Who was his father and how did the family get from Yorkshire to Scotland or vice versa I'm told families in that region might have bounced around back and forth across the border often.
Well, Yorkshire is not that far away. Crossing the border into England from here, after passing through Northumberland and County Durham, Yorkshire is the third county you would come to. At 158 miles from my house in the Scottish Borders to York the journey is less than half way to London. I would imagine that in the days before mechanised transport the journey on horseback might take around four days so in my view it is entirely feasible that your Yorkshire born relatives might have travelled to Scotland.