The Society’s genealogist, Tom MacLachlan, holds over 20,000 records of MacLachlan family history.
The twice-yearly Clan Lachlan has run to 70 issues since 1979, going from a photocopied production by Duncan MacLachlan in Fort William, Scotland to step-up to an illustrated offset litho job under Chris MacLaughlin’s editorship in Northern Ireland. In that period the Clan Society had established branches in Australia, New Zealand and Canada and combined with others in the United States. As the distribution widened the content changed to reduce the “local” content; it was no longer the place for news about individual members and one reason for that was the established publications, pre-existing in the USA and newly-introduced in New Zealand, Australia and Canada, catered for that need.
The newsletter produced by David McLaughlin in Orkney will be extended to fill the need and short articles about Mac/McLachlans and the septs of the Clan, MacEwan and Gilchrist, past and present. A sept or sect in the this case is a Clan that is without a traditional chief which has occurred when the property of a chief has been forfeited, through battle or bankruptcy, and without a base and respect he could not govern his people. The people would rely on the remaining leader of the district to adopt them. The need now is for news items about members, about other McLachlans and anything else of special interest.
If you can help, please contact Tom McLachlan at sennachie@btinternet.com, Don’t let doubts about the use of grammar worry you, the Editor can deal with that in co-operation with you.
The number of enquiries to the Society about ancestors is running at a record level at present. One asks about ancestors who established the Auchentoshan distillery at Dalmuir, to the northwest end of Glasgow, back towards the City centre on the north bank of the Clyde from the Erskine Bridge. Here the MacLachlan triple-distilled Lowland single malt was produced. Duncan MacLachlan has written of this and the story of Scottish whiskies in past editions of Clan Lachlan. Another asks for assistance in finding the fate of the grandfather who went to the United States, eighty years ago, when the family broke up. There are the instances of men who went from Scotland, usually across the Atlantic, to establish themselves and earn the money that would bring the family to a new home but there was not always a happy reunion. There were instances of men becoming ill and dying from lack of assistance from friends or family in a strange country. For that reason they usually joined with another to travel or made prior contact with someone who had gone before. There were husbands who took the opportunity to leave their responsibilities in Scotland and the case in a Belfast family of the husband sending the money home for his wife and sons to join him and the wife declining to leave.
At one time it was the landed families and the newly-rich who took an interest in their forebears, the first to maintain title to the property and rank accumulated over time and the second to emulate them, carefully avoiding irregularities and embellishing the virtues that their ancestors never knew they possessed. The spread of education beyond the breadwinning subjects has made family history an interest to many and the facilities have expanded in the past forty or so years to match the aspirations of many. Searches that would once occupy months are now reduced to days and much can be done from home at the cost of the travel previously necessary.
The Clan Society encourages McLachlans to know their roots and will assist wherever possible; however, this exercise is never so interesting unless you are a participant in the research.
