Author: Janice H.

The MacGregors: Family Legend or True Story?

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A history of the MacGregors, printed 1871

As a genealogy beginner, I thought I knew all about Fanny MacGregor’s family history. Family lore had it that Fanny, my three-times great-grandmother, (c.1789-1862) was descended from the chiefs of the MacGregor clan. I had inherited a copy of a booklet, printed in 1871, that supposedly described those ancestors, tracing back to the early kings of Scotland.

I read the booklet carefully until I got to the last page. Then it claimed that Peter MacGregor “had several children, among whom was Duncan MacGregor…. Duncan had a daughter Fanny ….”  After pages of detailed pedigrees based on oral records, this was suddenly too vague to be credible.

I have confirmed that Fanny’s father’s name was Duncan MacGregor, but that was a very common name at the time and I have been unable to identify his baptismal record. Then I contacted the Clan Gregor Society in Scotland and learned that Peter MacGregor, Fanny’s grandfather according to the booklet, had only one child, and that child had no descendants.

I realized that the booklet was a history of the MacGregor chiefs, with one paragraph about Fanny at the end and no solid evidence to tie her to them.

Furthermore, the family stories I had heard from my mother never mentioned anyone named Peter. Her stories said that Fanny was born near Stirling, Scotland (that was true) and was descended from Evan Murray MacGregor, a Jacobite officer during the rising of 1745 led by Bonnie Prince Charlie. Fanny’s ancestor was said to have had a price upon his head after he escaped from Edinburgh Castle. At some point, the story added, a baby was lowered in a basket from the castle. I loved these romantic images, but what was true?

I started to read more about the history of Clan Gregor. Members of a Scottish clan were not all related; the clans were more like extended families, and included people who owed allegiance to the chief. There were four principal families in Clan Gregor in the 17th century, one being the Glencarnaig line, at that time mainly tenant farmers in the Balquhidder area of Perthshire. Members of the Glencarnaig family have been Gregor Clan chiefs since 1774.

There were bitter feuds between Clan Gregor and other clans, and the MacGregors lost their ancestral lands to more powerful neighbours around 1600. As a result, they fell out of favour with the king. The government passed a law abolishing the name MacGregor; anyone who used that name could be put to death. Off and on between 1603 and 1774, some members of the Glencarnaig family used the alias Murray.

Meanwhile, many people in Scotland, especially in the Highlands, were unhappy with the king in faraway London. When Charles Edward Stuart, or Bonnie Prince Charlie, came to Scotland in 1745 to raise an army and try to seize the throne he claimed was his birthright, he found many supporters. They were called Jacobites. The Jacobites had some military success at first, but were completely crushed the following year at the Battle of Culloden.

Several hundred members of Clan Gregor fought for the cause. Robert Murray MacGregor of Glencarnaig was a Lieutenant-Colonel during the rising. He went into hiding after Culloden, but surrendered in 1747 and spent three years in Edinburgh Castle. His brother Evan was an aide de camp to the young prince.

After Culloden, government soldiers punished the Highlanders, burning their homes and taking their livestock. In an attempt to wipe out the traditional Highland clan system, the government banned people from wearing tartans and from carrying weapons from 1747 until 1782.  

Rob Roy MacGregor’s grave in Balquhidder, not far from Port of Menteith where Fanny MacGregor was born. It is clear that the MacGregors are not about to forget the clan’s history. 

Fanny MacGregor was born just a few years after that ban was lifted. Whether or not she was related to the clan chiefs, to Peter, or to Evan, she must have heard about these events and they must have had a profound impact on her. She left for America and married an Englishman, but she never forgot the stories she heard about the banning of the MacGregor name, about the imprisoned Jacobite officer, and about the suffering of the Highlanders in the aftermath of the Jacobite rising.

All three of Fanny MacGregor Mitcheson’s sons, Robert, Duncan and Joseph, had MacGregor as a middle name. Eleven years after her death, Robert MacGregor Mitcheson gave the booklet about the MacGregor chiefs to his brother-in-law in Montreal, Stanley Clark Bagg.

At first I took that booklet to be factual family history, then I questioned its credibility when I realized there were holes in the genealogy. Now I recognize its value as part of the family’s heritage.  

Photocredits: Janice Hamilton

Research remarks: The MacGregors called themselves Children of the Mist because they felt persecuted. Their history is also hidden in the mists of time, and I may never discover the truth about Fanny’s pedigree. Every family has stories, however, and it is important that genealogists and family historians try to untangle the myths from the realities.

Here are some sources I used:

www.clangregor.com The website of The Clan Gregor Society includes a history of the clan, a list of associated family names, news about clan gatherings and information about a DNA study.

www.glendiscovery.com/macgregor45.htm “The Clan Gregor in the last Jacobite rising of 1745-46,” by Peter Lawrie, 1996.

Seton, Bruce Gordon, Sir. The prisoners of the ’45 / edited from the state papers by Sir Bruce Gordon Seton (Bart.), and Jean Gordon Arnot. Edinburgh: Printed by T. and A. Constable ltd. for the Scottish history society, 1928-29. (I found this book in the McGill University library.)

http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/content/help/index.aspx?1161 One of the most famous MacGregors was Rob Roy MacGregor, 1671-1734 . He became a legend, but he was a real person. As far as I know, he was not related to my ancestors.

Mary Frances MacGregor

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Lochend, Port of Menteith

During our first trip to Scotland, I said something to our guide about my three-times great-grandmother Mary Frances (Fanny) MacGregor. He teased me that the MacGregors were all ruffians and cattle thieves. I didn’t know much about her, but I was pretty sure she wasn’t a cattle thief. That was the spark that got me started researching my family history.

Five years later, I have learned a lot about my ancestors, but there are some questions I may never answer about Fanny and her origins.

According to the parish records of Port of Menteith, Mary Frances MacGregor was the “lawful daughter of Duncan and Catharine MacGregor in Lochend.” It says she was baptized on 26 December, 1789, however, her headstone gives her date of birth as 8 January, 1792. Perhaps she lied about her age, or perhaps the first child died and the baby born in 1792 was given the same name.

I have been unable to find a marriage record for Duncan MacGregor and Catharine MacGregor. Perhaps they had an irregular marriage, a legal, but informal, custom that did not require a church proclamation. I have not yet found any records of Fanny’s parents’ births.

The name MacGregor was proscribed, or legally banned, between 1603 and 1775. According to a family story, members of Fanny’s family used the alias Murray until they could once again call themselves MacGregor. Perhaps Fanny’s parents were born or married under aliases, which would explain why the records can’t be identified.

The Menteith district, where Fanny was born, is in the shadow of the Grampian Mountains, where the Scottish Lowlands meet the Highlands. There has been a large house at Lochend since 1715, probably built as the home of the estate manager. All the land in the area belonged to a handful of landowners and, when Fanny was a child, the homes of many tenant farmers would have dotted the landscape. On the shore of nearby Lake of Menteith was the hamlet of Port of Menteith, which has been in existence since at least the 15th century.  

The parish church, Port of Menteith

This area was once one the favourite hunting spots of the kings of Scotland, but in the late 1700s, it must have been a very poor. Most of the kirk sessions records, or records of the parish court, consisted of the names of parishioners receiving charity from the church. There was no mention of Duncan MacGregor’s family. I also checked some tax records for the area, without success so far. If Fanny’s family had lived in a house with seven windows or more, they would have had to pay a window tax. If they had owned horses or watches, they would have paid taxes on those too.   I do not know what Duncan’s occupation was. Whatever they were doing in Lochend, it appears they eventually left. According to a family story, Fanny finished her education in Edinburgh. She didn’t stay there, though. By 1818, Fanny had crossed the Atlantic and was living in Philadelphia, married to English-born merchant Robert Mitcheson.

Photos: copyright Janice Hamilton, 2012

Research Remarks:  Family stories linked my MacGregors to the Stirling area of Scotland, and Fanny’s home in Philadelphia was called Monteith house, so when I discovered there was a rural parish near Stirling called Port of Menteith, I suspected Fanny had a connection to it. Then I found a short biography of her son Joseph McGregor Mitcheson that confirmed it. I used http://.books.google.comto access the Historical Catalogue of the St. Andrews Society of Philadelphia, With Biographical Sketches of Deceased Members.

The Scottish Archive Network website www.scan.org.uk/index.html is a searchable electronic catalogue of some 50 archives in Scotland. It told me that the kirk sessions records for Port of Menteith parish are not in the National Archives in Edinburgh, but at the Stirling Council Archives, in the city of Stirling.

There are digitized historical tax rolls on the subscription access portion of the Scotland’s Places website, www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk. Maps and many other resources can also be viewed for free on this excellent site. The Scottish Genealogy Society also has resources online at www.scotsgenealogy.com/Resources.aspx, including taxation lists, university graduates, military records, trades and professions and prisoners.

Members of this family used both the McGregor and MacGregor spellings of the name. Also, MacGregor was Catharine’s maiden name; Scottish church records used the woman’s maiden name, even if she was married. Mary Frances was not a very common name and, with Scottish naming traditions in mind, I have attempted to look for an earlier Mary Frances, after whom Fanny might have been named. Fanny had a brother Andrew (baptized 1791) and a sister Christian (baptized 1793), so those also might have been family names. So far I’ve had no luck. Their grandparents would have used an alias, perhaps Murray, rather than MacGregor.

I found the reference to Fanny’s baptismal record on familysearch.org and viewed a copy of the parish record on the Scotland’s People website. There must have been numerous MacGregors in Port of Menteith parish at the time: besides the couple named Duncan MacGregor and Catherine MacGregor at Lochend, there were couples with the same names at nearby Auchreig, Cardross, Gartmore and Court Hill.