D is for
Dunadd, Duncan, Dugald,
Dunadd. ‘the place on the River Add’ in
the parish of Kilmichael Glassary on the opposite
shore of Loch Fyne to Castle Lachlan was the home
of many generations of the Seneschals to the
Maclachlans of that Ilk for their lands on that
side of the Loch. Unfortunately, those lands were
lost to the Chief’s family in the 17th
Century, when Charles Maitland, brother to the Duke
of Lauderdale, gained legal title to them. The
Scrymgeour family, the head of which was the Earl
of Dundee, had gained land in Glassary and Cowal by
way of marriage but had allowed the local
landowners to take it under their care as
‘kindly tenants’ without any formal
agreement. While this was unsettling for the
Strathlachlan family, the wily Maitland’s
accession to the property put an end to the Dunadd
family which lost their home and their livelihood
as hereditary tacksmen (the landowner’s
representative) of a comparatively fertile area.
Robert MacLachlan, who would have succeeded to the
position at Dunadd, had to forego the appendage to
his name but a marriage was arranged with Margaret
daughter of Archibald Campbell, the Duke of
Argyll’s tacksman of Rahoy in the large
parish of Morvern further north on the Sound of
Mull. Robert succeeded to his father-in-law’s
position, certainly with the Duke’s sanction,
if not on his initiative. None of Robert’s
sons took over the tack on his demise. His daughter
Mary married Sinclair of Kinlochaline, who had
become a proprietor after working successfully as a
merchant. She maintained a diary of events in
Morvern which is a valuable social history of the
district in her family’s time.
Duncan MacLachlan of Dunadd was Robert’s
grandfather, one of many bearers of this dignified
‘Christian’ name which still flourishes
today despite the introduction of a very large
number of names from furth of the West Highlands of
Scotland where all boys born had shared a very
limited number. A hundred years ago King Duncan of
Scotland was killed in battle by his cousin MacBeth
who claimed the throne; known outside Scotland more
from the elaborated writings of William Shakespeare
than history books. .
Dugald was another popular name for boys in the
Highlands when the giving of names did not depend
on the child’s mother’s favourite male
film star of the time. If a boy was to be the first
or second son of the family his name was
predetermined even before conception when the first
had to bear that of his paternal grandfather and
the second boy the name of his maternal grandfather
while the third boy would be named after his own
father if the name had not been used already by one
of the previous two. There were instances of two
brothers bearing the same first name when those of
the grandfathers coincided but not many parents
were so stubborn in adhering to tradition. Girls
names were - and still are, to some extent -
treated similarly. Should the first-born not
survive his mother’s childbearing time, a son
born subsequently would take the name. This ritual
was observed, generally, throughout Scotland.
Elsewhere in Britain, as is well known, the first
born son was usually named after his father.
The name Dugald has not been maintained to the same
extent as Duncan, probably because it is not so
well suited to the tongues of non-Gaelic speakers,
but has been modified as Dougal which has,
seemingly, amalgamated with the surname of Douglas.
Some of the names that have almost disappeared from
Scotland have persisted later among families that
emigrated.
The name Donald is still very
popular; Donald McLachlan was well-known as the
writer and journalist following the second World
War in which he was distinguished as a Royal Navy
officer for his counter propaganda intended to
demoralized German U-Boat crews; his sons have long
been members of the Clan Society. Few are aware
that no one in the west Highlands would have been
referred to in speech as Donald
until the close of the 19th Century. He would be
‘Domhnall’ and should
his family have emigrated his name would be written
as Daniel but in Scotland as
Donald. All things Celtic were proscribed following
the 1745 Rising and so names were written in their
Lowland Scots or English equivalents although there
was not often a reason for the ordinary Highlanders
have their names written. Possibly the 1779 census
of the Duke of Argyll’s estates is the only
known occasion in that Century as there were very
few parish registers in use as early in the West
Highlands.
The Burgh of Dumbarton was on the
edge of the Highlands and many a Jacobite supporter
was locked away in the ancient and prominent Castle
of that place. For some obscure reason the county
of which Dumbarton is the chief
town, has been spelt as
Dunbartonshire. Its place on the
north bank of the Clyde that has made it easily
accessible to the towns , villages and farmtouns
along the sea and loch shores of Argyll by
waterborne McLachlans; most were sailors. Notable
were the bakers who left Strathlachlan early in the
19th Century to set up a thriving business of
baking bread, always important to the Scottish
diet. It was Dugald that set up
Helensburgh, the relatively new town on the north
bank of the river and Charles, his brother, who
entered the trade further upstream in the ancient
Burgh of Dumbarton.
D is for Dunoon,
a prime holiday resort close to the urban areas
along the banks of the Clyde, connected by frequent
vehicle ferries from Greenock and Gourock and by a
declining number older passenger boats from
Helensburgh, Kilcreggan, Strone and more. Besides
being the home town of MacLachlans from other Cowal
parishes, several families migrated there from the
northern parts of Argyll. Dunoon is accessible but
normally quiet and Victorian; the town provides the
best shopping for Cowal people without the need of
crossing the water or taking the long route to
Glasgow via the pass of Rest and be Thankful and
the busy road alongside Loch Lomond. The Cowal
Games, held in late summer of each year, draws
crowds to Dunoon from all parts of Scotland and
expatriate Scots from elsewhere in the World.
There has not been a Maclachlan Chief named Duncan
or Dugald although the former name, at least in the
past, has been given to a member of the immediate
family, but Donald, ca 1761-1817
was the 19th recorded of that Ilk who married
Susannah , daughter of Colin Campbell of Park, once
an estate on the south bank of the Clyde by
Inchinan in Renfrewshire. This Donald was the
second son of the name in his parents’
marriage, his elder brother having not survived.
Donald’s father was Robert who eventually
succeeded Lachlan, killed in battle at Culloden in
1746: his spouse was also a Campbell, Henrietta
daughter of Donald of Airds. The Campbells had a
strong influence on the Maclachlans of Maclachlan
at this time because of the favourable policy
adopted by the Duke, a supporter of the English
Crown, at a time when Lachlan (of the Forty-Five)
had been a casualty of the Crown’s army.
Strathlachlan and other property of Lachlan, the
rebel, had been sequestrated by the British
Government but the pronouncement was made from
Inverary Castle that as the son, Robert, was a
child at the time of his father’s death he
was not responsible in any way and so should not be
penalized by his forfeiting the property that was
to have come to him from his father. The decision
could have gone the other way if the Duke had not
been so disposed.
Donald’s family apprenticed him to the Law,
which was more effective from this period of
Scottish history in protecting property rights than
by force of arms as Charles Maitland had proved
earlier in the matter of the Scrymgeour property on
the Glassary side of the Loch.. Again, the eldest
son of the Chief was named after the father of the
child’s mother, Colin Campbell of Park. The
son, a midshipman at the time, died of yellow fever
in Barbadoes. The eldest daughter, Harriett,
married Colonel Alexander Campbell of Possil , Ann
Amillia married Mungo Nutter Campbell of Ballimore.
Robert, the eldest surviving son, succeeded his
father, became the Convener (Chairman) of Argyll
County Council, married Helen, daughter of William
A Carruthers of Dormont, Co Dumfries and removed
themselves to a pair of neighbouring houses in
Bournemouth, one of the warmest places in Britain
throughout the year. They had no children and the
management of the Castle Lachlan estates, amounting
to 12,000 acres, were handed over to Robert’s
prospective heir, his brother George, a lawyer.
Robert died in Bournemouth in 1872. Besides Colin
who died as a child, there was another of Donald
and Susanna, , presumably born after Colin’s
death; she was Colina who grew up to marry Colonel
Haggart. The names Colina and Susannah have been
repeated in the case of Chief Euan’s elder
aunt, now deceased, among other older family
members as well as in the case of his eldest
daughter,.
A Dugald McLachlan whose name was once known to
everyone in Argyll able to read, was the County
Clerk and Solicitor in the last thirty or so years
of the Nineteenth Century. He was one of six sons
of Dugald of Killimor on Mull and
his wife Isabella Stewart, another of whose sons
was also a practicing lawyer. Dugald, the younger
had two sons one of whom was baptised as Alastair
Mackintosh McLachlan but changed his surname to
MacLachlainn; his remarkable career was the subject
of an article in a recent issue of the Clan
Society’s journal Clan Lachlan. The
grandfather of Dugald of Killimor was Dugald
MacLachlan, tacksman, of Glencripesdale in Morven
parish who fought as a rebel officer in the Rising
of 1745 at the age of about sixteen.
Officers of any army, of the past at least, were
brought up with, or soon adopted by necessity, an
attitude of fierceness so as to instill in their
subordinates, and most others, the impression that
they were present and prepared to deal with any
opposition firmly and, if necessary, harshly. Such
a man was Captain Dugald MacLachlan sometime of the
Rifle Brigade in which he obtained his commission
without purchase in May 1814, three months short of
his 16th birthday. To be commissioned thus would
have been the result of a favourable recommendation
from a senior officer with a good war record, or by
bringing with him a number of young men to serve in
the ranks of his intended regiment. Highland
officer recruits were usually physically more
mature than the sons of the wealthy whose
father’s paid cash for their child’s
opportunity to get himself killed.
Dugald was of the family at Arihoulin in
Invernesshire where the River Scaddle flows into
the northern part of Loch Linnhe who were related
closely with the Coruanan MacLachlans, hereditary
standard bearers to Locheil and thought to be the
earliest cadets of the Chiefs’ line. After
the ’45 Rising and Cameron of Locheil’s
necessary evacuation to France away from the
vengeful Duke of Cumberland, money was raised for
the Laird’s upkeep across the Channel by
increasing rents, to the inconvenience of the
Coruanan family and others. Following their rift
with the officers of Locheil’s estate, most
of the younger members of Coruanan family went to
Canada and the Arihoulin people to Victoria,
.Australia to continue rearing sheep.
Captain Dugald returned one day to
his farm in Victoria with his men after a day on
the range to find the cook slaughtered, evidently
by Aboriginals. After arming themselves, the
Captain’s party took up the trail, caught up
with the departed visitors and taught them a lesson
which many of them were left in a condition never
to remember.
Anticipating a return visit by the surviving
natives, a particularly nasty dog was let out at
nights to discourage unwanted callers. One night
there were cries of terror and the noise of the dog
enjoying himself which gave Captain Dugald cause
for satisfaction. However, on putting the dog away
at the end of the night, it was found that there
was only one casualty, a white man, deceased,
having been attracted by the house lights with hope
for a night’s shelter.
The Captain died of heart disease at the Phillip
Club Hotel in Melbourne in January 1855.