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.
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