Where Archibald McDonald’s parents’ past is difficult to determine, more clues relate to Mary Lamont. In the wedding record for Mary Lamont and Archibald McDonald at their marriage in August 1870, Mary’s Lamont’s parents are named Charles Lamont and Mary Grant.  

The Lamont’s are another old Scottish clan that was originally based around Cowal in Argyll in the West of Scotland.  In the late 15th century a branch of the Lamonts settled in the lands of the Earl of Mar, in the highlands to the west of Aberdeen around Ballater and Braemar. What marked the family out as different to those around it was that there was a strong adherence to Catholicism even after the wars of religion and the Union with England.

The earliest traced ancestors in this line are Andrew and Isabel Michie, the parents of Malcolm Lamond who was baptised in the Catholic Church of St Andrew’s Braemar on 21 May 1752. 

T he next record was the wedding of Malcolm Lamond of Little Allanaquoich and Jannet McDonald of Corriemulzie. These two hamlets face each other across the River Dee and are part of what is now known as the Mar Lodge estate. This was originally the property of the Earls of Mar and, later, the Earls of Fife outside of the highland town of Braemar. These were places where people hunted for game and fish on the edge of the Cairngorms. 

Their son Charles was born around 1802  and moved to Canada and settled in Nova Scotia. On 17th January 1838, he married Margaret Grant, the daughter of Peter Grant and Margaret Taylor.

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