MY McLAREN ANCESTRY
MY McLAREN ANCESTRY
THE McLARENS
The McLarens or McLaurins are supposed to be descendants of one of the many groups of Aryans who migrated western from Northern Ludia by way of Egypt, Spain and Ireland.
Recorded history begins when Erc, and his three sons Loarn, Fergus and Angus left the kingdom of Dalrodia in Northern Ireland and by disposing the Picts, formed a kingdom on the west coast of Scotland in the year 503 A.D.
The arms of the clan have the galley of Lorne and the word Dalrodia. The Descendants of Loarn are the McLarens.
The capital of their kingdom was Dunadd. In the role of the Barons, three McLarens are mentioned (1287 A.D.) Maurice of Tiree, Conan of Balquhidder, and Laurence orf Ardviche The last chief was John McLaren who was made Chief Justice under the title Lord Dleghorn in 1798.
The clan were few in numbers and suffered in the feuds common in Northern Scotland. The McGregors slew eighteen families and disposed of their lands. It was two hundred years before the McLarens were able to avenge this and regain their lands.
The McLarens had the right to enter and be seated in the church of Balquhidder before anyone else. Sir John McLaren, the Rector, and several of his parishoners lost their lives in defending this privilege. The McLarens also fought the Buchanans and also lost territory to the Campbells.
EMIGRATION TO CANADA
Early in the year 1815 A.D. the authorities encouraged emmigration to Canada. Ships were promised at Glasgow. The settlers who came to Breadalbane spent some time in Glasgow waiting for ships. Early in July four ships arrived --- the Dorothy, the Eliza, the Atlas and the Baltic Merchant.
Breadalbane in Glengarry County, Ontario owes its origin to a number of Scottish immigrants who came to Canada in 1815.
Their former home was in Breadalbane in the Loch Tay district of Perthshire, Scotland in a region widely known for its natural beauty. Though loving the land of their birth with the fidelity so characteristic of the Scot, conditions of life were so harsh, the outlook so discouraging, that they were impelled to seek elsewhere wider opportunities.
Thus it happened that on July 11th, 1815, they bade a last farewell to the home of their fathers and. Embarking at Greenock, set out on the ship Dorothy for the Western world.
After a tedious voyage of many weeks (about three months) they landed in Montreal, Quebec. They proceeded up the St. Lawrence as far as Glengarry. They remained in the southern part of the county near Lancaster for the winter of 1815 - 1816 with friends who had settled there a few years earlier.
In the Spring of 1816 they resumed their journey to the place selected as the site for the new settlement. To this they gave the name of Breadalbane, perpetuating thereby in the new world the memory of the old.
TERMS OF SETTLEMENT
Each family was given one hundred acres of land. Also each male child when he became twenty one years of age. The settlers were to receive rations until they were settled and self-supporting. Before they left Scotland the settlers made a deposit of 16 guineas for each male over sixteen and 2 guineas for each female. The money was refunded after they spent two years on their farms.
Each family received an adze, a hacksaw, a drawing knife, an auger, two gimlets, a door lock and hinge, a scythe, a snath or reaping hook, two hoes, a hay fork, a skillet, a camp kettle and a blanket for each member of the family. Each group of four families was given a grindstone, a crosscut saw and a whipsaw.
With this company came my great great great grandfather, Duncan McLaren, and his wife Anna Bella McDiarmid with two or three children. Mary, aged ten, when they crossed the ocean, later became Mrs. Duncan McLaurin. Jennie (Mrs. James Forbes), was born on the ocean. The family consisted of ten children: Mary, Duncan, Jennie, James, Annie, Archie, Kate, Donald, John, and William.
DUNCAN McLAREN m. Anna Bella McDiarmid
Duncan McLaren (1778 - 20 Aug. 1837) and Anna Bella McDiarmid (1781 - 12 May 1870) were both born in Breadalbane, Perthshire, Scotland where they were married on 18 Dec. 1802 and where the first seven of their ten children were born.
WILLIAM McLAREN m. Mary Morrison
William McLaren was born on his father's farm, Lot 1, Concession 8 of Lochiel Township, Glengarry County, on 10 Mar. 1817, in the house that his father built when he came to Canada from Scotland in 1815. He lived on the farm where he was born until he died in 1890. He married Mary Morrison (11 Dec. 1844 - 28 Sept 1896) on 11 Dec. 1844 and to them were born nine children: Annie, James, Norman, AnnaBella, Jennie, John, Daniel, William, and Duncan.
NORMAN McLAREN m. Margaret McNab
Norman McLaren was born on December 12th, 1848 the family homestead Lochiel Township that his grandfather cleared when he first came to Glengarry County from Scotland in 1815. He was the fourth of nine children born to William McLaren and Mary Morrison. Norman and his brothers and sisters would have attended a small one room school that was, for many years, next to the Breadalbane Baptist Church, just a couple miles down the road from their farm. Most likely, he only would have had a few years of basic education, as once the boys were big enough to work, they were needed to help out on the farm.
On December 16th, 1862, at the age of fourteen, he was baptized by Reverend William McKee and received into the Breadalbane Baptist Church membership. He courted a local girl, Margaret McNab, and they were married on Dec 28th, 1881.
Norman and Maggie had a family of five children. Their first child was a daughter, whom they named Kate Violet. She was born on February 28th, 1883 and was my grandmother. Violet was followed two years later by a son, James Duncan, born June 25th, 1885. Jimmy and Violet both contracted scarlet fever in 1890. Violet recovered but in Jimmy's case, the fever "went in instead of coming out" as was the case with her and he died on May 28th at five years of age. Violet used to say that Jimmy was "too good to live". She remembered being the more mischievous of the two and told of how on at least one occasion she held her hand over her brother's mouth when their mother was calling him to come in so he would get it trouble for not answering. The very day after Jimmy died, Maggie gave birth to another child, another daughter, May "Jeanette". William "Gordon" followed on January 24th, 1893 and Norman "Cecil" completed the family on November 2nd, 1895.
Norman's brother James had married Jennie Ferguson in June of 1886 and moved to Buckingham, Quebec where they had two children, May born in 1887 and Art in 1888. This marriage was to be short lived, for James died at the young age of 43 years in March of 1890. His widow, Jennie, then moved to Ottawa with her two small children but she too died in September of 1894, leaving little May aged seven and Art aged six all alone. Norman and Maggie took the children to live with them in Breadalbane and raised them as their own.
The McLaren homestead remained in the family until 1904 when Norman sold it to William Anderson of the neighbouring county of Prescott. They did not leave right away, however. William Anderson took over the management of the farm and boarded with the family until they were able to make arrangements to move the family to Ottawa the following year. They stayed in Ottawa until their family was grown. Violet, the oldest, attended Business College in Ottawa and Jeanette trained to be a teacher. Gordon went to work in a bank after graduating from high school. William Anderson, who had bought the family farm in 1904, courted Violet and they were married in Ottawa on July 24th, 1907.
At some time after Cecil graduated from school, the family moved back to Vankleek Hill. Violet was married to Willie Anderson and they were living on the old McLaren homestead and had started a family. Jeanette found at teaching position at the 6th Concession Public School in East Hawkesbury Township, Prescott County and boarded with Willie and Violet where she was within walking distance of her school. Gordon worked in the Hochelaga Bank (now the Bank of Montreal and lived at home with his parents. When war broke out in 1914, Cecil enlisted and was sent overseas. He fought in the battle of Ypres and was among those soldiers who were gassed.
Around 1917 the McLarens took a young girl to in live with them for a short time. Mr. Elliott was the minister of the Vankleek Hill Baptist Church. When his wife died he was left with five young children and found that he was unable to take care of all of them by himself. The two older boys, Fenton and Vincent, stayed with him, but Norman and Maggie McLaren took Madeleine to live with them and the other girl, Melba, went to live with Jim McKinnon and his family. Ashley, the youngest boy, was sent to live with relatives in Grimsby, Ontario.
When Cecil came home from the war, Gordon was still working at the bank in Vankleek Hill but Jean was now teaching at the Public School in town and living at home were her parents as well. Willie and Violet sent Mildred and Clayton to the public school in Vankleek Hill rather than to the country school next to the Breadalbane Church. The distance between the country school and their farm was too great for the children to walk to school alone and besides that, a large number of French familes had moved into the area so the language in the playground was becoming predominantly French. Mildred and Clayton stayed in town with their grandparents during the week while they attended school, and would return home to the farm on weekends.
In 1921, Willie Anderson sold the farm in Breadalbane and the family moved into a house in town on Jay Street. That first year Willie went out west with the harvesters to Virden, Manitoba and took Mildred with him, who was now eleven years old. All summer long, while Willie worked and lived with the harvesters, Milded stayed with her Uncle John and Aunt "Sis" in Virden. John was a brother of Violet's father, Norman, and "Sis" (Christiann), was a sister of Violet's mother, Margaret.
Willie and Mildred didn't return home to Vankleek Hill immediately after the harvesting was completed. Mildred had just completed public school but Willie and Violet felt that, at eleven years of age, Mildred was too young to start high school, so he deliberately kept her out west until after the school year had begun. By the time they returned home in mid September the school year had already begun, but Mildred was determined to go back to school and her parents finally agreed.
While living in Vankleek Hill, Willie worked in a saw mill and kept bees in a shed behind his parents house on Main Street with Violet's brother, Cecil.
The home that the family moved into when they returned from Ottawa was a large four bedroom house at the end of Union Street. Eventually, this became too large and too expensive a house to run and they sold this house and bought another house, still on Union Street but closer to the centre of town. This too had four bedrooms, but it was a smaller building. Norman and Maggie remained in this home until Norman died there on December 2, 1936, just ten days short of his 89th birthday. He was buried in Breadalbane Cemetery, directly across the road from the Baptist Church that he had attended for much of his life.
KATE VIOLET McLAREN m. William E. Anderson
When our ancestors, Duncan MacLaren and his wife, Anna Bella McDiarmid, emigrated from Scotland to Canada in the summer of 1815, they set out to build for themselves and their family a new life in a young and growing country. Equipped with only the barest necessities in farming implements, they constructed a rude shelter on a one hundred and thirty-one acre tract of land in Concession Eight, Township of Lochiel, County of Glengarry, in Ontario.
This "homestead" was to remain in the MacLaren family for four generations, and it was on this farm that their great-grand-daughter--Kate Violet--was born to Norman MacLaren and Margaret McNab on February 28th, 1883.
This is the story of Kate Violet MacLaren Anderson--the woman to whom we all do honour today in recognizing and celebrating with her the achievement of her 90th birthday.
Violet MacLaren Anderson, This Is Your Life, remembered with love by all your family.
Born on February 28th, 1883, Violet was the eldest of the MacLaren children. Norman and Margaret were to have four more children--James Duncan b. June 25, 1885, May Jeanette b. May 29th, 1890, William Gordon b. January 24, 1893, and Norman Cecil b. November 2, 1895.
Tragically, scarlet fever was to take Jimmy from them on May 30, 1890 at the young age of four years and eleven months. Gordon died on February 21, 1929 and was followed by Jean on June 28, 1950.
Violet attended the R.R. #2 Public School until the age of 13 when, having completed the equivalent of our modern day grade 9, she was enrolled at the Vankleek Hill Collegiate Institute.
The public school which Violet attended was destroyed by fire many years ago, but the Vankleek Hill Collegiate was still standing and in use until as late as the 1950's.
Violet was prevented from continuing her schooling at the High School past grade 11 due to poor health. After Violet had undergone a throat operation, her parents decided that a change of climate might do much to prompt a more speedy recovery. So, Violet was but a young girl of eighteen when she set out on her own to visit her father['s brother, John, her mother's sister, Christie Ann, and their family in far away, Hargrave, Manitoba. She must have been a brave young woman to set out alone on a journey of over 1400 miles to visit relatives whom she had never seen before and who lived in a world totally unfamiliar to her. Her initial apprehensions were soon dispelled, however, and during the three months that she was with her Uncle John and Aunt Sis she initiated close friendships with her cousins that have kept up faithfully through the years.
When she was about twenty years of age, Violet studied at a Business College in Ottawa for a period of three to four months. While enrolled at the college she stayed with a Miss McLeod--a third cousin of her father.
Norman MacLaren sold the family farm to a man by the name of William E. Anderson in 1904. Mr. Anderson boarded with the MacLarens on their farm until the family moved to Ottawa in 1905. Two years later, at the age of 24, Violet MacLaren accepted his proposal of marriage and on July 24, 1907 became Mrs. William Anderson. They were married in the MacLaren home at 110 Second Avenue, Ottawa by the Reverend MacKay. It must have been with mixed feelings of nostnalgia and contentment that now, as Violet Anderson, she returned to the place of her birth and childhood, this time as mistress of the house.
On March 13, 1910 a baby girl--Mildred Jeanette--was born to Willie and Violet Anderson. Two years later, on September 8, 1912, they had a son whom they named Clayton Wallace. A second son, Winston Cecil, appeared on the scene on July 29, 1916. Violet and Willie had a fourth child, another son, on March 12, 1920, but William Norman lived for less than a day.
As the number of French families settling in the Breadalbane area continued to grow at a steady pace, the French language came to predominate and school lessons at the country school were conducted in French. Willie and Violet found it necessary to send the children to the English school in Vankleek Hill, some 5 miles away. Because this was too great a distance for the children to travel back and forth each daya, they stayed with their grandparents on Union Street during the week, returning home to the farm on weekends.
As Breadalbane became predominantly French-speaking, the Andersons felt more and more out of place socially, so that finally in 1921 Willie sold the 132 acre farm and moved the family into town. For the next three years they lived on Jay Street in Vankleek Hill.
After three years of living in town, Willie decided to give up his bee hives and go back to farming. So, in the autumn of 1924, he and Violet, accompanied by Cecil, set out to tour western Ontario in search of a suitable farm. One was finally found four miles outside of Elora in Pilkington Township, Wellington County.
Willie, Violet, and the boys moved to their new home and a new beginning in February of 1925. Mildred stayed behind with her grandparents to complete the school year before joining them the following July.
They had lived on the Elora farm just a little over ten years when Willie suffered a fatal stroke on June 10th, 1935. Three weeks later he was dead.
A widow now, Violet was left to manage the 100 acre farm alone and raise her three growing children. They were able to work the farm for three more years, but by this time the children were growing up and were ready to begin formulating definite plans for the future. Mildred had left the farm in 1936 to take up a teaching position with the Elora High School only to come home on weekends.
When the farm was sold in February of 1938, Clayton moved to Ottawa to a position with the Department of Agriculture. Winston was just completing his final year of High School and was ready to enter the Guelph Veterinary College in the Fall.
Immediately upon leaving the farm, Violet made another journey out west--this time with her mother. This was Violet's third visit to the west, having journeyed out to Virden, Manitoba with Clayton in 1919.
When they returned home in early summer, her mother went back to Vankleek Hill and Violet took an apartment in Guelph with Winston for the duration of his four year course in Veterinary Science.
In the summer of 1939 Violet journeyed west for a fourth time. This time Mildred went with her, and they travelled all the way to the coast. It was a leisurely trip, punctuated regularly with stops to visit friends and relatives along the way.
Their first stop was in Winnipeg to see May Goodman. May and her brother, Arthur, had lost both their parents when they were very young, and had come to live with their Uncle Norman and Aunt Maggie in 1894, so Violet and May had grown very close; they were really more like sisters than first cousins.
The next stop was Virdin, Manitoba, for a visit with Elma. From there they went on to Regina where they stayed at Government House with Aunt Edith and Uncle Archie, who was the Lieutenant Governor or Saskatchewan. While in Regina they also visited with Elma's sister, Jean. They made a brief stop in Calgary as well to visit several friends before continuing on to Vancouver to spend some time with Violet's friend, Elizabeth Quick.
Violet watched with pride as each of her three children received a university degree--Mildred from McMaster University in 1931, Clayton from the Ontario Agriculture College in Guelph in 1936, and Winston from Guelph Veterinary College in 1943.
With all of the children now away from home and busily persuing their separate careers, Violet found that she was finally free to do as she pleased with her time. Her sister Jean was at that time teaching elementary school in northern Ontario, and their mother, who had developed pernicious anemia, had left Vankleek Hill in 1943 to live with Jean in New Liskeard.
Now free of the responsibilities of a growing family, Violet decided to join Jean as well and to help her in caring for their failing mother. She remained in New Liskeard until her mother's death in 1947.
After her mother died, Violet was left with no plans whatever for the future. Her quandry was short-lived, however, for three months later Winston phoned to ask her when she was coming home; Esther had just given birth to a set of twins and they wanted Violet to come and live with them.
Violet moved back to Elmira in the summer of '47 and remained with Winston and his family for the next nineteen years.
In 1954 Winston gave up his veterinary practice in Elmira to take up a government position in Calgary. Violet moved west with the family, but began making frequent trips east during the summer months to visit friends and relatives.
Winston moved from one extreme to the other, transferring later to Glace Bay, Nova Scotia. They were there for less than a year when Winston was transferred again, this time to Toronto. From here they returned to the West, this time to Coutts, Alta.
With Winston for nineteen years, Violet watched his children grow up into young men and women, and eventually leave home to begin lives of their own. Feeling that her work here was finished, and that her grandchildren no longer needed her as much as they had while they were growing up, Violet decided that it was time to begin a new chapter in her life. While visiting in the east during the summer of 1966 she stopped to see Mildred and decided that she would make St. Catharines her home. She found a modest but comfortable apartment and wrote to Wintston to have him send her belongings east.
Shortly after moving to St. Catharines, Violet made it clear that she did not intend to sit idle. One of the first things she did was to join the Queen Street Baptist Church, and shortly afterwards she became an active member of the Church Missionary Society, frequently playing the piano at their meetings, and the Golden Rule Club, which holds social meetings and organizes a number of bazaars through the year. When she learned that a group of ladies take turns reading the mail to the residents of the CNIB she was quick to volunteer. She and her co-workers at the CNIB busy themselves with quilting and bazaars in addition to their work reading and sewing for the blind. Yet another of her projects is knitting various articles for the Red Cross. Though she has passed her ninetieth birthday, Violet is still more active than most of us who are many years younger than she, and she will most assuredly be so for many more years to come.
On February 28th, 1973 Violet marked her 90th birthday, and again, as in the last several years, Mildred and Clayton were on hand to help her celebrate.
Because the achievement of a 90th birthday is a particularly felicitous occasion, Mildred wanted to do something extra for her mother. Unfortunately, Violet's birthday fell at an awkward time of the year. Kept busy with her work at school, Mildred did not have the time necessary to plan and prepare a celebration of any great size. However, the winter break for the schools was just around the corner, falling during the third week of March. Thi week offered both the extra time needed to organize a party, and more favourable weather for venturing out of doors.
A visit from Mildred's cousin--Vivian Schoon--had been scheduled for that week so, with her help, Mildred hosted a Tea on March 20th in honour of her mother's 90th birthday. It was a social gathering of Violet's Sunday School class from Queen Street Baptist Church, and her co-workers on the Ladies' Auxiliary at the C.N.I.B.
Violet, Mildred, and Douglas had begun, in 1967, to compile genealogical recorsd of the MacLaren family from the time when Duncan MacLaren and his family emigrated from Scotland in 1815, right up to the present. Their work was, for the most part, completed by 1970, and, with a bit of reorganization and a few las minute additions, was ready for publication in the MacLaren Clan Quarterly in December of 1971.
Donald MacLaren of MacLaren succeeded to the Chiefship of the clan upon the death of his father in 1966, but because he was then only eleven years old, he was not officially installed as Chief until October, 1972. He had earlier resolved that as Chief he would visit his clansmen all over the world, and with helpful suggestions from Stuart MacLaurin of Cleveland, Ohio, he drew up an itinerary for a tour of Canada and the United States. Stuart had suggested that he meet 90 year old Violet Anderson and her family while he was in Canada. So, on May 20th, 1973, Violet, Mildred, and Douglas met Donald at the bus station in Bracebridge. After showing him the Muskoka area, they took the Chief to St. Catharines and showed him around the Niagara Peninsula.
Donald planned to be in the Ottawa area towards the end of his tour, so Violet, Mildred, and Douglas made a special trip out to Vankleek Hill on July 3rd to assist in showing the Chief around the Breadalbane area.
Violet journeyed out to Vankleek Hill with Douglas in May of 1973, and along the way, they stopped to call on two cousins whom Violet had not seen in quite a number of years. These were Mary McNab of Eganvile, and Isabell McGregor in Douglas, both related to Violet on her mother's side of the family.
THE EO REVIEW
VANKLEEK HILL, ONTARIO WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 15, 1973
FORMER RESIDENT CELEBRATES 90th BIRTHDAY
On Sunday, August 5th, 1973, Mildred and Douglas Robbins, at their summer cottage on Lake Joseph, Muskoka, entertained thirty-eight guests at a buffet dinner in honor of Violet Anderson's ninetieth birthday.
Mrs. Anderson is a former resident of this area, having grown up on the original MacLaren homestead in Lochiel Township, and later moving to Vankleek Hill with her own family after her marriage to William E. Anderson. They left Vankleek Hill for Elora in Western Ontario some fifty years ago.
The surprise party was attended by relatives and friends from far and near -- Los Angeles, California; Cleveland, Ohio; Crown Point, Indiana; Toronto, Ottawa, Vankleek Hill, Winchester, Shelburne, Chatsworth, and Guelph.
Following the dinner, Douglas Robbins presented his grandmother with two very interesting albums which he had himself compiled -- one containing her numerous congratulatory 90th birthday cards (some fifty in all) and the other, the illustrated story of her life -- along with her party guest book. When the family's gift was presented, Bob Anderson, another grandson, read the following address prepared by Clayton, Violet's son. The address follows:
To Kate Violet Anderson
Mother, we are gathered here today to wish you every happiness on the occasion of your ninetieth birthday. As everyone knows, you have celebrated your actual birthday in a small but sincere way on February 20th, but as you are aware, your many friends and dear ones were unable to be present at that time.
Let me reminisce for a few minutes and say that you have carried on alone ever since Dad died on June 30th, 1935. It is true we had grown up at that time but your concern for us was very great and it has not changed from that date to this August 5th, 1973.
With every passing year many changes have occurred -- your children have married, made homes for themselves and blessed you with loving grandchildren. Another generation has appeared and with it great grandchildren who will have many memories of their great grandmother.
Everyone here today rejoices in your long and happy life with us and I hope this message does not bring any sadness because we are hopeful that you will enjoy many more occasions such as this.
To live to be ninety years of age is beating the three score years and ten plateau. We can now be happy in the fact that we have been blessed with your presence here on earth, four score years and ten.
May this occasion remain ever in your memory and remind you of the love that we have for you and how grateful we are for the loving care that you have bestowed on us, your children, in every year of our lives.
God Bless you Mother.
Your loving children, Mildred, Clayton, Winston.
Sunday, a beautiful day in every way, was one long to be remembered by Violet and every guest who shared it with her.
Do you link to this family? If so, please e-mail me at
robbins@niagara.com
