MacLean Family Of Washabuck

   MacLean Family Of Washabuck

Info taken from the Newspaper Clipping of Victoria-Inverness Bulletin, dated Feburary 4, 1938. A portion of the newspaper clipping was missing, by referring to a book " ALL CALL IONA HOME" by S. R. MacNeil, I was able to fill in the blanks on the names of some of the spouses. 

I also wish to thank Valerie Levesque, Liana Shaw, Maureen Brown, Doug MacKenzie, Cameron McNeil, George Bernard MacKinnon and Jeanne C. Henley who supplied me with information on some of the later descendents of the MacLean Clan who settled in Washabuck, N.S. 

LACHLAN MACLEAN 

LIVED UNDER FIVE BRITISH SOVEREIGNS–

PROGENITOR OF ALL MACLEANS OF WASHABUCKT

Victoria News

(was written in the left margin)

(C.M. Bethune, MD, Baddeck, Nova Scotia

was stamped in the margin)

(On the upper right hand corner was written ‘BF-197-72)

Baddeck – In a little Catholic cemetery in Lower Washabuckt, Victoria County, rests the mortal remains of many of the pioneers who first settled in that locality. 

In this cemetery rests all that is mortal of Lachlan MacLean, who died in 1842 at the venerable age of 114 years. 

He was born at Barra in 1728, and emigrated to Cape Breton in 1817 with his sons and daughters and some of his grand-children, he then being near his ninetieth year. 

When we consider that there were three generations represented in this emigration, it is a thing worthy of note in itself. 

Lachlan MacLean, was the progenitor of the MacLeans of Wsashabuckt, and today his descendants comprise the total population of Lower and Centre Washabuckt, and descendants are found all over Cape Breton and in New England, representing all walks of life.

Despite the fact that he reached the remarkable age of 114 years, he was physically and mentally active until a short time before his death in 1842 his eyesight beginning to fail four years before. 

When we recall that he lived under the reign of five British sovereigns, George 1, George 11, George 111, George 1V, William 1V, and Queen Victoria, in a period that made much history, we will understand that he lived in truly stirring times. 

In his lifetime he experienced the rigors of the penal legislation and disabilities under which the Catholics suffered at that time. He was a young man, seventeen years of age at the time of the Jacobite uprising in Scotland in 1745, and he was wont to recall events that occurred in 1745-46, when Bonnie Prince Charlie made his unsuccessful bid for power. 

Waterloo was only an occurrence of two years past when Lachlan MacLean came to Cape Breton, and many of the emigrants who came over with him were veterans of the Waterloo campaign. 

When the pioneers came here in 1817, the forest covered the lands to the water’s edge. There was an immense task before them: To conquer the forest, till the soil, make a home and a living. But if the task was great there was the strong resolute will, the strength of arm, and the faith in God to meet and to accomplish it.

Lachlan MacLean lived in the new land for a quarter of a century after the arrival of the pioneers and played his part, and did his share in assisting his children in wresting a home from the wilderness.

He is buried in what used to be known to the early settlers as “Chladh Lachainn” (Lachlan’s Cemetery, due to the fact that this burial place was part of his own property, but donated by him to the Church for this purpose, and also because he was the first to be buried there. 

Soon after another cemetery was laid off in what is now known as Washabuckt Centre, and this now forms a part of the present cemetery.

In these days, and for a long time afterwards, the bagpipes played a prominent part in all funerals, and on visiting the old cemetery it is not hard to visualize the scene that took place there on that day in 1842, when this venerable Scot was laid to rest:–

The funeral strains of the bagpipes, and the bier born on the shoulders of sorrowing neighbours, who, like himself, were exiles from old Scotland. 

(There were no plumed hearses and few wheeled conveyances in those days).

In those days, priests were scarce, and their visits to this small band of Barra immigrants were of necessity, infrequent, but when a priest did come, it was a thing to be made much of, and an event to be remembered. 

Their watchword was “Cha h-eil baile fuan againn an so-ach tha sinn a sireadh aon, a tha ri tighinn” (We have not here a lasting city, but we seek one that is to come.) 

To walk twenty miles over a road, little better than a woods trail, or to row a heavy Barra boat or “sgoth’ across the Bras d’Or Lakes meant nothing to them, if an opportunity to attend Mass lay at the end of the journey.

A grand-daughter of the subject of this sketch passed away in Baddeck early this year, at the advanced age of ninety-three years, she being the last surviving grand-child. 

Several of his descendants of the fourth and fifth generation now reside in Washabuckt, Baddeck and Iona Districts, and in the keeping of a great-grandson in Washabuckt, are many of the personal belongs of Lachlan MacLean, among them being a razor that he purchased in Glasgow Scotland, when a young man, almost two hundred years ago.

It is not easy to find many such instances of longevity and physical ands mental activity as shown by Lachlan MacLean when well over the century mark, and it is not to be wondered at that his memory is still cherished by his descendants

SOME MAClEAN GENEALOGY

I. Leathain (Lean) MacLean b. ca. 1650 

A. Hugh (EOGHAINN) Gobha MACLEAN b. ca. 1690 son of Lean MacLean

This family belonged to the Duart branch of the MacLeans and therefore claims descent from Eachainn Ruadh nan Cath, (Red Hector of the Battles) 

1. Lachlan (Lauchlann) MacLean (Pioneer  in Washabuck, Cape Breton) 1728-1842 m. Elizabeth (Bessie) Annie MacPhee (or Catherine MacInnis) and settled in Lower Washabuck NS.

 This family belonged to the Duart branch of the MacLeans and therefore claims descent from Eachainn Ruadh nan Cath, (Red Hector of the Battles) Lachlan MacLean, was 17 yrs. of age in 1745, but he was in the ranks of the Battle of Culloden. Lachlan MacLean emigrated with his family from the Isle of Barra, Scotland in 1817 and was born in 1728 and was 89 years of age on arrival in Cape Breton. He lived to be 114 years. There is a great monument set up to his honor as the progenitor of the MacLeans of Washabuck, Victoria Co. Cape Breton Island. In a graveyard (CLADH LACHLIN -LACHLAN'S GRAVEYARD, in Washabuck, NS or as known today as St Peter's Graveyard) the tombstone reads: "In this cemetery rest all that is mortal of LACHLAN MACLEAN, The progenitor of the MacLeans of Washabuckt Born in Barra Scotland AD 1728 Died at Lower Washabuck AD 1842 aged 114 years. May his soul rest in peace."