A 700th Anniversary
The year 1314 created Ardnamurchan Clan MacIain. In that year Angus Og MacDonald (Aonghas mac Domhnaill) fought with Robert the Bruce at Bannockburn and, as a reward, was given extensive lands on the west coast of Scotland, amongst which was Ardnamurchan. Angus chartered this wild and forbidding peninsula to his brother, Iain Sprangach the Bold, and it was Iain who founded Clan MacIain.
With his lands, Iain received the castle of Mingary, built by the MacDougals of Lorn, who had sided with the English king against the Bruce. For over three hundred years, the MacIains of Ardnamurchan held Mingary as their clan seat and rose to great power within the MacDonalds’ Lordship of the Isles. Theirs is a long, tangled and bloody history, which we will explore on this website with the help of you, the MacIain descendants.
Now, in 2014, the Scottish Year of Homecoming, with the rescue of Mingary Castle under way, the people of the Ardnamurchan peninsula are calling on the scattered members of the Ardnamurchan Clan MacIain – MacIans, McCains, McCanes, McEans, MacIans, McIan, McKeans and others – to come together to celebrate the rebirth of their castle.
As descendants of the Ardnamurchan MacIains, sometimes called the Ardnamurchan MacDonalds, well know, their clan was destroyed following a long and bitter dispute with the Campbells, culminating in a massacre of MacIain women and children in a cave on the north shore of the peninsula some time around 1633. Following this, the remaining clan members either joined other, local clans, such as the Clanranald MacDonalds, often changing their names, or they fled their homeland, many to Ireland and later abroad, to America and elsewhere. All that was left of their heritage was their lands, and Mingary Castle.
In the centuries that followed, the castle and the MacIain homelands changed hands many times, sometimes in war, sometimes by sale. In 1838, the castle, by then in a dilapidated state, was gutted and left to ruin. The Mingary Castle Preservation and Restoration Trust was set up in 2013 to save the castle from imminent collapse. A huge amount has been done – the foundations stabilised, a detailed archaeological survey and dig carried out, and a start made on the refurbishment of the castle – more at www.mingarycastletrust.co.uk.
Now the present laird of Ardnamurchan Estate, the Mingary Trust, and the wider Ardnamurchan community want to share this great endeavour with all members of the Ardnamurchan MacIains, for whom this is their ancestral land. A website is being set up, and a call is going out to use the Scottish 2014 Year of Homecoming as an opportunity for the Ardnamurchan MacIains to start to reconnect with their home.
Maybe someone can help. My name is David Duncan McKean. My earliest ancestor is Thomas McKen (note spelling) born 1766 at Larbert, Stirlingshire. I know clan membership can be sketchy, but is the McKean/McKen line from Argyle? I don;t know if we’re McDonalds or MacIans. Any thoughts? Thank you.
Hi Dave, my last name is McKain, but older ancestors from before 1800 in my family used the McKean, McKen and McKeen spellings as well. These different spellings are usually up to whoever was literate and recording their name for marriages, births and deaths, where ever they happened to settle. These are different phonetic spellings but all referencing the same surname of “MacIain”. Our ancestors would have known their last name verbally but not all were literate so whoever wrote it down wrote it how they thought it should be spelled. These MacIains were descendants of Iain Sprangach, a descendant of Somerled and Donald, the progenitor of Clan MacDonald.
I was born Susan McKain, and after I divorced and finished raising my four children, I chose the spelling MACIAN when I resumed my own name.
My ancestors were here before the revolutionary war. My understanding is that three sons landed in New England and the youngest son followed and was blown off course, landing in North Carolina. My ancestors settled and Virginia, North and South Carolina and some in Georgia. The only fact I have about them other than names, dates of birth, and such is that, before he became President of the United States, Andrew Jackson was the attorney on several occasions representing one of my ancestors. I would love to find more information on that relationship.
At the gathering of the Clan Donald North America at the beginning of this century, I finally got to meet a number of my family and clansmen. Many claim kinship with a privateer who is said to have been nearly 7 feet tall and have flaming red hair and beard. He sailed a ship that was painted black on one side and white on the other and sailed up and down English rivers, doing what came naturally. I have not been able to find anything written about him.
But, inspired by stories told at the gathering I have been hoping to gather information for a book titled The MacIains a Herd of Mavericks which describes every McKain, McCain, MacIain. McKean, however the spelling, that I have ever met, or heard stories of.
If anyone reading this has stories to share, and I would be willing to bet that’s everyone, please contact me. I would like to give credit to everyone who contributes to the book which I am hoping to see distributed at Highland games and other gatherings at least in North America and Scotland and anywhere else where there is an interest.
The adventures of my father, Karl Joseph McKain, would fill a very thick book. Just the story of how he quit being a Quaker preacher to join the army air corps, and, after having been shot down and paralyzed, and told that he would never walk again, was back in combat within six months. Shot down yet again, the story of his escape from a prisoner of war/concentration camp would make a book itself. How many of us have stories of our own, and our near relatives that we could share with each other and others (who probably won’t believe them anyway). I would love to save these stories for our descendants, and would enjoy reading them myself.