Inventory Acc.12335 Clan Gregor Centre Archive
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Inventory Acc.12335 Clan Gregor Centre Archive (History and Genealogy) National Library of Scotland Manuscripts Division George IV Bridge Edinburgh EH1 1EW Tel: 0131-466 2812 Fax: 0131-466 2811 E-mail: [email protected] © Trustees of the National Library of Scotland Donated to the National Library of Scotland on behalf of the Clan Gregor Centre in March 2004. This is the third of three (as of April 2004) Clan Gregor deposits: for the first, see Acc.10664; for the second see Acc.11713. This inventory has been compiled by Sheila McGregor, FSA Scot, for the Clan Gregor Centre. Introduction This is the third major deposit of material relating to the history and family histories of Clan Gregor, the results of research and a collecting and collating exercise which began c.1989 and which continues. The first deposit of 28 items, Acc.10664, was made in January 1993. The second deposit of a further 83 items was made in February 1999. All those with an interest in this old Clan are vastly indebted to the National Library of Scotland for its willing support of this project. The archive represents the activities of many individuals, under the auspices of the Clan Gregor Centre and the general editorship of Sheila McGregor. The information reflects traditional knowledge, extracts from published sources, some of them rare, and much personal research in public records. Several files are the work of a named individual but in most cases they are composite collections. No previous effort on this scale has ever been made. It may fairly be said that the Clan Gregor Centre's compilation of archival data marks a substantial advance in the state of our understanding an that there should be no excuse for the repetition of errors, particularly in publications by official bodies where one might at least hope for accuracy. As a general rule one needs three independent lines of evidence before one can be certain of an identity, eg, a letter locating a family at a township, an appropriate birth at that township, and a marriage certificate or death certificate confirming the same information). In practice such records are unlikely to exist for any rural MacGregors in Scotland much before 1850. Researchers are particularly requested to note that no claims are made for the accuracy or reliability of any of the information in this Archive. Its quality and accuracy is known to be very variable. To counter this tendency the Centre published a research magazine, The Quaich, from 1989 to 1997 to provide a critical overview. Many problems have been identified and, very often resolved, and its views have stood the test of time very well, though the discrediting of cherished theories is not a policy for popularity. One might mention in this context the lack of validity of most ‘Rob Roy’ claims, the exposure of the McGehee-McGregor fraud, and the lack of validity of the Glencarnaig claim to the Chiefship. A different approach is taken by Dr John Ward, whose proposals are liable to be misleading to those inexperienced in the rigorous approach needed, since his policy is to include everything and wait for enlightenment. This might be a valid approach if revision were possible on the necessary scale. It might also be valid in an experimental discipline or if there were an abundance of documentary sources which might produce conflicting stories but since the problems in Clan Gregor arise very largely from a shortage of hard facts and an abundance of conflicting and optimistic stories, it seems wiser to adopt a more cautious approach. One may object on principle to certain current theories. Many aspects of the standard stories advanced by the Glencarnaig family (the MacGregor Murrays, or Murray MacGregors) lack historical validity and this may become worse. The 'Baronage' account of MacGregor of MacGregor, written by John Murray as a young man, which persists in official accounts of the kind, is fiction confused by a few inconvenient facts, and so is anything written by Rev. William Stirling, his protegé in later years. This caution extends to The History of the Clan Gregor compiled by Amelia Murray MacGregor. She can hardly have been unaware of several fundamental contradictions in her family traditions but she gave them absolute credence, naturally enough. One object of this version appears to have been to detach the Glencarnaig family (which came into Balquhidder in 1721) as far as possible from the Glengyle family representing the old line of Chiefs as far back as 1519. In fact the Glencarnaigs are of unknown origins and were very much intermarried with their new neighbours. The location of the current chiefship of Clan Gregor among the descendants of the younger son of the younger son of this obscure family, who may (but who may not) be MacGregors by blood in the male line, is one of the mysteries of modern heraldic law. They are thought by some, including my father, who was a native of Perthshire, to have been Murrays, which would go far to explaining several otherwise obscure things: their preferential treatment by the Duke of Atholl in 1721 when he evicted the MacIntyres, a native family affiliated to the chiefs of Clan Dougal Ciar, to give Iain Og and his sons their short and disastrous lease of Glencarnaig. It was burned in 1746 and a few years later they were bankrupt. Before he died in 1822 Sir John Murray, who in 1787 had claimed the Chiefship of Clan Gregor for himself, forfeited any right he might have acquired by election by his continued use of the surname Murray, a mark of his devotion to the Duke of Atholl, according to his own statement (in the Stirling Archives). It is evident that a man who considers himself a follower of the Duke of Atholl and, so, a Murray, cannot be the independent leader of a different Clan. John Murray's claim was in any case invalid, despite his vast wealth, since there were at that time numerous living individuals with a better claim, including senior lines of various descendants of Duncan Ladosach (if one accepts his MacGregor line). Insofar as there was ever a hereditary chiefship in Clan Gregor it is now extinct. Insofar as the chiefship was elective, the current holder has no right to the title, but no counter-claim is likely to succeed. Descendants of this Highland Clan are extremely numerous, far more so than is generally realised, for very few Clan Gregor families ever used the surname MacGregor. Proscription had little or nothing to do with this. Most Highland families continued to use their existing secondary family names, such as MacAndrew, MacIntyre, MacPhatrick and MacRobert, of which some two hundred modern variants have now been recognised. Recognition of this fact allows one to see Clan Gregor as an archaic organisation or tribal name for the aboriginal Gaelic population of the southern Highlands and Islands. Migrating MacGregors often used the surname Gregg or Greig, and this name allows us to trace migrating Gaels. In part as a result of their own activity and enterprise, and in part in response to a policy of ethnic cleansing imposed early in the seventeenth century, one finds them in leading positions in every Scottish burgh and in many parts of England at a very early date. Members of this population made up a substantial part of the population of the Lowlands in the historical period. The name Gregg is also common in Northern Ireland and North America in the seventeenth century. MacGregors by name and others from the Balquhidder area were among the first to organise voluntary migration to North America in the years before the War of Independence. Much transmitted family information has come back to the Clan Gregor Centre from these dispersed families, including a seventeenth-century Gregg whose line goes back through New Hampshire to Northern Ireland, Ayshire and Aberdeenshire, and a seventeenth- century Gregory who was kidnapped in Glasgow as a small boy and sold as a slave (see CGA 209). The persistence of such stories has a great deal to do with the persecution suffered by Clan Gregor for almost two centuries, which had the result of fixing the importance of its identity very clearly in the minds of its members, though the reason for this importance was never so clear. Those with an interest in this ancient and very primitive tribe owe these tradition-keepers and private researchers a great deal, since by collating their separate fragments of the real past, collected by the Clan Centre, that it has been possible to reconstruct the outlines of a story which was seldom written down and which is otherwise seen only through the eyes of unfriendly Lowland authorities and even less friendly neighbours. This view of an ancient but not uncultured population, Clan Gregor of the hunting and the pipes, as old as ills and hills, which fitted its landscape as a hand fits a glove, provides a realistic alternative to the meaningless romantic escapism that pervades modern Highland culture, which serves to fill the gap left by the loss of genuine oral history but which perverts the memory of our Gaelic ancestors in a most unacceptable way. This is a positive view but there is also a clear recognition of limits. Our new-found ability to collect and marshall data has also demonstrated the very severe limits on the available information which no amount of searching or listing will remedy. A study of the Balquhidder birth register for the years 1750-1800, a period of rapid growth, reveals that only a tiny percentage of births was ever recorded (Quaich 14, April 1993).