The Clearances

[macwilkin]

Pages 150 to 154 of Meyer's book, The Highland Scots of North Carolina 1732- 1776, describes 3 reasons, at least for North Carolina Scots: 1. some Highlanders (Campbells) had it as it as "part of their tradition to defend the HOuse of Hanover." 2. "The fear of reprisal was probably a second factor....No group of people in the empire was any better acquainted with the painful aftermath of an unsuccessful revolution than the Highlanders....Even though Highlanders who were too young to remember the Forty-five had heard many stories of the brutalities, atrocities and destruction inflicted by the British Army under the Duke of Cumberland." 3. [The NC governor's policy of land grants] " must have been a third factor in influencing some of the Highlanders....the pressure of population and the changes in the agricultural system of the Highlands forced many people from the land. Thus the Highlanders land hunger is understandable."

Loyalties are often divided. I had ancestors who fought on both sides during the Revolution and the Civil War. And similar conflicts of interest can cause history to be interpreted different ways.

I guess history is like memory: selective and not altogether rooted in the facts.

Sir,

Many thanks for the specific passages from Meyer. My copy is at home on the shelf, so I wasn't able to quote directly from it.

Meyer's point about the collective memory of the '45 is spot on; Many Highlanders reasoned that the American Revolution would fail, just as the '45 did, and being on the losing side twice was somewhere they didn't want to be.

Interestingly, Fernec Szaz, in Scots in the North American West writes of anti-Scottish attitudes on the part of the rebels, from Thomas Jefferson's mention of "Scotch mercenaries" in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence*, down to a 1782 resolution passed by the State of Georgia that declared the Scots had a "decided inimicality to the Civil Liberties of America." (pp. 5-6) Flora MacDonald, famed of song and story as the woman who rescued the Bonnie Prince after Culloden, immigrated to North Carolina with her husband, only to return to Scotland after the war.

btw, Dr. Duane Meyer, the author, was a professor at my alma mater. He retired not long after I began my undergraduate work, so I never had the pleasure of taking a class with him.

Regards,

Todd

*native Scot John Witherspoon of New Jersey successfully lobbied TJ to remove this passage from the Declaration.

[Bellfree]

Thanks, Todd, for that addition. After a couple of years of retirement, I confess to feeling almost giddy at participating in a footnoted discussion again!
Andy

[James MacMillan]

Hunter, James. A Dance Called America: the Scottish Highlands, the United States, and Canada. Edinburgh: Mainstream, 1995.

Meyer, Duane. The Highland Scots of North Carolina, 1732-1776. Chapel Hill: U. of NC Press, 1961, 1987.

Moore, Christopher. The Loyalists: revolution, exile and settlement. Toronto : McClelland & Stewart, 1994.

Ray, Celeste. Highland Heritage: Scottish Americans in the American South. Chapel Hill: U. of NC Press, 2001.

Szasz, Fernec M. Scots in the North American West, 1790-1917. Norman: U. of Oklahoma Press, 2000.

Toffey, John J. A woman nobly planned : fact and myth in the legacy of Flora MacDonald. Durham, N.C. : Carolina Academic Press, c1997.

Thanks, I now have a couple of new ones to read.

[Nick the DSM]

cool! looks like i have to go to the library soon.

[Coemgen]

I'm just glad I was brought up with a great love for learning in general, especially history and reading.

My parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles are all college educated, many have master's degrees, and there's a smattering of doctoral degrees too, as well as technical training from military service that many of my relatives went through.

I and my brother and sister have been, from the time we were able to understand it, taught to learn and study all the fields of knowledge.

This all makes it very easy for me to forget that most people aren't as blessed as I have been with a great education and a love for learning. It was a genuine shock to me when I went to public school and found that my peers didn't want to read or study history or literature, that they didn't want to understand math or science.

Oh dear, I'm rambling again. Well, all this to say that we need to take a step back and remember that not everybody has the opportunities that we have to learn about these things. There are many subjects on which I am woefully ignorant, many more than those in which I know enough to be of intellectual use. As they say, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing.

[Coemgen]

A curriculum of California State History is essentially non-existent in California high schools. See, it's not on the State Exit Exams, so teachers are thoroughly discouraged from teaching it. I could rant on that, but will refrain. Suffice it to say that there's not a single kid in California that has to drive more than 75 miles to find SOMETHING fascinating from the 250 years (only 250 years!) of recorded human history in California, and yet I bet that the overwhelming majority have never been to a Mission, or a Gold Rush town, or Fort Ross.

I know! As I stated above, when I started public school as a high school freshman, I was astounded and shocked by my peers wilful ignorance of anything that was beyond what they needed to do to pass the classes. It's a real shame.

My parents and grandparents, in their great wisdom, took me and my brother and sister to museums and the missions and would take us to all sorts of neat places (the Stanford Theatre was always a favourite of mine before we moved to So. Cal. - I remember watching a series of Alfred Hitchcock films there - *sigh* those were the days). They'd also take us to the library, where I would spend hours (and still do!).

[Nick the DSM]

I love alfred hitchcock, The Birds is possibly the funniest movie ive ever seen!


I love reading too especially history. so when a good of scotland or kilts appears i jump on it to read it.

[MaclaineNY]

Hey guys, im new to the forum, but I've been researching my genealogy and have reached the time period of the clearances and you guys are pretty knowledgable about the subject.

My ancestors were Maclaines of Lochbuie (McLain sept). The family story is that they left Edinburgh for Tullamore Ireland in 1786. (they were protestants in Ireland and eventually came to New York in the 1860s).
I know the MacLeans of Duart were dispossessed after the Jacobite uprising and many fled, but the Lochbuie Maclaines did not participate in the rebellion and their lands were spared.

I know it will probably never be known fully but is it feasible to believe the highland clearances forced them off their land in the 1770s to Edinburgh and eventually out of Scotland completely? I'm trying to find anything about the Isle of Mull and the clan's lands in this time period but cant seem to.

I've been reading that almost all of the Ulster-Scots were lowlanders and border scots so I'm wondering where my ancestors would've fit in to the scheme of things.

Thank you

[JSFMACLJR]

Hey guys, im new to the forum, but I've been researching my genealogy and have reached the time period of the clearances and you guys are pretty knowledgable about the subject.

My ancestors were Maclaines of Lochbuie (McLain sept). The family story is that they left Edinburgh for Tullamore Ireland in 1786. (they were protestants in Ireland and eventually came to New York in the 1860s).
I know the MacLeans of Duart were dispossessed after the Jacobite uprising and many fled, but the Lochbuie Maclaines did not participate in the rebellion and their lands were spared.

I know it will probably never be known fully but is it feasible to believe the highland clearances forced them off their land in the 1770s to Edinburgh and eventually out of Scotland completely? I'm trying to find anything about the Isle of Mull and the clan's lands in this time period but cant seem to.

I've been reading that almost all of the Ulster-Scots were lowlanders and border scots so I'm wondering where my ancestors would've fit in to the scheme of things.

Thank you

Mull was not cleared until quite some time into the 19th century.

The book you MUST have is "Mull, The Island and Its People," by Jo Currie. It is a very inormative book with all sorts of information..

Two points I would like to bring to your attention:
1. the Lochbuie MacLaines are not a sept, but are rather cadets of the MacLean of Duarts. The Lochbuies and Duarts come off of two brothers who were the descendants of Gilleathain na Tuaidh, Gillian of the Battleaxe
2. MacLean of Duart did not forfeit his lands after the Jacobite uprisings (1st or 2nd). Rather, due to debts primarily, the Earl of Argyll (not yet a dukedom) took possession of Duart around 1674.

Regards,
Sandford MacLean

[JSFMACLJR]

I know it will probably never be known fully but is it feasible to believe the highland clearances forced them off their land in the 1770s to Edinburgh and eventually out of Scotland completely? I'm trying to find anything about the Isle of Mull and the clan's lands in this time period but cant seem to.

Mull was not cleared until much, much later! My people left Mull in 1829, BEFORE the clearances began.