A is for
Alexander, Allan,
Andrew, Angus,
Ann, Archibald,
Artt, for Argyll and
Aberdeen..
Although Alexander was written, it was Alasdair that was used in the Gaelic-speaking Highlands of Scotland; Allan was Ailean, Andrew was Aindrea although one would have travelled a long way through Argyll before meeting one of that name. Angus was Aonghas, Archibald Gilleasbuig, Artt or Arthur Artair was also an unusual name. The dictionary does not recognise Ann but Annabella was Barabel. Actually, it was a little more complicated than that but quite simple and straightforward to people used the names in speech but who would not have recognise them in writing, that is, if they ever came upon anything in writing.
Argyll was Earraghàidheal and the Duke of Argyll was Mac Cailein Mor. Aberdeen was Abaireadhain or Obaireathain. The district of Angus would have been Machair Aonghais.
Aberdeen did not accommodate more than a few MacLachlans even when Scottish country people became more mobile in the 19th Century and then they are most likely to have arrived by sea. Probably, not so Ewen MacLachlan (1775-1822), celebrated scholar and headmaster of Aberdeen Grammar School, a native of Fort William whose aptitude to learning was recognised by someone with resources to make higher education possible. Sergeant Donald McLachlan who was born about 1780 at Campbelltown, the Scottish burgh nearest Ireland, was sent there as a sergeant in the Argyll Fencibles when Britain was concerned that it might be the object of Napoleon’s next invasion. Men were conscripted into the fencible regiments by ballot and trained for defence only although the Government broke its undertaking not to send these regiments overseas when they deemed it necessary. Sergeant Donald crossed the seas of his own free will when he took his wife Mary Park and growing family to Ohio.
Andrew Youngsen Greig McLauchlan was born in Aberdeen in 1863, the son of John and of Jessie Greig. The Scandinavian influence is obvious in these names. John was born in Edinburgh but married in the ‘Granite City’ and was sufficiently successful a grocer to have had an investment in a sea-going vessel. He obtained a seaman apprenticeship for his son who qualified as a master mariner at Port Glasgow in 1889 by Board of Trade examination. As many Scottish seamen found, their voyages often ended in London, for some time the World’s busiest commercial port. He married Christina McMillan from Scotland at Mile End in the East End of London in 1891. His ship Tyrone ran aground at Otago, New Zealand in 1913 and though the enquiry exonerated him from blame, he never sailed again as a master. His son of precisely the same name was born in 1895 at St Pancras, London and served in wartime army; he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment and died in France only six weeks before the Armistice was declared in 1918.
The County of Argyll was the Highland and Island area of West Scotland comprising those lands that had come under the influence of successive Earls and, subsequently, Dukes of Argyll, based for several centuries at Inverary eleven miles further north on the opposite shore of Loch Fyne from where the Maclachlan Chiefs have been based for eight centuries. At the time of the first census of Britain in 1851 in which names of individuals were quoted, there were McLachlans to be found in every part of the County but more in some parishes than others. With emigration and the drift to towns and cities that is no longer the case.
As would be expected, the parishes surrounding Castle Lachlan had high proportions of McLachlans but even hereabouts ten percent of the total would be a generous estimate, although every family would be related someone of the name. Kilfinan was home to more of the Clan than neighbouring Strathlachlan because it had much more arable land and sea on almost all its boundaries from which most made their livelihood. Kilmichael Glassary on the opposite shore of Loch Fyne from Strathlachlan had many because the Chiefs held land there for many centuries with the related senior families of Dunadd and Kilinochanoch representing them with subsequent reinforcement of family bonds. The right of the Maclachlan Chiefs to occupy lands across the Loch was lost in 1672 through a greater power’s contriving but, by that time, McLachlan families had spread through the Knapdale parishes and Kintyre to the south and, offshore, to Jura and Islay.
Although by no means part of the extended Campbell family, the Maclachlans of Maclachlan were able to avoid major ‘misunderstandings’ with the Earls and then Dukes of Argyll and there were marriages into Campbell families, one of which led to the younger sons of Chief Lachlan taking up land on Islay after Argyll had driven off the MacDonalds of the Isles.
Families of MacLachlan, tacksmen (local leaders as representatives of major landowners) of the Duke, some of whom continued in that role despite being on the opposite side in the 1745 Rising, oversaw farm rentals and order in much of the parishes adjacent to Loch Linnhe. They were on the island of Lismore and in and around Morven parish until taking up the tack of Achnacraig at the east side of the Isle of Mull. There were many McLachlans in these parts as they were related in one way or another to the tacksman families, their leaders in time of war. In Kilmallie parish, once partly in Argyll and Inverness counties, there were many of the Clan who were attached to the MacLachlans of Coruanan, on the west side of Loch Linnhe close to the ‘modern’ town of Fort William. This senior family is said to have been an early branch of the Strathlachlan family who attached themselves to the Camerons of Locheil as their standard bearers.
McLachlan families were well represented in other counties but more of those later.
Keeping to the theme of the letter ‘A’ one family yielded several sons with the name Adam. Duncan, a blacksmith from Kilmallie (Fort William area) whose father was also Duncan and a blacksmith, settled in Stow south of Edinburgh where he married a woman from Peebles. Others of the name Adam, strictly confined to the Lowlands, were of those prolific McLachlans of Morton parish in Dumfriesshire who spread to many parts of England and on to Salt Lake City, among overseas destinations
Among the earliest-known McLachlans named Allan, was one who may have been of the Coruanan family. He professed to be a surgeon in Wapping, east London, two hundred and fifty years ago. Skills were learnt as an apprentice and much depended on the ability of the master surgeon and the intelligence and adaptability of the youthful apprentice for a reasonable patient recovery rate. Another early Allan was a bookseller in Dumfries trading as McLachlan & Chalmers as early as 1775 who is assumed to have settled there from further north. He was obviously educated and that attribute was not available to the ordinary Highlander at that time. Even earlier was Allan mentioned in a rental roll on Islay in 1686, the MacDonald period of proprietorship.
Allan MacLachlan of Corrie, although of a tacksman family, is alleged by the MacLeans of Inversanda to have lived on their land on the western shores of Loch Linnhe without right. Nevertheless, his sons held positions of rank including self-styled John of Greenhall who laid claim, unsuccessfully, to the property of John MacLachlan of of Auchentroig in Drymen parish west of Loch Lomond. An earlier member of the Auchentroig family was kidnapped by Rob Roy MacGregor and ransomed. There are 120 men named Allan in the Society’s records; there are others named Alan, a spelling introduced, generally, outside Scotland.
We have well over a thousand recorded as Alexander. The earliest of them was married in Kinfauns, near the city of Perth, in 1672 to Helen Gairdner. Good records were kept much earlier in the east of Scotland than in the west where laws governing the common people gave the Chiefs and large landowners the power of life or death. Alexander MacLachlan of Laudill in Morvern was the uncle of James of Lephinmore who died in 1737. Alexander was of the tacksman family that ruled in those parts on behalf of the Duke of Argyll. Lephinmore is in the parish of Strathlachlan and its incumbents were closely related to the Chiefs of Clan Lachlan.
Andrew, although not a West Highland name is as old as civilisation in Scotland and on moving out of Argyll and marrying, the name soon entered McLachlan families. The county of Stirling shared a border with Argyll at Loch Lomond and farther north where Andrew McLachlan of Drumlean married Elizabeth Graham, a daughter of the Earl of Monteith almost four hundred years ago. It was in these parts where the descendents of the MacLachlans of Auchentroig included many named Andrew and the church’s recording of marriages and births commenced rather earlier than in Argyll. The earliest record to hand of an Andrew McLachlan in Argyll was he and his wife Mary McVicar who had a son Achibald born at Stillaig in Kilfinan parish in 1745, the year prior to the fateful Rising of the Clans loyal to the Stuart Kings. It was often the Highland gentry that married into families of their own rank outside their home region that brought in names beyond those of local Celtic tradition.
There are around two hundred Andrews in our records including some named Andre, descendents of Charles McLachlan, a soldier discharged in Nova Scotia after the American Revolution, who took up a plot of land in Tracadie, a French-Canadian settlement in New Brunswick.
Angus, also the name of one of the old Scottish east coast counties, was not a name often chosen by McLachlans; there are around a hundred and fifty in our records. The earliest recorded are of the Innschonnell branch of the Craigenterve family, both hereditary officers to the principle Campbell family. Innischonnell, long a ruin, was the Campbell castle on Loch Awe occupied until the Campbell geographical base was moved to more accessible Inverary when an officer was installed to keep the old home in good order and to manage the surrounding lands. When the earlier hereditary keeper, a MacArthur, was prosecuted for theft at the beginning of the 17th Century, ‘Grim Faced Archie’ the 7th Earl of Argyll granted the post on a similar basis to Donald second son of Colin MacLachlan of Craigenterve, the family of hereditary leaches (doctors) to the Earls of Argyll from the 15th Century when Angus MacLachlan held the position. The name Angus was repeated several times in the family. Lachlan MacLachlan of Innischonnel served under Colonel Lachlan Maclachlan of Maclachlan in the 1745 Rising, fighting on the opposite side to the then Duke of Argyll.
Rather later, Angus Hope MacLachlan was a midshipman in the Royal Navy who lost his life in 1918 when taking part in the blockading of Zeebrugge harbour, thus neutralising part of the German battle fleet at a crucial time. He was posthumously promoted to sub-lieutenant. His grandfather Thomas became a prosperous banker in Darlington, Co Durham and had been born in Kirkaldy, son of a millwright.
In 1618 Archibald Dow MacLachlan lived with his wife Elizabeth Lamont at ‘Over Enyngs’ in Kilfinan parish near what is now Tighnabruiach, on the Kyles of Bute. It is assumed that he was closely related to the Chief and she to Lamont of that Ilk and that they were joined by a marriage contract as part of the long term gesture of goodwill between the two heads of Clans. The neighbouring clans had come into conflict frequently over domestic matters and the problem came to a head when Lachlan MacLachlan of Dunnamuck slaughtered Robert Lamont of Silvercraigs in 1579. When Lachlan Oig succeeded his uncle Archibald as Chief over twenty years later, he yielded property to James Lamont of Inveryne, Chief of his clan. as part of the reparations demanded in the name of King James VI, after some years of procrastination. Lachlan had married Isabel daughter of the same James Lamont, presumably as part of the process towards a peaceful co-existence.
Lachlan Oig or Og was so described because he was the younger of two, the other being Lachlan his father, younger brother of the of Archibald, the previous chief who had no legitimate sons. The significance of ‘Dow’ was to distinguish the elder of two men of the same name. Three Lachlans and two Archibalds have been mentioned here, names often repeated in the names of the heads of the Clan until two-hundred and sixty years ago. According to the best kept records of the time, those kept on behalf of MacCailein Mòr, the Dunnamuck MacLachlans were from the Dunadd family, hereditary seneschals of the lands of Maclachlan of that Ilk on the west side of Loch Fyne.
‘Enyngs’ appears as Innens or various similar versions on modern maps and the family of McLachlans that farmed there a hundred years ago and more, may have been descendents of Archibald Dow and Elizabeth Lamont.
Believed to have been two separate men were both Presbyterian ministers named Archibald MacLachlan who appear in 17th Century records. One, who came away from Glasgow University with a Master of Arts degree, was deposed in 1648 and went to Ireland. The other was the minister at Tarbert on the west side of Loch Lomond and was tried before the Presbytery of Inverary. He appears to have survived the charges brought because he lived to the age of 96 according to his tombstone dated 1731in Luss churchyard. His son was Colin and they are certain to have been the progenitors of, or to have been related to, the thriving family in this corner of Dunbartonshire that occupied estates providing wood for shipbuilding in the Burgh of Dumbarton as well as building ships themselves and employing the better known William Denny as an apprentice, supplying consecutive town clerks of Helensburgh and merchants and auctioneers in London including one who was the neighbour of Karl Marx (1818-83), the radical German-born economist..
Artt, is very, very rare. The half-pay lieutenant of the 81st Regimen of Foot bearing this name is believed to have been a son of Duncan MacLachlan of Kilbride, south of Oban. He would have been a relative of Captain John, the Bald Major who lost most of his hair in an encounter with natives of North America while there in the vain attempt to prevent the establishment of the United States. Another Artt was born on the Isle of Luing who married Catherine McLachlan in Glasgow in 1825 and was successful in the purveying of wine and spirits. His sons included a doctor who practised in the English Midlands and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dumfries; both would have been professionally engaged in countering the ill effects of their parent’s trade.
Alastair Mackintosh MacLachlainn (1892-1959) strove to be different; a description of him by John Cunningham Johnson that appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1998 is reproduced in Clan Lachlan 53 of 2006. From a family taking a lead in the 1745 Rising, a son of Dugald MacLachlan, the Argyll County Clerk & Solicitor, by his second wife, he and his brother were orphaned and put in the care of separate guardians. Eventually studying medicine, Alastair broke off in 1914 to volunteer as a stretcher bearer in the Allied lines. Although resuming his studies after the War he did not persist but married and settled down at Tobermoray. On the outbreak of the 1939 War he joined the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders as a private soldier at the age of 47 but, after Dunkirk, was allowed leave to resume his medical studies. With considerable encouragement from his contemporaries he qualified and after some hospital experience was commissioned in the RAMC to serve mainly on troopships.
With one or two exceptions, the spelling of our surname above has been generalised with ordinary Clansmen being ‘McLachlan’, the tacksmen and others of the Highland middle class as ‘MacLachlan’ and the chiefs as ‘Maclachlan’. Even in modern times every one of us has had our names misspelt in a variety of ways and so it always has been.
Although Alexander was written, it was Alasdair that was used in the Gaelic-speaking Highlands of Scotland; Allan was Ailean, Andrew was Aindrea although one would have travelled a long way through Argyll before meeting one of that name. Angus was Aonghas, Archibald Gilleasbuig, Artt or Arthur Artair was also an unusual name. The dictionary does not recognise Ann but Annabella was Barabel. Actually, it was a little more complicated than that but quite simple and straightforward to people used the names in speech but who would not have recognise them in writing, that is, if they ever came upon anything in writing.
Argyll was Earraghàidheal and the Duke of Argyll was Mac Cailein Mor. Aberdeen was Abaireadhain or Obaireathain. The district of Angus would have been Machair Aonghais.
Aberdeen did not accommodate more than a few MacLachlans even when Scottish country people became more mobile in the 19th Century and then they are most likely to have arrived by sea. Probably, not so Ewen MacLachlan (1775-1822), celebrated scholar and headmaster of Aberdeen Grammar School, a native of Fort William whose aptitude to learning was recognised by someone with resources to make higher education possible. Sergeant Donald McLachlan who was born about 1780 at Campbelltown, the Scottish burgh nearest Ireland, was sent there as a sergeant in the Argyll Fencibles when Britain was concerned that it might be the object of Napoleon’s next invasion. Men were conscripted into the fencible regiments by ballot and trained for defence only although the Government broke its undertaking not to send these regiments overseas when they deemed it necessary. Sergeant Donald crossed the seas of his own free will when he took his wife Mary Park and growing family to Ohio.
Andrew Youngsen Greig McLauchlan was born in Aberdeen in 1863, the son of John and of Jessie Greig. The Scandinavian influence is obvious in these names. John was born in Edinburgh but married in the ‘Granite City’ and was sufficiently successful a grocer to have had an investment in a sea-going vessel. He obtained a seaman apprenticeship for his son who qualified as a master mariner at Port Glasgow in 1889 by Board of Trade examination. As many Scottish seamen found, their voyages often ended in London, for some time the World’s busiest commercial port. He married Christina McMillan from Scotland at Mile End in the East End of London in 1891. His ship Tyrone ran aground at Otago, New Zealand in 1913 and though the enquiry exonerated him from blame, he never sailed again as a master. His son of precisely the same name was born in 1895 at St Pancras, London and served in wartime army; he was appointed 2nd Lieutenant in the Manchester Regiment and died in France only six weeks before the Armistice was declared in 1918.
The County of Argyll was the Highland and Island area of West Scotland comprising those lands that had come under the influence of successive Earls and, subsequently, Dukes of Argyll, based for several centuries at Inverary eleven miles further north on the opposite shore of Loch Fyne from where the Maclachlan Chiefs have been based for eight centuries. At the time of the first census of Britain in 1851 in which names of individuals were quoted, there were McLachlans to be found in every part of the County but more in some parishes than others. With emigration and the drift to towns and cities that is no longer the case.
As would be expected, the parishes surrounding Castle Lachlan had high proportions of McLachlans but even hereabouts ten percent of the total would be a generous estimate, although every family would be related someone of the name. Kilfinan was home to more of the Clan than neighbouring Strathlachlan because it had much more arable land and sea on almost all its boundaries from which most made their livelihood. Kilmichael Glassary on the opposite shore of Loch Fyne from Strathlachlan had many because the Chiefs held land there for many centuries with the related senior families of Dunadd and Kilinochanoch representing them with subsequent reinforcement of family bonds. The right of the Maclachlan Chiefs to occupy lands across the Loch was lost in 1672 through a greater power’s contriving but, by that time, McLachlan families had spread through the Knapdale parishes and Kintyre to the south and, offshore, to Jura and Islay.
Although by no means part of the extended Campbell family, the Maclachlans of Maclachlan were able to avoid major ‘misunderstandings’ with the Earls and then Dukes of Argyll and there were marriages into Campbell families, one of which led to the younger sons of Chief Lachlan taking up land on Islay after Argyll had driven off the MacDonalds of the Isles.
Families of MacLachlan, tacksmen (local leaders as representatives of major landowners) of the Duke, some of whom continued in that role despite being on the opposite side in the 1745 Rising, oversaw farm rentals and order in much of the parishes adjacent to Loch Linnhe. They were on the island of Lismore and in and around Morven parish until taking up the tack of Achnacraig at the east side of the Isle of Mull. There were many McLachlans in these parts as they were related in one way or another to the tacksman families, their leaders in time of war. In Kilmallie parish, once partly in Argyll and Inverness counties, there were many of the Clan who were attached to the MacLachlans of Coruanan, on the west side of Loch Linnhe close to the ‘modern’ town of Fort William. This senior family is said to have been an early branch of the Strathlachlan family who attached themselves to the Camerons of Locheil as their standard bearers.
McLachlan families were well represented in other counties but more of those later.
Keeping to the theme of the letter ‘A’ one family yielded several sons with the name Adam. Duncan, a blacksmith from Kilmallie (Fort William area) whose father was also Duncan and a blacksmith, settled in Stow south of Edinburgh where he married a woman from Peebles. Others of the name Adam, strictly confined to the Lowlands, were of those prolific McLachlans of Morton parish in Dumfriesshire who spread to many parts of England and on to Salt Lake City, among overseas destinations
Among the earliest-known McLachlans named Allan, was one who may have been of the Coruanan family. He professed to be a surgeon in Wapping, east London, two hundred and fifty years ago. Skills were learnt as an apprentice and much depended on the ability of the master surgeon and the intelligence and adaptability of the youthful apprentice for a reasonable patient recovery rate. Another early Allan was a bookseller in Dumfries trading as McLachlan & Chalmers as early as 1775 who is assumed to have settled there from further north. He was obviously educated and that attribute was not available to the ordinary Highlander at that time. Even earlier was Allan mentioned in a rental roll on Islay in 1686, the MacDonald period of proprietorship.
Allan MacLachlan of Corrie, although of a tacksman family, is alleged by the MacLeans of Inversanda to have lived on their land on the western shores of Loch Linnhe without right. Nevertheless, his sons held positions of rank including self-styled John of Greenhall who laid claim, unsuccessfully, to the property of John MacLachlan of of Auchentroig in Drymen parish west of Loch Lomond. An earlier member of the Auchentroig family was kidnapped by Rob Roy MacGregor and ransomed. There are 120 men named Allan in the Society’s records; there are others named Alan, a spelling introduced, generally, outside Scotland.
We have well over a thousand recorded as Alexander. The earliest of them was married in Kinfauns, near the city of Perth, in 1672 to Helen Gairdner. Good records were kept much earlier in the east of Scotland than in the west where laws governing the common people gave the Chiefs and large landowners the power of life or death. Alexander MacLachlan of Laudill in Morvern was the uncle of James of Lephinmore who died in 1737. Alexander was of the tacksman family that ruled in those parts on behalf of the Duke of Argyll. Lephinmore is in the parish of Strathlachlan and its incumbents were closely related to the Chiefs of Clan Lachlan.
Andrew, although not a West Highland name is as old as civilisation in Scotland and on moving out of Argyll and marrying, the name soon entered McLachlan families. The county of Stirling shared a border with Argyll at Loch Lomond and farther north where Andrew McLachlan of Drumlean married Elizabeth Graham, a daughter of the Earl of Monteith almost four hundred years ago. It was in these parts where the descendents of the MacLachlans of Auchentroig included many named Andrew and the church’s recording of marriages and births commenced rather earlier than in Argyll. The earliest record to hand of an Andrew McLachlan in Argyll was he and his wife Mary McVicar who had a son Achibald born at Stillaig in Kilfinan parish in 1745, the year prior to the fateful Rising of the Clans loyal to the Stuart Kings. It was often the Highland gentry that married into families of their own rank outside their home region that brought in names beyond those of local Celtic tradition.
There are around two hundred Andrews in our records including some named Andre, descendents of Charles McLachlan, a soldier discharged in Nova Scotia after the American Revolution, who took up a plot of land in Tracadie, a French-Canadian settlement in New Brunswick.
Angus, also the name of one of the old Scottish east coast counties, was not a name often chosen by McLachlans; there are around a hundred and fifty in our records. The earliest recorded are of the Innschonnell branch of the Craigenterve family, both hereditary officers to the principle Campbell family. Innischonnell, long a ruin, was the Campbell castle on Loch Awe occupied until the Campbell geographical base was moved to more accessible Inverary when an officer was installed to keep the old home in good order and to manage the surrounding lands. When the earlier hereditary keeper, a MacArthur, was prosecuted for theft at the beginning of the 17th Century, ‘Grim Faced Archie’ the 7th Earl of Argyll granted the post on a similar basis to Donald second son of Colin MacLachlan of Craigenterve, the family of hereditary leaches (doctors) to the Earls of Argyll from the 15th Century when Angus MacLachlan held the position. The name Angus was repeated several times in the family. Lachlan MacLachlan of Innischonnel served under Colonel Lachlan Maclachlan of Maclachlan in the 1745 Rising, fighting on the opposite side to the then Duke of Argyll.
Rather later, Angus Hope MacLachlan was a midshipman in the Royal Navy who lost his life in 1918 when taking part in the blockading of Zeebrugge harbour, thus neutralising part of the German battle fleet at a crucial time. He was posthumously promoted to sub-lieutenant. His grandfather Thomas became a prosperous banker in Darlington, Co Durham and had been born in Kirkaldy, son of a millwright.
In 1618 Archibald Dow MacLachlan lived with his wife Elizabeth Lamont at ‘Over Enyngs’ in Kilfinan parish near what is now Tighnabruiach, on the Kyles of Bute. It is assumed that he was closely related to the Chief and she to Lamont of that Ilk and that they were joined by a marriage contract as part of the long term gesture of goodwill between the two heads of Clans. The neighbouring clans had come into conflict frequently over domestic matters and the problem came to a head when Lachlan MacLachlan of Dunnamuck slaughtered Robert Lamont of Silvercraigs in 1579. When Lachlan Oig succeeded his uncle Archibald as Chief over twenty years later, he yielded property to James Lamont of Inveryne, Chief of his clan. as part of the reparations demanded in the name of King James VI, after some years of procrastination. Lachlan had married Isabel daughter of the same James Lamont, presumably as part of the process towards a peaceful co-existence.
Lachlan Oig or Og was so described because he was the younger of two, the other being Lachlan his father, younger brother of the of Archibald, the previous chief who had no legitimate sons. The significance of ‘Dow’ was to distinguish the elder of two men of the same name. Three Lachlans and two Archibalds have been mentioned here, names often repeated in the names of the heads of the Clan until two-hundred and sixty years ago. According to the best kept records of the time, those kept on behalf of MacCailein Mòr, the Dunnamuck MacLachlans were from the Dunadd family, hereditary seneschals of the lands of Maclachlan of that Ilk on the west side of Loch Fyne.
‘Enyngs’ appears as Innens or various similar versions on modern maps and the family of McLachlans that farmed there a hundred years ago and more, may have been descendents of Archibald Dow and Elizabeth Lamont.
Believed to have been two separate men were both Presbyterian ministers named Archibald MacLachlan who appear in 17th Century records. One, who came away from Glasgow University with a Master of Arts degree, was deposed in 1648 and went to Ireland. The other was the minister at Tarbert on the west side of Loch Lomond and was tried before the Presbytery of Inverary. He appears to have survived the charges brought because he lived to the age of 96 according to his tombstone dated 1731in Luss churchyard. His son was Colin and they are certain to have been the progenitors of, or to have been related to, the thriving family in this corner of Dunbartonshire that occupied estates providing wood for shipbuilding in the Burgh of Dumbarton as well as building ships themselves and employing the better known William Denny as an apprentice, supplying consecutive town clerks of Helensburgh and merchants and auctioneers in London including one who was the neighbour of Karl Marx (1818-83), the radical German-born economist..
Artt, is very, very rare. The half-pay lieutenant of the 81st Regimen of Foot bearing this name is believed to have been a son of Duncan MacLachlan of Kilbride, south of Oban. He would have been a relative of Captain John, the Bald Major who lost most of his hair in an encounter with natives of North America while there in the vain attempt to prevent the establishment of the United States. Another Artt was born on the Isle of Luing who married Catherine McLachlan in Glasgow in 1825 and was successful in the purveying of wine and spirits. His sons included a doctor who practised in the English Midlands and the Roman Catholic Bishop of Dumfries; both would have been professionally engaged in countering the ill effects of their parent’s trade.
Alastair Mackintosh MacLachlainn (1892-1959) strove to be different; a description of him by John Cunningham Johnson that appeared in the British Medical Journal in 1998 is reproduced in Clan Lachlan 53 of 2006. From a family taking a lead in the 1745 Rising, a son of Dugald MacLachlan, the Argyll County Clerk & Solicitor, by his second wife, he and his brother were orphaned and put in the care of separate guardians. Eventually studying medicine, Alastair broke off in 1914 to volunteer as a stretcher bearer in the Allied lines. Although resuming his studies after the War he did not persist but married and settled down at Tobermoray. On the outbreak of the 1939 War he joined the Argyll & Sutherland Highlanders as a private soldier at the age of 47 but, after Dunkirk, was allowed leave to resume his medical studies. With considerable encouragement from his contemporaries he qualified and after some hospital experience was commissioned in the RAMC to serve mainly on troopships.
With one or two exceptions, the spelling of our surname above has been generalised with ordinary Clansmen being ‘McLachlan’, the tacksmen and others of the Highland middle class as ‘MacLachlan’ and the chiefs as ‘Maclachlan’. Even in modern times every one of us has had our names misspelt in a variety of ways and so it always has been.