THE McNAUGHTON FAMILIES WHO CAME TO AMERICA IN THE YEARS 1841-1843
(Written in 1954 by Arnold McNaughton)
My knowledge of this part of the story and branch of the family is lacking in detail, and little is known about the life and times of the generations now past and gone. While some of the facts are to be found in the family records, the story is written to a large extent as it was told to me by the late Miss Isabella McNaughton of Hemmingford a few weeks before she passed away.
Malcolm, brother of Thomas of Glen Lyon in Scotland and younger son of the last Scottish chief of the Clan McNaughton, (Editor’s note: Please remember this was written in 1954 when Arnold McNaughton and others in the family were still under the impression that our line descended from the last chief of the clan, John MacNachtan of Dunderave castle, rather than from the chief’s uncle of the same name who also lived in the castle, as has since been made clear.) lived at Balamaneck in Scotland where his occupation was the weaving of tartans for the Duke of Richmond, Malcolm married but no record of his wife's name exists. He had three sons and a daughter Catherine who married her first cousin Duncan, son of Thomas of Glen Lyon, her uncle. (Editor’s note: The recently found marriage record for this couple spell her name with a K: Katherine, and records indicate she may have been called "Kett".) Their six children were Donald of Havelock, Que., who was known as "the lame schoolmaster", Finlay who lived at Hemmingford, John who remained in the old land and died on the Isle of Skye, Duncan who was killed in the Canadian west as a soldier, Catherine who married John McFee and resided at Hemmingford, and Christina, Mrs. John Young, who was buried in Scotland.
Malcolm of Balamaneck's eldest son Donald, called "Big Donald" had graduated from Kelpatrick College and in 1840 or there-abouts set sail for America. He never married and it is not known where he settled, although it was in the Hemmingford district. About the only item of interest that has survived these many years concerning him was his dislike for the man his niece Christian planned to marry, and he threatened to cut her out of every penny he possessed if she went ahead with the marriage. She did marry the man of her choice and became Mrs. Angus MacKenzie. They owned and operated a farm at St. Chrysostome near the homesteads of the McFees and the Youngs Several of the MacKenzies still live, in that vicinity today.
Duncan was another son of Malcolm of Balamaneck and a brother of Big Donald but nothing is known about him. It is supposed that he operated a sheep ranch as his many cousins did. He had three children, of whom the second son Donald died as a young lad, Duncan the elder son and his sister Mary who married Hugh Cameron sailed to far-away Australia with their families. Exactly where these families settled when they reached that land is unknown, and any traces of their descendants have been lost through the years.
It is not known exactly just how long the voyage may have taken them, but at one time a sailboat making such a trip took close to eight months over some 18,000 miles of ocean. The sailboat would of course have to sail all the way down to the southern tip of Africa past the Cape of Good Hope, for there was then no Suez Canal to shorten the great distance of travel. It was likely that the boat would put into harbour along the way to obtain fresh supplies of food and water before proceeding into the Indian Ocean and the other side of the world. No record exists of the possible trials and illnesses that these families must have suffered on this voyage, but one can only too well imagine the hardships they had to endure.
The youngest son of Malcolm of Balamaneck was John, His children all came out to America sometime between the years 1840 and 1843. For some strange and mysterious reason all his three sons were named John. The eldest was John of the Mill who was born at Lochaber, Inverness-shire, Scotland. He settled north of Hemmingford next to Donald McFee's home. As there was a river running througe his property, there was also an old mill besides it; and because of it being located on his land, he was always known as John of the Mill. His wife was Isabella McLean, a native of Fort George, Inverness-shire, who outlived her husband by twenty years. They had a number of children who remained at home in the Hemmingford community on farms.
Then in 1929 with the death of Isie, Mrs. Robert Ellerton, this branch of the family came to an end.
***Some notes concerning this chapter by Thomas Ross Holme:
Arnold McNaughton died just before the age of computers began. So sad. He would have loved computers. Thanks to computers we are able to access records today that Arnold McNaughton could not find. I searched for years to find the Australian McNaughtons. There were a few pitfalls that had to be overcome along the way. The first one is that Arnold McNaughton wrote two books about our family, both very similar, but the second book corrected many mistakes of the first. The first was written in 1954, the second in 1977. In the first book (which has been quoted above) he says that Duncan McNaughton had 3 children: Donald dying young and Duncan marrying Mary Cameron, and Mary marrying Ewen Cameron. But in his 1977 book he changes this and says that it was Duncan who died young in Scotland and it was Donald who married Mary Cameron. Some of our McNaughton family members only have a copy of the 1954 book and are not aware of the changes that Arnold made in the 1977 book.
So after searching for ten years I found the lost Australian McNaughtons.
Australia has some pretty good genealogy websites and government services available. I found Hugh Cameron and Mary McNaughton here:
http://www.clan-cameron.org.au/getperson.php?personID=I32428&tree=cameron1
Hugh and Mary arrived in Port Phillip Bay, Victoria, Australia on Jan 7, 1849 aboard the ship Maitland which left Gravesend, Kent, England on Sept 14, 1848. (That's a port on the River Thames near London. They probably arrived in Gravesend on ship from Scotland.)
Hugh and Mary traveled to Australia with 8 children, the oldest being Margaret born in 1829 and the youngest being Angus born in 1841. So their children varied in age from 8 years old to 20 years old. The records describe Hugh as a shepherd and Mary as a housekeeper and goes on to say that they made their way to Linlithgow Plains, near Hamilton, Victoria, and from there to Glenthompson, which became the family seat of their descendants. The clan-cameron.org website traces their generations forward into the twentieth century. I am presently attempting to make contact with them.
So, having found Hugh and Mary the next step was to find Mary's brother Donald McNaughton and his wife Mary Cameron. But there was no record of any couple of those names coming to Australia. However, I did find a record of a Samuel McNaughton whose parents were Donald McNaughton and Marjory Cameron.
Below is a link to an Australian government database that has the information about Samuel McNaughton and the names of his parents. The site costs $.99 to view the details. So I have printed them out here.
http://online.justice.vic.gov.au/servlet/IdxSearch?action=getHistIdxSearchCriteria&queryIdParam=445037&pageNoParam=1
Family Name: MCNAUGHTON
Given Name(s): Saml
Sex: Unknown
Event: DEATH
Father's Name: Donald Cameron
Mother's Name: CAMERON - Marjory
Spouse's Family Name:
Spouse's Given Name(s):
Age: 86
Birth Place:
Death Place: Little River
Registration Year: 1896
Registration Number: 14008I made contact with descendants of this family and learned that Samuel's parents never came to Australia. They died in Kilmonivaig Scotland. Well. I had it in my head that Arnold McNaughton had written that Donald and Mary came to Australia, so initially I thought it couldn't be the same people. So I reread what Arnold wrote:
"Duncan the elder son and his sister Mary who married Hugh Cameron sailed to far-away Australia with their families. Exactly where these families settled when they reached that land is unknown, and any traces of their descendants have been lost through the years."
(Remember - In the 1954 book quoted above Arnold had Duncan as the son who married Mary Cameron. In the 1977 book he corrected that to read Donald.)
And the first paragraph of this chapter tells us that he isn't absolutely clear about the details:
"My knowledge of this part of the story and branch of the family is lacking in detail, and little is known about the life and times of the generations now past and gone. While some of the facts are to be found in the family records, the story is written to a large extent as it was told to me by the late Miss Isabella McNaughton of Hemmingford a few weeks before she passed away."
Also important to realize is that our McNaughtons left the Kilmonivaig area and sailed to Canada in 1821 and 1831. So anything these new-Canadian McNaughtons learned about what happened to McNaughton cousins in the late 1840's probably was learned by exchanging letters across the ocean. Even Big Donald, who arrived around 1840 or the youngest brother John who arrived in Canada before 1843 could not have carried the exact news because they too left Scotland before those McNaughtons went to Australia. So that part of the family was seen quite distantly by our people and remembered indistinctly. All they knew for certain was that the families of brother and sister Donald and Mary McNaughton had emmigrated to Australia with all their children and there were large families living there, but all contact with them was lost.
So I began to look deeper into the Little River McNaughtons. Here is information from an Australian government website:
"Samuel and Catherine McNaughton both came from Fort William, Scotland. Samuel had made his living as a tailor there. On July 3, 1848 they emigrated to Australia aboard the "Andromache" with their two sons, Donald aged four,and Dugald aged two. Catherine gave birth to a third son Duncan, 26 days after sailing, at the Bay of Biscay. They arrived in Port Phillip Bay on November 8,1848, where the "Andromache" berthed at Geelong.
Samuel remained in Geelong for two years, until the discovery of gold in Ballarat in 1851. There is no record of how successful he was in this venture, or how long he spent at the goldfields. However, in 1853 he purchased a property consisting of 1,800 acres of freehold land at Little River, near Geelong, which he called "The Rises". He carried on general farming and grazing of sheep and cattle. By this time there were two more sons in the family, John and Alexander. Another son, Angus, was born in 1856, the only son born in the bluestone house Samuel built on the property. The ruins of this house can still be seen on the property. Angus was the only son who did not become a farmer, instead becoming a journalist."
So our search for the Australian McNaughtons has found Hugh Cameron and Mary McNaughton and their 8 children arriving in Port Phillip Bay Victoria on Jan 7, 1849. And Samuel McNaughton and his wife and children arrived in Port Phillip Bay on November 8, 1848. That is only 2 months apart. These Kilmonivaig Scotland families traveled to Australia at near the same time. Which goes along with the general impression of Arnold McNaughton's writing that they came to Australia together, as a family. And the ultimately settled not all that far from each other. The circle on the left on the map below marks the the Glenthompson area where Hugh Cameron and Mary McNaughton and their children settled. The circle on the right marks where Samuel McNaughton's family settled.
I am still not one hundred percent certain Samuel McNaughton of Little River is the son of our Donald McNaughton. But so far everything I find points to it. First, there is no other Australian record of a Donald and Mary McNaughton or their children emmigrating from Kilmonivaig Scotland to Victoria Australia. And we know their family went to Australia. So where are they? The only record possible is this Samuel McNaughton of Little River. It is true that Arnold McNaughton gives her name as "Mary" Cameron in his writings. And Samuel's mother was named "Marjorie" Cameron. But the names Mary and Marjorie are derivatives, and are very similar. She may have been known by both names to her kindred. This was common among Scots. My grandmother on my father's side was Christened Mary Margaret Ross. And Margerie is short for Margaret. And add to this the possibility that our Canadian McNaughton ancestors may have remembered her as Mary instead of Marjorie. Easy to do.
Perhaps the clincher is in realizing that the Kilmonivaig area of Scotland was not natural McNaughton territory. There were not very many McNaughton families living there in the early eighteen hundreds. All or most of those McNaughton families living there were certainly related to each other. So Samuel McNaughton's Kilmonivaig parents must have been related to our line. And we pretty much know and are able to account for all the McNaughton individuals and families of our line.
There were some deep reasons why our line of McNaughtons had left Perth and moved north to the area around Kilmonivaig. Our family history tells us that Malcolm McNaughton made tartans for the Duke of Gordon. The Duke of Gordon owned most of the land around Kilmonivaig. So our McNaughtons moved to Gordon lands to raise sheep and make tartans. The fact that Samuel and his sons were tailers, is more proof they are of this same McNaughton family.
Samuel had 7 brothers and sisters. Four of them remained in Scotland: John, Ann, Mary and Dugald. His sister Margaret settled in Victoria. Brother Donald eventually went to New Zealand.
There remains a great deal of research to do in this area. I am trying to contact the genealogists for the Little River McNaughtons and will make adjustments to this site according to all new information that comes my way.
Thanks,
Thomas Ross Holme
For a more complete and up-to-date article on the Australian McNaughtons click on this link:
http://www.oocities.org/mcnaughtonofdunderave/quandry_of_the_missing_australia_mcnaughtons.htm
