The McDonalds of Scotland, Prince Edward Island and Nova Scotia

Introduction

Clara Frances McDonald was the daughter of Archibald McDonald and Mary Lamont. Archibald and Mary married in Halifax, Nova Scotia, in August 1870. Looking into their histories, both sides of the family appear to be descended from Highland Scottish Catholic emigrant families that landed in what were to become the Maritime provinces. Clara’s history is a tale of old and new Scotland

Highland Scotland in the 18th and 19th Centuries

To understand the conditions in Scotland at the time that the McDonald’s and Lamont’s emigrated to Canada, the roots are in the religious politics of the Reformation, 250 years earlier. Scotland was a place of severe religious division in the middle of the 1500s. A traditional Catholic country, when reformers like John Knox moved back to Scotland religious fractures emerged. The State religion became Presbyterian but adherence to Catholicism was strong, particularly in some of the Highland and Island areas. The Royal Family was also broadly Catholic. When James VI of Scotland became King of England in 1603, the religious questions were not settled. 

England, Scotland and Ireland all suffered a Civil War in the 1640 with Oliver Cromwell, a Protestant, being named as Lord Protector. When Cromwell was defeated and the English monarchy was restored, Charles II was nominally a Protestant but upon his death, James II was widely suspected of being a Catholic. James II was overthrown with the Glorious Revolution in 1688. James’ Stuart Family went into exile. 

Scottish Catholic nobles agitated for the Stuart Family to return and become Kings of Scotland again. The first Jacobite Rebellion began in 1715 with banners raised at Braemar in the north of Scotland in support of James II’s son, James Francis Edward Stuart – The Old Pretender. The 1715 Rebellion failed and the Old Pretender returned to continental Europe. 

The Old Pretender had a son, Charles Edward Stuart, Bonny Prince Charlie. He tried to do what his father couldn’t and returned to Scotland in a second Jacobite Rebellion in 1745. He raised an army of the Highland Clans and the Rebellion made it as far south as Derby in England, 5 days march from London. There they were defeated and retreated in a harried return to Scotland where the Jacobite forces were beaten at the Battle of Culloden.

In the fifty years after Culloden, the English government enabled devastation in the Highlands. The Lords and Clans that support the Jacobite cause were supressed with lands taken away and high rates of imposed taxation. Some of the government-supporting landowners also took action to change the crofting small-holding ways of life forcing people off the land. (There are considerable parallels to actions in Ireland after in the Great Famine). At the end of the 18th century life was tough for Catholic Highlanders and emigration was an option that offered a future.

There is a common thread amongst the Riley ancestral families that emigrated from Scotland to Canada, they were all Catholic. Their Catholicism was a golden thread for these families that impacted on who they married, how they socialised and where they were buried. Leaving Scotland for Canada may have been an economic decision, but also a political and cultural issue to move a new and better Scotland, a Nova Scotia.

Origins of families in this branch

The families in this branch of the family are all associated with Scottish highland clans. Their origins are in the northern parts of Scotland

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