Preliminary MacNeil Scottish Research

Last week I found a clue to John Breac MacNeil's father's name. If the Scottish naming pattern was followed then, given the names of his own sons, John's father's name was likely to be Angus MacNeil. This was a start but would it be enough to take my search back to Scotland?

Because of his military service and the fact that he received early land grants, there was a fair bit written about John Breac MacNeil, the pioneer. Unfortunately, the sources did not agree where he came from. Some stated that John's origins were on the Isle of Barra, where many MacNeils come from, but the Rankin book, the one that supplied the somewhat confusing genealogy of John's family, said that John Breac MacNeil came from Knoydart.

I have done Scottish research on my own family line but they were far easier to find because they followed the established church and the family showed up in the OPRs or Old Parochial Records. Catholic Records are much harder to find.

A check of Scotland's People for Catholic records led me to the National Archives for Scotland. There I found out that the Catholic Church was not the established church after 1680. That was when the Reformation took place. At that time the number of Catholics diminished rapidly and the Church lost its parish structure and, as a consequence, the records of births and marriages that family historians hunt for. The Scottish Catholic Archives have consultable records of genealogical value at Columba House in Edinburgh but they are only available for the time after 1878. That won't help me in my quest to take the family of John Breac MacNeil further back in time.

Family Search yielded very little information when searched for Knoydart and none at all on a search for Barra or the Isle of Barra. Ancestry and Find My Past didn't come up with any relevant hits after a quick look. I'm not sure how far I will get online. Perhaps records don't exist.

Then I found another entry in my MacNeil binder, a photocopy of pages from Donald Whyte's Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to Canada Before Confederation Vol 1. On page 310 I found the entry for "MACNEIL, John 'Breac'. From Knoydart, INV.  To Antigonish Co, NS, 1788. m Margaret, d/o Donald, ch: 1. Catherine, b Gulf Shore; 2. Stephen; 3. Angus; 4. Donald; 5. Hector; 6. John; 7. Alexander; 8. Michael; 9. Mary. HCA 329."

Here was another source which gave Knoydart as John's place of origin. Frustratingly, I hadn't copied the page for references to decipher what HCA stood for. Could it be Highland Council Archives? Would a visit there when I visited Scotland yield more information on the MacNeil family?

Sources:

National Records of Scotland https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/catholic-parish-registers/introduction

Rankin, Rev. D.J., A History of the County of Antigonish, Nova Scotia (1929). Global Heritage Press/GlobalGenealogy.com Inc., Milton, Ontario, 2003. p329

Scottish Catholic Archives http://www.scottishcatholicarchives.org.uk/

Whyte, Donald, Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to Canada Before Confederation Vol 1. Ontario Genealogical Society, 1986