to reward him, bestowed upon him the estate in Dumfriesshire. His mother’s maiden name is said to have been Patrick, and, by combining the two names, the family name of Kirkpatrick was derived.
The early history of the family has been lost in obscurity. Few people could read or write and old records are now about the only source of information. The name Ivone Kirkpatrick appears as a witness on a charter granted by Robert Bruce, the elder, in the year 1130. A grandson of the above was granted a confirmatory charter to the estates of Closeburn in 1232 by King Alexander II. Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, who was at this time head of the House of Closeburn, had a younger brother by the name of Duncan who married Isabel, the daughter and heiress of Sir David Torthorwald, and thus established the second house of peers in the Kirkpatrick family.
Three generations later, in 1435, the younger Roger Kirkpatrick, was married to Lady Margaret de Summerville, who was a direct descendant of King Alfred the Great of England, and thus the two lines meet to form the ancestry of the Kirkpatricks of the present day. (Vicky's Note: This is incorrect -- other sources state that Sir Roger Kirkpatrick, brother of Duncan, both sons of Stephan, married Lady Margaret de Summerville).
From their eldest son, Thomas, descends the titled barons of the present day as sown in the left hand columns on the cart set forth on the preceding two pages, and from their second son, Alexander, descends the Kirkpatricks of Kirkmichael, who are the ancestors of Empress Eugenie and most of the Kirkpatricks in America.
The following are books and research materials that contain the history of the Kirkpatrick family members. The books were all copyrighted before 1923 and are no longer protected by copyright laws.