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Connections to Scottish clans

 

                                                                 Houses in Portree, Isle of Skye, Scotland

Last week I wrote about one set of Scottish immigrants that I have researched but those were not my ancestors. One of my own family lines does go back to Scotland though. I have connections to the Highlands and Islands, specifically to Islay and Skye. As I know of that link in my family tree, at one point I signed up to receive emails from the Society of Highland & Island History. They hold webinars and I never know when they might show something of interest. This past week there was a webinar about Y Chromosome Testing and the presenter was Alasdair F. Macdonald.

The Highlands with their clan system are an interesting place to pursue Y DNA testing. There are so many stories handed down about clan linages and the clan system still exists in the present day. Finding documentation to corroborate the stories can be tricky though, as Alasdair told us in the webinar. He has been doing DNA research for a long time as he was one of the contributors to Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA: A Guide for Family Historians. The book was originally published in 2019 but a new edition is about to come out.

One of the clans he spoke about was the Mathesons. I sat up and took notice then as that was the surname of my 3 x great grandfather, Kenneth Matheson, who immigrated from Skye to Prince Edward Island and then to Upper Canada. Apparently there are two main branches of the Matheson family, one from Shinness and one from Lochalsh. That last place name sounded familiar. It's where the bridge now goes from the mainland to Skye so I would have passed through it on my visit to the island.

Apparently, according to the presentation, there is also a connection between the Mathesons and the Rosses. That also piqued my interest as Kenneth Matheson was married to Ann Ross. Maybe there were ongoing connections between the families over the centuries as well. Of course, now I'm starting to dig out the information I have on my Scottish families. We'll see how far I get with that. 

A Tale of Scottish Immigrants in the Maritimes

 

                                                                                 Brass of priest (1540) Thaxted

I sign up for a lot of webinars related to my areas of research. That's probably part of the reason that I get distracted from whatever genealogical path I've been exploring. A recent talk put on by the Scottish SIG of the Ontario Genealogical Society caught my eye as it had the title, Scots in the Maritimes. I have Scottish lines of research and some of those families ended up in the Maritimes, so I signed up.

The speaker, Peggy Homans Chapman, presented a comprehensive view of records available about Scottish migrants in New Brunswick, Nova Scotia and PEI. I already knew a lot of the information she covered, like the wonderful books by Lucille Campey, but she mentioned some different and new to me items and databases that I want to explore.

One of the themes of her presentation about where the Scots settled showed that religion had a role to play in who settled where. I had found that in my own research. My ears perked up when she talked about the story of a priest who met boats coming in to Pictou to deter the Catholic Scots from putting down roots there. She thought it was just an old story but I was able to put the names of the priest, MacEachern, in the chat because I came upon that information in a story I covered in this blog.

The story I had about the priest differed somewhat as MacEachern wasn't meeting the newcomers, he advised people already settled in Pictou to move to Antigonish, where the Catholics had settled. this was part of the story I covered when I wrote about John Brack McNeil back in 2020. His story started with the December 14, 2019 blog post Loyalist or just loyal   and continued for six more blog posts in 2020 commencing with The Search for John McNeil. It was interesting to be reminded of this story and the research I had done in those areas of Nova Scotia. Now I'll have to see if I can find some similar information on my Scots who went to PEI.

Sources:

Information about Angus Bernard MacEachern the priest from PEI who came to Pictou https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angus_Bernard_MacEachern 

Blog posts related to the story:

Loyalist or just loyal? - December 14, 2019 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2019/12/loyalist-or-just-loyal.html

 The Search for John McNeil - January 11, 2020 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2020/01/the-search-for-john-mcneil.html

Other related blog posts:        The Riddle of the Three John McNeils January 18, 2020

Putting Down Roots by Chance January 25, 2020

The Power of Religion February 1, 2020

Notable in Malignant Cove February 8, 2020

A Will Adds Dates to the Timeline February 15, 2020

Scottish Names February 22, 2020

Images:

By Poliphilo - Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=81903245