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Appendix: The ancestry of the MacLeods of Badnaban
We returned to London with a mass of information on MacLeods that we now had to sort out. Confusion had inevitably arisen due to the number of different marriages of MacLeods to MacLeods. The Badnaban MacLeods were not a single family, but a collection of different, interconnected MacLeod lines. Luckily, we had General Registration records (which go back to 1855, but in the case of deaths identify the parents of people born long before then), censuses copied from the copies at Inchnadamph, and the earlier listings in Bangor-Jones’s books.
The following is an attempt to work out exactly who was who from the records available.
Alice’s father Ally Alistair MacLeod (1861-1940) was the son of Alexander MacLeod (1810-1884) and Christine MacLeod (1818-1895). Alexander was the son of Angus MacLeod (b. 1776) and Margaret MacLeod (1780-1870). This couple married in 1807 and had an elder daughter Eliza before Alexander was born in 1810. The 1811 census of Badnaban lists five MacLeod heads of households, including Angus MacLeod, with a household comprising two males (ie himself and Alexander) and two females (ie his wife Margaret and daughter Eliza). Margaret later appears in the 1841 census with two boys, Alexander and Donald, of the right age to be the foregoing Alexander (1810-1884) and his brother Donald, and also a much older Angus, born in 1756.
I think in the past this was taken as evidence that Angus was Margaret’s father, but we know from her death record that Margaret’s father was called Alexander: it seems far more likely that she was a widow living with her elderly father-in-law, ie, her late husband Angus’s father. The 1811 census does not list this Angus in Badnaban, but in Strathan, which is literally next to it, is an Angus MacLeod with a household comprising himself, another male and a female. Old Angus would have been alive at the time of the 1774 ‘census’ (a list of inhabitants of Assynt created by the Sutherland Estate), but he is not listed in the vicinity of Badnaban. The family tradition, however, is that the line came from Elphin, and sure enough there is an Angus MacLeod listed in Elphin, a with a wife, a child and a servant. He would have been one of the small farming families who lived in Elphin before the area was reassigned to victims of clearances, though his move to Badnaban would have been somewhat before the general movement and I cannot say with any certainty that he is the right person.
Margaret (1780-1870), meanwhile, was the daughter of Alexander MacLeod and Katy Matheson. I believe it was this Alexander who we found living at Cnocaneach with his family, only to be a victim of the clearances, trudging away with heavy heart to Langwell sheepfarm in 1812. His son Angus MacLeod was married in Assynt in 1809, clearly described as ‘of Knocknash’, to Mary Ross of Badnaban, presumably a relation of the Rosses who also lived at Cnocaneach. In 1811, he is listed at ‘Knocknash’ with another male, probably his first son, and a female, presumably his wife. This Angus, who was thus a brother of Scott’s ancestor Margaret, was cleared to Badnaban in 1812, where she was already living with her husband Angus MacLeod. I have not traced what happened to him and his family – he does not appear in the 1841 census.
Earlier population lists exist, but as they do not state relationships, they are only of limited use for genealogy. However, the lists show the spread of MacLeods gradually diminishing as one goes back through the 18th and 17th centuries. The 1774 lists show three MacLeods in Badnaban, Neil MacLeod McInnash, with a wife and four children; Katherine MacLeod (presumably a widow) with a daughter and Murdoch MacLeod alias McCurchy with a wife and two servants (he was presumably father of Janet MacLeod, born about 1776, who married Roderick MacLeod, another son of Alexander MacLeod and Katty Matheson, who was ancestor of a branch of MacLeods in New Zealand). In ‘Cnocknash’ was Roderick MacLeod with a wife and two servants, his son Roderick MacLeod Oge with a wife, and a third Roderick MacLeod McAngus, with a wife, two children and servants. We can conjecture reasonably plausibly that these two children included Alexander MacLeod who married Katty Matheson. The research done by Cousin Maime seems to include details from the now lost family Bible, and states that this Alexander had a brother John MacLeod who married Sibella MacKenzie, and had a son Alexander, father of Christina MacLeod (1818-1895), mother of Ally Alistair. If so, this son John could be the other child of Roderick in the 1774 list.
As Roderick was listed as ‘MacLeod Mc Angus’, he was presumably the son of an Angus MacLeod. The next list back we have is from 1746 and was made to record those local men able to fight who had not joined the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. Few locals had been Jacobites. Hugh MacLeod of Geanies in Easter Ross was the male-line representative of the deposed MacLeods of Assynt and was sent to Assynt in 1745 by the Lord President of the Court of Session to raise an Assynt Company of 100 men loyal to the Crown. Hugh clearly commanded much local loyalty, for he managed to raise the company, which fought at Culloden and later sought out rebels. Badnaban is not listed and probably did not exist then, but there is a listing for ‘Knockineach and Drumswordlin’. The latter is the name of the loch next to Cnochaneach and the name of the now deserted land to the loch’s east. Then, the area was quite well populated by MacLeods:
Rorie MacLeod
Murdo MacLeod, soldier
Alexander MacLeod, soldier
John MacLeod alias MacOnil, soldier
John MacLeod alias MacNeil, soldier
Angus MacLeod, soldier
Alexander MacLeod alias MacLien
Angus MacLeod alias MacAnnish
The Angus we are seeking, father of Roderick (1774) who was in turn the putative father of Alexander who was cleared in 1812 and whose daughter was Margaret (1780-1870), Scott’s 3 x great grandmother, could have been either of the two Anguses listed here. This population could well be the source of the 1774 MacLeods of Badnaban (and it’s interesting to note that a MacLeod alias MacAnnish appears in 1746, and a MacLeod McInnash appears in 1774).
The origins of the 1746 MacLeods of Cnocaneach and Drumswordlin is not clear: none are listed in the 1691 Hearth Tax, but at nearby Culag is a Rurie McLeod. Presumably they were somehow descended from the earlier MacLeods of Ardvreck Castle.
And what of the MacLeods of Elphin, the putative ancestors of the Angus MacLeod, born about 1756, the male-line great grandfather of Ally Alistair? Earlier MacLeods appear in the list for Elphin going back to 1667, when ‘John McCleud’ is listed in Elphin as ‘brother to the Laird of Assint’.
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