The Senior Colquhoun Lines of Scotland

titles and terminology

By Scottish tradition, the chief of the Calhoun family is The Colquhoun of Colquhoun and Luss, who has resided for centuries on the shores of Loch Lomond in Dunbartonshire.  He is officially recognized as a clan chief by the Court of the Lord Lyon, the legal arbiter of Scottish heraldry.  This entitles him to bear the undifferenced arms granted to his ancestor Sir John Colquhoun, 13^th of Colquhoun and 15^th of Luss, in 1542 by that same court.

Source: Fraser vol. 1, p. 417.

As with most Scottish clans, the chief is the senior-most male descendant of the family’s founder, in our case Humphrey of Kilpatrick, who is considered the first chief (i.e., 1^st of Colquhoun).  All chiefs who have followed him are numbered consecutively, and I follow the numbering of Fraser, who may or may not have originated the system.  In the early generations of the family, their seat was in the Barony of Colquhoun from which they took their name.  The chief of the family was therefore also the laird of Colquhoun, with laird being not a hereditary title implying nobility but rather a Scots word meaning specifically an estate owner.

Around 1368, Humphrey’s great-great-grandson Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th of Colquhoun, married the daughter and heiress of Godfrey, 6^th of Luss.  Her given name is not known, so she is referred to by Fraser and others, in fairy-tale fashion, as “The Fair Maid of Luss.”  With Godfrey’s death around 1385, the male line and surname of Luss came to an end, and the family’s extensive property on the shores of Loch Lomond was inherited by his daughter and her husband, the aforementioned Sir Robert Colquhoun.  Evidently the Barony of Luss was a more desirable property than the Barony of Colquhoun, since the Colquhoun chiefs soon moved their seat to Luss, where they have remained ever since.  They thus became lairds of Luss beginning with Sir Robert, who succeeded Godfrey as 7^th of Luss.  From Robert’s time on, the senior-most Colquhouns have been referred to with two numbers, of the form “Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th of Colquhoun and 7^th of Luss.”  Eventually, the lands of Colquhoun passed out of the family’s ownership, and so I take the title since then to mean “5^th chief of Colquhoun [the family] and 7^th laird of Luss [the property].”  Whether this interpretation is correct or not, I’m not sure.

I tend to use a shorthand format of my own invention to describe the chiefs succinctly with both numberings.  My shorthand for the example above would be “Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5^th/7^th of Luss.”  It is not standard, and I hope no one is offended by this.

On 30 August 1625, the Colquhoun chiefs acquired another hereditary title when King Charles I granted to Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss the rank and dignity of Baronet.  The initial grant was a new Baronetcy of Colquhoun in the colony of Nova Scotia in America, to be located near LaHave.  In 1704, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20^th/22^nd of Luss, 5^th Baronet, having no male heirs to pass the baronetcy to as required by the original grant, surrendered the title to the Crown and was regranted the same under terms that allowed its succession to his son-in-law, James Grant, who would then become Sir James Colquhoun, 21^st/23^rd of Luss.  However, Sir James subsequently inherited the Grant estate, and that original baronetcy passed into the Grant family.  James Grant’s son Sir James Colquhoun, 23^rd/25^th of Luss was granted a new title, Baronet of Great Britain, just a few months before his death in 1786, and this new title has been in the Colquhoun of Luss family ever since.  The present chief of the family is Sir Malcolm Rory Colquhoun, 31^st/33^rd of Luss, 9^th Baronet of Great Britain.

Again, the position of chief and laird is typically inherited by the eldest son of the outgoing chief, or if he has no surviving sons, the eldest in the family’s male line according to rules of British primogeniture, which I don’t fully understand.  However, younger sons from the Luss family sometimes acquired property of their own, either through division of the Luss estate or by marriage into another landowning family.  These younger sons therefore established junior lines (so-called “cadet branches”) of the Colquhoun family, named for the property of which they became laird.

Relationships of the various cadet branches to the Colquhouns of Colquhoun and Luss based on Fraser vols. 1 and 2.

The Colquhouns from these families belong to the gentry, the upper social strata of British commoners, and none of them to my knowledge have risen to the peerage (aristocracy).  Even Baronets do not belong to the peerage.  I’m an American and confess that I’m not used to the terminology of titled gentry and aristocracy (with the notable exception of the Duke of New York, A-Number One [video, with sound], once held by the late, great Isaac Hayes).  The table below describes the social ranks to which the Calhoun gentry of Scotland and Ireland belonged, as best I have been able to figure them out.  As always, I welcome any correction by those who know more than I do.

Rank	Hereditary	Prefix Title	Description
Baronet	yes	Sir/Lady	Hereditary honor created by James VI/I in 1611 to raise revenue for the crown
Knight	no	Sir/Lady	Non-hereditary; there are several orders, all but one of which fall between baronet and esquire in rank
Esquire	no	none	Traditionally for eldest sons of knights and some younger descendants of peers, but also bestowed by virtue of certain offices
Gentleman	no	none	Generally men of “good social standing” who did not need to work for a living

Genealogical importance of the senior lines

I focus on the Colquhoun of Luss family in this post because of its genealogical importance.  Using family records from Rossdhu and Camstradden, Fraser built pedigrees of this family and its connected cadet branches beginning with Humphrey of Kilpatrick in the 13^th century and extending all the way to the 19^th century, an unbroken lineage of Colquhoun chiefs and chieftains.  Most of us who are interested in family history and genealogy would love to connect ourselves to such a pedigree, but very few of us (if any) can actually do so.  In centuries past, only families who were deemed “important” in some way (namely, those with land, titles, or money) were documented.  Such people were a minority, and so for most of us, our paper trail ends in the 18^th or 19^th century.

Can genetic information from Y-DNA help us?  In theory, yes.  In my earlier post, I stated that Humphrey of Kilpatrick was the patrilineal ancestor not only of males from the Colquhoun of Luss family (prior to 1718) and its cadet branches, but also of all Calhoun males belonging to haplogroup E-Y16733.  For most of us, however, there is a five- or six-century gap between Humphrey and our earliest documented Calhoun ancestor.  If we can simply find someone who is a patrilineal descendant of Humphrey of Kilpatrick with an unbroken paper trail—namely someone descended from the Luss family or one of its cadet branches—to take a Y-DNA test, he could serve as a “gold standard” for those without such a paper trail.  Having this point of reference would not magically create paper trails for the rest of us, but it would at least close the gap between Humphrey and ourselves considerably, since we would have a much better idea of approximately when each of our ancestries branched off from Fraser’s lineage.

Here’s the problem:  the male lineages of the Colquhouns of Luss and of every cadet branch of the family have ended.  Yes, the Colquhouns of Luss have continued to the present day, but there was a break in the strict father-to-son lineage in 1718 with the death of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20^th/22^nd of Luss, 5^th Baronet.  As I mentioned above, he had no sons, and so the family line continued through his daughter Anne Colquhoun, who married James Grant.  The present-day Colquhouns of Luss are the male-line descendants of Anne’s younger son Sir James Colquhoun, 23^rd/25^th of Luss, whose Y-chromosome came from the Grant family.  The following table describes the fates of the various Colquhoun family branches (source:  Fraser vols. 1 and 2).

Family	Founder (First in Male Lineage)	Last in Male Lineage
Luss	Humphrey of Kilpatrick, 1st of Colquhoun (1190-1260)	Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20th/22nd of Luss (d. 1718)
Tillyquhoun (Tullichewan)	Alexander (fl. 1666), third son of Sir John Colquhoun, 16th/18th of Luss	Robert-David Colquhoun, 7th of Tillyquhoun (d. 1838)
Camstradden	Robert, son of Sir Robert Colquhoun, 5th/7th of Luss (1395-1439)	Sir Robert Gilmour Colquhoun, 17th of Camstradden (d. 1870)
Kilmardinny	Walter (d. bef 1541), third son of Sir John Colquhoun, 11th/13th of Luss	John Colquhoun (7th generation), d. ca. 1692
Garscube	James, second son of Humphrey Colquhoun, 12th/14th of Luss	Property soon reverted to Luss
Garscadden and Killermont	Descendant of John, second son of Robert Colquhoun, 6th of Camstradden	James Colquhoun, 7th generation from John (d. 1801)
Balvie	Humphrey, second son of Alexander Colquhoun, 15th/17th of Luss	No children, did not continue
Kenmure	Patrick, third son of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 6th/8th of Luss	William Colquhoun Stirling of Edenbarnet (d. 1866)
Barnhill (Bonniel, Bonhill)	John Colquhoun of Milton, 1543 charter from Sir John Colquhoun, 13th/15th of Luss	Walter Colquhoun, 8th of Barnhill (d. 1827)

Despite this, there is some good news.  Just because the titled positions above have all ended in the male line, that doesn’t mean we won’t be able to find male-line descendants.  In my next post, I will list many younger sons from the various family lines above who are unaccounted for (by Fraser, at least) and who could have male-line descendants alive today.  My sincere hope is that eventually someone with a solid, documented pedigree back to someone in that list will be identified and would be willing to take the Big Y test.  More soon!

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Special thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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