| Tiree, Scotland =====>
|
The first known direct ancestor of mine was Niel McKinnon of the Isle of Tiree in the county of Argyll. Niel was a tenant farmer. The first documentation of Niel is his marriage in 1787 to Flora MacDonald. They lived in Heylipol on Tiree. Heylipol was Flora's birthplace I believe. Niel may have been from another town on Tiree because there were no MacKinnons listed in Heylipol in 1779. Tiree (alternatively spelled Tyree and Tireiry and known in Gaelic as
Tiriodh) is about
13 miles long and at its widest only 6 miles. The island's history is pre-Christian.
Several ancient Celtic runes can be found on the island. The island served as a farming
area for the Columban monks of Iona during St. Columba's time. Vikings began raiding the
Hebredian islands and held sway over Tiree until 1263. After that it came under control of
the Lordship of the Isles under whom the MacKinnon clan found great favor and the
MacDonald clan controlled island. In 1577 the MacLeans took possession and held control
until 1674 when the Campbells took over. The economy of Tiree has traditionally been farming, ranching, and fishing though in recent times it has become somewhat of a windsurfing mecca. Niel and Flora had four children -- Catharene (1788), Effy (1790), John (1792), and Niel (1799). Our link is the first son John. John was baptized on May 27, 1792. He was probably a farmer like his father. They lived in the town of Heylipol, which in 1787 was the largest town on the island with 185 people. At this time there were a total of 2,306 people on Tiree living in thirty-one different towns. On February 29, 1820, John married Ann McKinnon of Crossapol, a neighboring town. Ann was born in 1796 on the Isle of Mull. They had seven children -- Niel (1821), Una (1823), Donald (1825), John (1826), Catherine (1829), Hugh (1832), and Effy (1835). The second son, Donald, was our direct ancestor. Donald was baptized January 30, 1825. Tiree's population boomed between the mid-1700s to the mid-1800s growing from 2,000 inhabitants to nearly 5,000. A series of events, culminating in severe famines in Scotland in the mid-1800s, led to many deaths and a massive emigration. By 1890 Tyree's population had shrunk to 1,000. Today it is down to 790. The events leading up to the famines demonstrate both the subsistence level of existence on the island and the traditional relationship between the landowners and the crofters. Near the turn of the eighteenth century, with population increasing on the island, individual farmers were farming smaller and smaller plots. Fortunately, about the time Niel and Flora were married, kelp became much in demand as an industrial alkali. To help earn enough money to pay the rent, many farmers supplemented their earnings with kelping. The sudden demand for kelp led inadvertently to smaller and smaller crop yields from the farms. The reason for that was historically the farmers used the kelp as a fertilizer for the fields. They would go to the beach, gather the kelp, bring it back to their fields and plow it into the soil. Without the kelp, the land became less and less fertile. Because crop yields were diminishing and the population was simultaneously increasing, may farmers switched from traditional grains to planting potatoes. Potatoes took less land than grain to yield similar amounts of food. Then, the market for kelp crashed after the Napoleonic war around 1825 and farmers had to do without this important income. This would not have been devastating in and of itself but in 1847 a potato blight hit the British Isles and destroyed the crop throughout Ireland and Scotland. Thus began a three year cycle of increasing hardships as there was little or nothing to eat and all the grain and potatoes needed to plant next years' crop were eaten in order to survive the winter. When tenants couldn't pay their rent, they were evicted from their crofts. While the Duke of Argyll had a better, more humane, record than most of the landlords, by 1851 half of Tiree's land had been taken out of the hands of the crofters and turned over to grazing sheep, a more profitable venture.
Canada enacted homestead laws in the mid-1800s, just as the U.S. had, to entice people to move to the unsettled central parts of the country. Donald and his brothers probably landed in Quebec and subsequently moved to Bruce County, Ontario to homestead. The first winters must have been difficult for them. Many homesteaders built lean-tos out of tree branches for shelter while they constructed their simple log shacks. The MacKinnon brothers had probably never even seen snow before.
They settled in a remote area of southern Bruce County in what would become Greenock Township near today's town of Riversdale. In the 1851 census, the total population of the township was 220 people -- a mix of Canadians (including First Nation people), Scottish, Irish, and English. Neil was listed in the census with his brothers and sisters (John and Ann weren't listed). They all lived in a log house measuring 14' x 18'. The family lived on the edge of a large swampy area and, over time, became successful farmers. In 1857 Donald MacKinnon married Margaret Brown. Donald and Margaret had eight children -- Donald (1857), John (1860), Angus (1862), Annie (1864), Neil (1866), Archy (1868), Mary Flora (1870), and Grace (1873). The youngest son, Archy, was born March 12, 1868 and is my direct ancestor. Most of the family, including John and Ann, are buried in Greenock Baptist Cemetery. Being the youngest son, Archy probably realized he would never inherit the family farm. Or maybe he was just an adventurous soul. As a teenager he went south and worked as a lumberjack in the Michigan woods. In his later teens or early twenties he left home for the Pacific northwest. He worked as a lumberjack and also worked for the railroads building wooden trestles and bridges for the trains. His passport lists him as 5' 11" tall with blue eyes By the early 1890s Archy had migrated down the west coast to Hollister in San Benito County, California. San Benito had only been a county for a little over a decade. It was dominated by large ranches and haciendas. The climate couldn't have been more different than Bruce County, Canada or the Pacific Northwest. It was dusty, dry and hot. He must have loved the change because he went back to Canada in 1897, married his childhood sweetheart, Barbara Campbell, and they emigrated to the U.S. and settled in San Benito County in 1899. On December 4, 1899 in front of Judge M.T. Dooling in San Benito County courthouse he renounced his Canadian citizenship and became a U.S. citizen. Archie started his career in the U.S. with the operation of a small apricot orchard in the Buena Vista area. Later he did carpentry work, expanded that into a contracting business, and opened a lumber company in 1906. The lumberyard is still there today.
He was very civic minded and served as a member of the Rotary Club, the Masons, and the Elks. He served as president of the local chamber of commerce from 1923-36. He was also an elder in the Presbyterian church. He was well known in town and had quite a circle of friends. He and a local Frenchman named Jean had a yearly golf match as part of the town's summer festivities. It was the Scots against the French with Archie wearing his Glengarry cap and Jean wearing his beret. It became such a talked about event that a golf pro from Carmel, Peter Hay, came over for a couple of years to play with them and to act as referee. Archie's wife Barbara died in 1921 leaving him a widower at fifty-three. In the later years of his life he always wore a black, three piece suit and black Stetson hat. He was fond of a good cigar and when he visited his son in Los Angles, every morning he'd walk the four blocks from the house to the barber shop for a shave. Archie's lumber business did well. He even owned a stand of redwoods up north near Ft. Ross. On his trips north he would stop to spend time with the maiden Berringer sisters in St. Helena. Their family's winery -- Berringer Brothers -- was one of the very early ones in the Napa Valley. Archie died in 1948 at the home he built on Monterrey Street. His last will and testament is a simple one page handwritten will. In it he leaves the lumber business to his nephew Roy Campbell Brown and the rest of his earthly goods to his only son -- Douglas David McKinnon. Los AngelesDouglas McKinnon was born August 8, 1899 in Hollister. He had one of the early cars in Hollister as a youngster and a story is told that he got one of the early speeding tickets too. It happened in Morgan Hill and for years after getting that speeding ticket he would back his car through town whenever he'd pass through just to annoy the sheriff. He joined the army briefly at the end of WW I. After discharge he went to Stanford graduating in Business Administration in 1922. He rowed crew and was a member of both the Block S letterman's society and the Alpha Delta Pi fraternity. His mother Barbara died shortly before his graduation and that, combined with the massive world-wide flu epidemic a few years earlier, convinced him to become a doctor. Doug went to medical school at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. He interned in 1927-28 at the Royal Victoria Hospital in Montreal. While there he met Jean McQueen and, shortly after graduation, on August 4, 1928 they were married in Toronto. After the wedding, they embarked on a honeymoon in Europe. They stayed in Europe for a year as Doug undertook a tour of the preeminent teaching hospitals in Vienna, Berlin, and Edinburgh (This was a fairly common tour for medical school grads. It was called "walking the wards"). Upon their return to the States in 1929, Doug was invited to join the practice of an older doctor in Los Angeles. The doctor was one of the early cancer specialists (though his technique at the time was limited to cutting out the cancerous growth and then cauterizing the lesion). In 1931 Jean bore their first son Murray followed a year later by their second son Douglas Archie. Jean spent some time at Glen Ranch recuperating from giving birth to young Doug. It is unknown whether she was suffering from post-partum depression or medical complications (this was before antibiotics were available). Jean and Doug hired a housekeeper to help around the house after Jean's return. There is a story that young Murray unknowingly sprinkled his early speech with Spanish words he had learned from the housekeeper. Jean and Doug spent vacations with the boys up in Morro Bay. Jean had visited Morro Bay in her youth when the Fairbanks family (a wealthy family from Petrolia, Ontario, where Jean grew up) brought her with them on summer vacations. Morro Bay seemed to have special place in all of their hearts. Big Doug volunteered for the Navy in December 1941, shortly after the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor. He was on active duty from January `42 until June of `46. He served one and a half years as medical officer on the USS Detroit, a light cruiser that saw combat in the Aleutian Islands campaign. Big Doug left the Navy as Commander in the Medical Corps. His last post was as chief of surgery at the U.S. Naval Hospital on Guam. After the war he returned to his family and to practice general surgery and medicine. Jean was diagnosed around this time with rheumatoid arthritis. As the disease began to take its toll, the family decided to move to a one floor house in the Westwood area of L.A. The house had a pool for therapeutic exercise for Jean. Big Doug started painting recreationally in 1948 under the tutelage of Arthur Beaumont, the official artist for the U.S. Navy in WW II. At different times in later years Big Doug was, in addition to his practice, Chief Medical Officer for the Los Angeles Times newspaper and for B.F. Goodrich at their tire plant in L.A. He retired from practice when he was about 65 years old. Jean died about this time too and Big Doug's health slowly declined thereafter. He lived quietly until his death in 1977. Scotland The MacKinnon clan has impressive origins. The clan is tied to the Irish Saint Columba, who founded a monastery on the island of Iona in southern Scotland in 563, and to the Scottish King Alpin, who ruled from 831 until he was killed in a battle with the Picts in 841. Alpin's lineage can be traced back to Erc, king of Dal Riada (northern Ireland) in the 5th century. (See the lineage of Alpin.) The tie to St. Columba is presumed because the abbots of the monastery at Iona were chosen from his kin. MacKinnons were abbots of Iona from 1358-1500. The isle of Tiree, where the first known tie to my present day line, is only 20 miles from Iona. The tie to King Alpin is clear. King Alpin had four sons. The first was Kenneth MacAlpin who, upon his father's death, became king of Scotland. He was the first king to rule a united Scotland of both Scots and Picts. The third son of Alpin was Gregor MacAlpin. He was father to Doungallus who married Spontana, daughter of one of the Irish kings. Doungallus died circa 900 leaving behind two sons, Constantine and Findanus. Findanus is our clan's namesake. The name MacKinnon means son of Findanus ("Mac" means "son of". Over time, MacFinadus became MacFingon, which became MacKinnon). The original homeland of the MacKinnons was on the island of Mull (circa 900) which is a large island off the west coast of central Scotland. Iona is just a mile off the coast of Mull and Tiree just five miles further north. The MacKinnons expanded their landholdings to include estates on Arran, Tiree, the shires of Perth and Ross, and finally to the Isle of Skye. The clan didn't obtain the lands at Strathardill on the Isle of Skye until the late12th century, when a Mackinnon was sent to Skye to "be nursed" back to health and was adopted by Gillies of Strathardill who had no children. The MacKinnon insignia is a boar's head with a stag's shank bone in its mouth. The motto is Audentes Fortuna Juvat - Fortune Aids the Daring. The story, probably apocryphal, is that the chief of the clan got caught out in foul weather while hunting. He took refuge in a cave with the fruits of his kill from earlier in the day, a stag. After building a fire and eating some of the meat, a wild boar entered the cave and charged at our unsuspecting ancestor. He had no time to draw his blade so, thinking quickly, shoved the bone from his meal into the boar's mouth to keep the jaws of the beast open as it attacked him. He drew his knife as the force of the charge knocked him over and slit the throat of the boar. Clan MacKinnon was known as fierce warriors. They fought under the great Bruce against the English at Bannockburn in 1314. They were loyal to the Stuart line and fought often in its cause. Perhaps the most eloquent testimony of their loyalty is that they were one of only ten clans to join Bonnie Prince Charlie in his march into England in the Jacobite rebellion of 1745. At the fateful battle of Culloden, they were given the honor of the center line of attack. The day might have been won but for the treachery of some of clan MacDonald. The defeat led to Prince Charles and the surviving highlanders retreating to Scotland. There the MacKinnons played an active role in hiding out the Prince before his eventual escape to France. The chief of the clan MacKinnon, John Dubh, was arrested for his role and, at 65 years old, taken to England and imprisoned at Tilbury Fort. He was pardoned after a year and he returned to Skye where he had three more children before dying at 75.
|
John, Ann, and there family left Tyree for Canada in 1851 after a three year famine.
The Duke of Argyll, who owned the land on Tyree, paid passage for 851 of the people of
Tyree to sail to Canada. It is possible that MacKinnons were among them. It is also
possible they were forcibly evicted by Colonel Jock Campbell, the "Big Factor",
who worked for the Duke of Argyle. Whatever the reason, the family left Tyree aboard the Conrad
in June 1850 bound for the port of Montreal. The Conrad was a square stern, three
masted,
single deck ship measuring 142' long and 30' wide. It would have resembled a slightly
smaller version of the James Nesmith, which was built around the same time and is
pictured right.
