Before the accelerated pace generated by the Agency group made a long absence from his Anti-Slavery office in Aldermanbury too difficult, Pringle wrote to Sir Walter Scott, on 14 June 1830:

He and Margaret duly went north that autumn but left no record of their travels. By his own account we know only of his visits to Selkirkshire, and to Morebattle in Roxburghshire, the adjoining county of his childhood. He wrote at length to his brother William in his South African Eildon about their immediate Pringle ancestors.

This was not simply a letter but the opening pages of a well-bound volume, its pages otherwise blank, but with Family Memorials Vol. I on the spine and ‘Family Memorials &c.’ at the top of page 1. The letter is unsigned and is followed by the 28-line ‘Inscription’ quoted at the foot. The volume found its way to the Ainslie family of Braeside in the Fort Beaufort district of the Cape Colony, descendants of Thomas's sister Jessie. It survives in the Cory Library in Grahamstown

Thomas's immediate family had sprung from a small farm, once the orchards of Dryburgh Abbey, a noble ruin since destroyed by English invaders in the mid-16th century.