Clan MacGillivray

History

The MacGillivrays have long been counted within Clan Chattan, the confederation of clans linked to the Mackintosh chiefs. COSCA gives their early lands as Mull, Lochaber and Morvern, and Electric Scotland also describes an origin in the west. Tradition names a founder, Gillivray, but what the name originally meant is uncertain.

The Clan Chattan Association says the MacGillivrays came under the protection of the Mackintosh chief in 1268, joining the confederation as incomers rather than kin. Electric Scotland tells much the same story, with the date given only as about 1268, and one of its accounts says simply the thirteenth century. We treat the year as tradition, not as something documented.

By the mid-fifteenth century, Electric Scotland says, Mackintosh papers show the family settled at Dunmaglass, on land belonging to the thanes of Cawdor. The same source records a band of union at Termit, near Inverness, in 1609. It also gives a feu-contract dated 4 April 1626, which gave Farquhar MacGillivray the first heritable right to Dunmaglass. Another account on that page claims a grant in 1326, so the early dates are not firm.

Dunmaglass is placed in Strathnairn by the Clan Chattan Association, and near the headwaters of the Farigaig in Stratherrick by Electric Scotland. Both are in the hill country south-west of Inverness, but we cannot say more precisely where it lay.

The clan is best remembered for Culloden, on 16 April 1746. Alexander MacGillivray of Dunmaglass led the Clan Chattan men, having been picked for the role by Lady Anne Mackintosh, as her husband was serving elsewhere. The National Trust for Scotland's battlefield blog says the Chattan men broke the first government line but could go no further. Electric Scotland says Alexander was killed, and that friends later buried him at the kirk of Petty.

A story says that, mortally wounded, he led a thirsty drummer boy to a spring on the moor. That spring is now called the Well of the Dead, and is said to mark where he died. The blog itself hedges the tale, and so do we. Many other MacGillivrays are known to have fallen in the battle.

Electric Scotland says the Dunmaglass line moved to dispose of Dunmaglass in the nineteenth century, and it describes the chiefship as dormant after 1852. The Clan Chattan Association says there has been no recognised chief since 1914. The Register adds that the last Steward of the Clan, Colonel George Brown MacGillivray of Thunder Bay, Ontario, died in 1994.