Fact and Fiction About Adam, Nancy, and Robert Colquhoun

In my previous post, I traced the origin of the story and the pedigree purporting to connect the Colquhouns of Luss in Scotland with the Colhouns of Crosh in Ireland.  To summarize, it originated as a hypothesis published by Charles Croslegh in 1904, then was expanded on by Orval Calhoun in 1976.  With advances in information technology and increased availability of sources made since those authors’ times, we now have the ability to cross-check many pieces of this hypothesis.  I began this process in the previous post by questioning what we can truly say about the inheritance of the Colquhouns’ Irish estate, Corkagh.

In this post, I will continue by examining many commonly held “facts” about the three central figures in this pedigree––Adam Colquhoun, his sister Nancy, and his supposed son, Robert––to assess what is likely to be true and what isn’t.  The format I will use is to put the asserted “fact” in italics, followed by my assessment of whether it is substantiated by evidence in bold, followed by my comments on why.  For the purposes of this post, the term “true” means that I personally believe it is substantiated by the evidence I have seen, and “false” means it is not.  Of course, I encourage every reader to make up his or her own mind.

Adam Colquhoun

“Adam Colquhoun was a son of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss.”  True.  Alexander’s probate records, dated May 1617, name Adam as a son.  In my earlier post about Adam, I discussed that Adam Colquhoun, son of Alexander of Luss, acquired the estate of Glens in Stirlingshire, married Giles MacFarlane in 1644, and died in 1655.  There are primary source records to support these dates of marriage (namely, a muniment of Clan MacFarlane) and death (namely, Adam’s probate records).

“Adam Colquhoun was born about 1601.”  False.  As I elaborated in my earlier post about Alexander’s family, strong circumstantial evidence indicates that Adam was Alexander’s seventh and youngest son, and his tenth child overall.  Given Alexander’s marriage in 1595 and a typical two-year spacing between children, Adam was more likely to have been born about 1612.  The commonly-cited date of 1601 was probably suggested by Croslegh to squeeze several generations into a limited timeframe.  For details see the earlier post. 

“Adam Colquhoun inherited the Irish estate of Corkagh from his father.”  False.  In another post, I described how the Scottish probate laws at the time required that Corkagh pass to Alexander’s eldest son and successor, Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss.  Documents bear out that Corkagh was in the possession of Sir John from the 1620s, and I will lay these out in an upcoming post about Corkagh. 

“Adam Colquhoun married a daughter of Lindsay of Bonhill and had a daughter who married Thomas Buchanan of Carbeth.”  False.  Again, Adam married Giles MacFarlane in 1644.  Is it possible that Miss Lindsay was an earlier wife?  No.  The idea that Adam married Miss Lindsay originated with a case of mistaken identity by Charles Croslegh in 1904.  There were many men with the name Adam Colquhoun, and Croslegh mixed up two of them.  Writing in 1723, William Buchanan of Auchmar stated that Thomas Buchanan, son of Thomas Buchanan, 3^rd of Carbeth, “married a Daughter of Adam Colchoun Merchant in Dumbartoun, said to be a Son of Luss’s, her Mother being Lindsay of Bonneil’s Daughter.  He had by her Two Sons, John his Successor, and Walter.”  (William Buchanan. A Historical and Genealogical Essay Upon the Family and Surname of Buchanan. Glasgow: William Duncan, 1723, p. 88.)  However, when did this Adam live?  John Guthrie Smith states,

Thomas Buchanan of Carbeth, by disposition dated 2^nd December 1614, sold the Temple lands of Letter to Sir William Livingstone of Kilsyth.  He married Agnes Blair, and he and his spouse are parties to a contract, 3^rd March 1621….  Auchmar (p. 88) states that the last Thomas Buchanan of Carbeth married a daughter of Adam Colquhoun, merchant in Dunbarton.  If this is correct, Agnes Blair must have been the second wife.

John Guthrie Smith. Strathendrick and Its Inhabitants from Early Times. Glasgow: James Maclehose and Sons, 1896, p. 347.

Because Thomas Buchanan’s eldest son, John, was married in 1632, he was probably born about 1605, give or take a few years.  Working backwards, that means that Thomas and his first wife (Adam’s daughter) were born about 1575, and his father-in-law, Adam Colquhoun, merchant of Dumbarton, was born around 1550, give or take a few years.  This was 60 years before the birth of Adam son of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss.  Clearly, the Adam Colquhoun who married Miss Lindsay and the Adam son of Alexander of Luss were two different people from two different generations.

Orval O. Calhoun goes one step further than Croslegh, calling Adam’s wife “Christian Lindsay.”  This first name appears neither in Buchanan nor in Croslegh, so I suspect Orval mistook her for the Christian Lindsay, daughter of John Lindsay of Bonhill, who married John Colquhoun, 7^th of Camstradden (see Fraser vol. 2, p. 189).  However, this Christian was born in the early years of the 1500s, about 100 years earlier than Adam’s wife would have been.  There was also a 16^th century Scottish female poet named Christian Lindsay (fl. 1580-1620), but she was married to William Murray and had nothing to do with any Adam Colquhoun.

As far as evidence currently shows, Giles MacFarlane was Adam Colquhoun’s only wife.

“Adam Colquhoun was a merchant in Dumbarton, and an unsuccessful one.”  False.  The same case of mistaken identity that caused Croslegh to believe that Adam married Miss Lindsay also caused him to believe that Adam was a merchant.  According to Buchanan of Auchmar, the Adam Colquhoun of an earlier generation who married Miss Lindsay was indeed a merchant.  However, I have seen no document that describes the occupation of Adam the son of Alexander of Luss.  Fraser notes a record stating, “In December 1634, Adam Colquhoun, brother to the Laird of Luss, was indebted to William Towart (Stewart) £42, 2s” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 235).  Croslegh, perhaps taking this debt as evidence of poor business acumen, states, “The ownership of one thousand acres beyond the sea could not tempt the merchant of Dumbarton to give up his apparently not very successful business, in order to become a resident landlord in Ireland” (Croslegh, p. 214).  Adam was not a merchant, but even if he had been, it would be a stretch to suggest that a single debt of £42 meant he was an unsuccessful businessman.  Furthermore, as I noted above, Adam was not the owner of Corkagh, the 1,000-acre property in Ireland that Croslegh alludes to.

“Adam’s wife died in 1629.”  False.  As described above, Adam was not born until about 1612, and his only known marriage did not even occur until 1644.  The idea that he had a wife who died young was probably invented by Croslegh to explain why Robert Colquhoun went to Ireland as a boy.

“Adam himself died in 1634.”  False.  His probate records tell us unambiguously that he died in 1655.  The idea that Adam died in 1634 seems to have originated with Orval Calhoun, who states,

Records show that Robert’s father, Adam Colquhoun, brother of Sir John Colquhoun, BT, Laird of Luss, in Dec. of 1634, at the time of his death was indebted to William Stuart, Captain of Dumbarton Castle, for £42.2s. on account of Sir John Colquhoun encumbering the Estates.  But this was cleared and paid off at the time, Adam’s WILL was probated in 1635…. 

[Adam’s wife died in 1629. It] is not recorded what caused her death at such an early age, but it sure left Adam Colquhoun, in quite a quandry [sic], with a store on his hands to operate and two very small children to raise and look after.  Being that Adam was not a well man, health wise, he made his WILL and gave the Lands in Ireland to [his son] Robert in 1630, when Robert was only eight years of age.  It was a good job that he did, for Adam died in December of 1634, a young man, with both health and financial troubles, as there are records to show this.

Orval O. Calhoun. OCF vol. 1, pp. 21 and 24.

Records do show that Adam incurred a debt in December 1634:  as I stated above, Fraser notes that Adam was indebted to William Towart in December 1634 (Fraser vol. I, p. 235, in which he cites “Dumbarton Records, loose slips, vol. i”).  However, Fraser does not state––nor is there any reason to infer––that this was at the time of Adam’s death or had anything to do with his brother encumbering Irish property.

Orval reiterates that there are “records to show” that Adam died in December 1634 amidst health and financial troubles.  To be blunt, I have seen no such records.  The “records” Orval mentions may be his own assertion that Adam left a will that was probated in 1635 and that bequeathed Irish land to a son named Robert.  Adam’s actual probate records from 1655 do not include a will, and the inventory makes no mention either of Irish property or a son named Robert.  I have considered the possibility that Orval could have mistaken some other probate record from 1635 for Adam’s will.  However, the only probate record for a Colquhoun from 1635 on file with the National Records of Scotland, as per the indexes at ScotlandsPeople and elsewhere, belongs to John Colquhoun, 2^nd of Kenmure.  The source of Orval’s claim is unknown, at least to me.

Nancy Colquhoun and John McAuselan

“Nancy Colquhoun was a daughter of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss.”  True.  We know this from Alexander’s will, dated May 1617.

“Nancy Colquhoun married John McAuselan, a younger son of the last Baron McAuselan, of Dunbartonshire.”  Unknown, but probably false.  We have no evidence as to who Nancy married, if anyone, so there is no way to gauge the truth of this statement.  For what it’s worth, The Red Book of Scotland states that Nancy died unmarried.  Why would anyone postulate a marriage between Nancy and a McAuselan in the first place?  Croslegh mentioned an oral tradition in his family that stated the founder of his family, who he claimed to be Robert, was raised by an uncle named McAuselan.  A surmised marriage between Nancy and John would have satisfied that claim.

“Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, sent his son-in-law and daughter John and Nancy McAuselan to Ireland to manage the Corkagh estate for him.”  False.  Nancy was probably born about 1604 and would have been about 13 when her father died.  Even if she did eventually marry John McAuselan, it would probably not have been before 1624 and therefore not during her father’s lifetime.  According to William Buchanan of Auchmar, “the greatest Number and of best Account of [McAuselans] reside in the Counties of Tyrone, Derry, and Down in the North of Ireland.  The Ancestors of the principal Men of there last were Andrew, and John M’Auselans, Sons of the Baron M’Auselan, who went out of the Paroch of Luss to that Kingdom, in the latter Part of the Reign of King James VI” (Buchanan, p. 275).  James VI/I ruled Scotland from 1603-1625, so it does appear that John McAuselan’s relocation to Ireland would have occurred in the early 1620s.  Where in Ireland he went, and whether he was married to Nancy Colquhoun when he did so, are open questions.

In the list of Irish counties mentioned by Buchanan, Donegal is not included.  Furthermore, a muster roll of able-bodied males on the Colquhouns’ Corkagh estate from 1630 mentions no one named McAuselan.  That is not to say that John could not have been a freeholder at Corkagh either before or after 1630, but Buchanan’s failure to mention Donegal as a place of McAuselan settlement argues against this.

Robert Colquhoun

“A Robert Colquhoun was made denizen of Ireland in 1630.”  True.  Index entries to the letters patent of denization clarify him as follows: “1630, July 14.  Robert Colqunhowne, Esq., a native of Scotland.  (Patent Roll 6, Car. I., 1^st part, f. m. 25.).”  This Robert was made an undertaker of “the small proportion of Corkagh” consisting of 1,000 acres.  (James Morrin. Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland in the Reign of Charles the First. Dublin: Alexander Thom, 1863, p. 538.)

“The Robert Colquhoun made denizen was the son of Adam Colquhoun.”  False.  Adam Colquhoun did not marry until 1644, and his only known sons were named John and Alexander (sources: Adam’s probate records, and The Red Book of Scotland).  Let’s say for the sake of argument that Adam also had an illegitimate son named Robert, born before his marriage to Giles, who went unrecorded. Even so, with Adam born about 1612, such a son would likely not have been born before 1632. Therefore, this son could not have been made denizen of Ireland in 1630, and he could not have been the father of William Colhoun of Newtownstewart, who was born about 1635.

“The Colhoun family of Crosh was founded by a man from Luss named Colquhoun who went to Ireland as a young boy, in the charge of an uncle named McCausland.”  Unknown, but possibly true.  As I outlined in the previous post, this comes strictly from oral tradition in the Crosh family, as related by Croslegh.  There is probably at least a kernel of truth to this, and the fact that William Colhoun of Newtownstewart married a McCausland does support a connection between the two families in the 17^th century.  This founder might have been William himself, but it was more likely his father, whose name is not stated on any primary source document.  William was probably born about 1635, and his father (whatever his name was) was probably born around 1600-1605.  (Actually, I now have my suspicions about who William’s father was, but you’ll have to wait a couple of weeks for my next post!)

“The Robert Colquhoun made denizen of Ireland in 1630 was that founder.”  Probably false.  Having come across the denization record of Robert Colquhoun from 1630, Croslegh concluded that Robert was the founder of the Crosh family and the father of William of Newtownstewart.  To make this hypothesis work, he proposed a birth year for Robert of about 1622, making him a boy in 1630.  However, there is no reason to assume any of this, since many other scenarios are equally possible if not more likely.  Worth noting is that the name Robert was not used for any known sons, grandsons, or great-grandsons of William Colhoun, which argues against William’s father having been named Robert. 

So who was Robert colquhoun?

In the section above, I tried to establish that the “Robert Colqunhowne, Esq.” made denizen of Ireland in 1630 was not the grandson of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss and not the ancestor of the Colhoun family of Crosh, County Tyrone.  So who was he?  We know from the letter of denization that he was from Scotland, and since Undertakers came from the peerage and the gentry class, we need to look to the Scottish Colquhoun families from these classes––namely the Colquhoun of Luss family and its cadet branches––to identify him.  The title “Esq.” was reserved for the eldest sons of peers and knights, but within those senior Colquhoun families, I cannot find a knight or baronet who would be a candidate for Robert’s father.  Keep in mind, however, that the same index of letters patent where he was called “Robert Colqunhowne, Esq.” also referred to Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss as “Sir” and “knight”.  Alexander was not in fact a knight, so I suggest that Robert’s title might have been similarly inflated.

By 1630, the name Robert had not been used in the Luss family for many generations.  In fact, the only senior Colquhoun family where the name Robert was in common usage at that time was Colquhoun of Camstradden.  Interestingly, two independent sources suggest that Robert was in fact from the Camstradden family.  The first is Burke’s entry for “Colhoun of Carrickbaldoey”, which states,

By Patent dated 14 July, 1630, another member of the family, Robert Colquhowne (probably Robert Colquhoun, afterwards of Camstradden) was granted letters of denization together with Corkagh, which was then created the Manor of Corkagh, with the usual manorial rights.

Sir Bernard Burke. A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland. London: Harrison and Sons, 1912, p. 121.

The second source, interestingly enough, is noted by Croslegh himself in the following footnote:

The Venerable William Colquhoun, Archdeacon of Derry,––who tells me that he takes no personal interest in the history of the family,––has very kindly sent me a pedigree which makes the Irish branch to spring from “Robert Colquhoun of Comstroden, living in 1620.”  I am unable to attach any importance to this document.  It is impossible to reconcile it either with Fraser’s Monograph, or with the public annals of the nation.  [Croslegh then enumerates several errors in the pedigree between the years 1120 and 1373.]  It is unnecessary to examine this alleged descent more closely.  I have not indeed gone into the history of the Camstradden branch.  But the identification of any Robert of that line with our ancestor Robert, who received letters of denization in 1630, is negatived by all the evidence before me, whether of extant documents, or of uninterrupted and unvarying family tradition.

Croslegh, p. 211.

Croslegh is right in pointing out the errors in the very early part of the archdeacon’s pedigree.  However, by using that as a reason to discard the more recent (and likely more reliable) parts of the pedigree, I think he was being overzealous.  Ven. William Colquhoun (1842-1920) was from an Irish Colhoun family originating in parish Taughboyne, Co. Donegal, not from the Crosh family.  Several years ago, I contacted William’s only surviving great-grandchild, but unfortunately he had no records of the family handed down from William.  The fate of that pedigree is unknown, but it is possible that if research notes from Rev. Croslegh have survived, it might be among them.

I believe that the Robert Colquhoun made denizen of Ireland in 1630 was indeed from the Camstradden family, and in fact was the Robert Colquhoun (ca. 1588-1669) who in 1642 became 10^th laird of Camstradden.  This Robert was a close associate of the Luss family and likely a personal friend of Alexander, 15^th/17^th of Luss and of his son, Sir John.  Robert’s father, John Colquhoun, 9^th of Camstradden, was witness to the will of laird Alexander in 1617.  In 1612, Robert, then fiar (heir-apparent to the laird) of Camstradden, received a charter from Alexander to the lands of Auchengavin, perhaps as a wedding present (Fraser vol. 2, p. 201).  Robert was also the man who in 1653 paid off the mortgage of the lands of Aldochlay to Adam Colquhoun of Glens, son of Alexander (Fraser vol. 2, p. 202).  In 1662, Robert served as bailie of barony to Alexander’s grandson Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss (Fraser vol. 2, p. 202).  Taken together, this suggests that several generations of the Luss family had placed their trust in this Robert.

I do not know exactly why Robert Colquhoun of Camstradden should have been made Undertaker of Corkagh, a property that both before and after 1630 was clearly under the ownership of Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss.  However, in 1630 Sir John was engaged in the purchase of several new Scottish lands from John Colquhoun of Kilmardinny “for great sums of money” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 248).  Therefore, I speculate that Sir John temporarily sold Corkagh to Robert, a trusted family friend and associate, as a means of raising funds, keeping open the option of reclaiming Corkagh at a future date, which he seems to have done.

The commonly-cited pedigree linking the Colquhouns of Luss with the Colhouns of Crosh. This is the same figure shown in my previous post, but with relationships I have shown here to be problematic now marked in red.

This is how I would revise the figure based on the evidence I have presented here. Note there is no longer a link between the Colquhoun of Luss family and the Colhoun family of Crosh in Ireland. Rather, they are presented as two separate pedigrees. Not shown is Robert Colquhoun, 10^th of Camstradden, who was not closely related to the Luss family or, as far as known, to the Crosh family.

Summary

In my assessment, most of what is commonly believed about Adam, Nancy, and Robert Colquhoun is not true.  Again, many of these beliefs originated with the hypothetical connection between Luss and Crosh proposed by Croslegh in 1904.  This connection was not an entirely unreasonable assumption on Croslegh’s part: since Robert Colquhoun held title to Corkagh in 1630, and since Corkagh was the Irish manor previously granted to Alexander, 15^th/17^th of Luss, Croslegh assumed that this Robert must have been an heir and therefore a direct descendant of Alexander.  Unfortunately, this does not seem to have been the case.  (Worth noting here is that George Hill made the same mistaken assumption on p. 511 of his work, An Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster, where he states without evidence, “On the 14th of July, 1630, letters patent of denization were issued to Robert Colqunhowne, son of Sir John….”)

As far as I can tell, neither Adam Colquhoun of Glens (originally of Luss) nor Robert Colquhoun of Camstradden (made denizen of Ireland in 1630) left descendants in Ireland.  Robert became 10^th laird of Camstradden in 1642, so if he lived in Ireland at all, he had returned to Scotland by 1642, and it appears that his children lived in Scotland as well (see Fraser vol. 2, pp. 202-204).  The parentage of William Colhoun of Newtownstewart, and therefore the origin of the Colhoun family of Crosh, therefore remains unknown.  However, if we are at long last willing to part with Croslegh’s story, the way will be clear for us to look for the truth.  With some luck, we may find it.

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Once again, I express my gratitude to Paul Calhoun and to a second reader for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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Most Recent Posts

• The Colhouns of Crosh, Part 3: Scottish Origins
• The Colhouns of Crosh, Part 2: The McCausland Connection
• The Colhouns of Crosh, Part 1: The First Generations in Ireland
• The Colhouns of the Irish Gentry
• The Manor of Corkagh: Part 2 of 2

The “Luss-Crosh Link” and the Story Behind It

The most commonly cited link between the Colquhouns of Scotland and the Colhouns of Ireland spans five generations, from Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, Scotland to Rev. Alexander Colhoun of Crosh, County Tyrone, Ireland.  This five-generation pedigree, and the narrative behind it, has found its way into thousands of Calhoun family trees and written histories, both online and in print.  In my own words, I summarize the story told as follows.

“Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, acquired the estate of Corkagh in Co. Donegal, Ireland in the 1610s.  Instead of residing there himself, he designated his son-in-law John McAuselan, husband of his daughter Nancy, to live on and manage the estate as his personal representative.  However, when Alexander died in 1617, rather than give Corkagh to John and Nancy, he instead bequeathed it to his son Adam, a merchant in Dumbarton.  Like his father, Adam also decided not to relocate to Ireland.  Upon the death of his wife in 1629, Adam sent his seven-year-old son Robert to reside there in his stead.  Adam died in 1634, after which Robert inherited Corkagh.  In 1641, Robert married his first cousin Catherine McAuselan, daughter of John and Nancy.  They had several children including a son William.  In 1651, at the age of eight, William inherited yet another Irish estate, Crosh House in Co. Tyrone, from Sir William Stewart, Baronet, apparently some kind of relative.  A stipulation of the inheritance was that William live there, and so the boy relocated from Corkagh to Crosh, where he was raised by Alexander McCausland and his wife, who were relatives of his mother’s.  William later married their daughter Catherine McCausland and had several children, including son Alexander, later Rev. Alexander Colhoun.”

This story has been part of Calhoun family lore for more than a hundred years, and many people have come to rely on it for determining their own ancestry.  However, if we are interested in getting as close to the truth of the historical record as we can (and why wouldn’t we be?), then every piece of received wisdom, no matter how old, is worth re-examining from time to time.  After all, the digitization of records has brought to light many sources that may not have been easily accessible to researchers a hundred years ago, or even forty years ago.  So getting back to this particular story, how true is it, or more accurately, how much of it is true?  Based on my interpretation of the evidence, the short answer is (spoiler alert!), “not much.”  I will analyze the specific elements of the story in the next post, but in this post, I would like to discuss how the story as a whole came to be.

The commonly-cited pedigree linking the Colquhouns of Luss with the Colhouns of Crosh. Additional details on the McCausland family added by me based on McCausland research.

From Oral Tradition to Croslegh

The core elements of this story originated with Charles Croslegh who first published it in his book on the family in 1904.  Croslegh’s roots ran through the Colhoun family of Crosh, and like many Calhouns, he was curious as to how his family was connected to the senior Colquhoun family of Luss, Scotland.  He says the following:

In the case of the [Colhoun] family I may claim credit for having established the historical connection between the Scotch and the Irish Colquhouns.  The Irish branch had always retained the tradition, but it had lost all documentary record of its descent from the old Chiefs of Colquhoun.  It knew that its first ancestor in Ireland, Robert Colquhoun, had come from Luss, as a child, under the charge of his uncle MacCausland.  But how that child was linked to the Lairds of Luss on the one hand, or to the Colquhouns in Ireland on the other, it did not know.  I have recovered that lost record.  I do not mean that I have discovered documents which would be received in a court of law as unshakeable evidence to prove the descent at every step.  But I have found testimony, (resting all along on trustworthy written or printed statements), sufficient, I think, to remove all reasonable doubt as to the general correctness of my deductions.

Croslegh, p. x.

I have to disagree with Croslegh here:  I believe there is plenty of room for reasonable doubt.  Croslegh performed his research 120 years ago, and it is a fact that there were sources available to him at that time that have not survived to the present day.  So are there things that he knew that we don’t?  Probably not:  he did an excellent job of citing the documents and personal communications he relied on, and there is relatively little in his list of references that is not also available to us.  On the other hand, the internet, digitization of books and records, and modern-day travel permit us access to sources that were not available to him.  Therefore, we can examine his story not only in light of the sources he used to construct it, but also in light of additional sources he may not have been aware of. 

Croslegh’s “story,” as I have called it, is in fact a hypothesis he built to explain the origin of his Irish Colhoun family in light of the documentary and oral sources he had to work with.  He says, “it is interesting to see how the chaos of apparently impossible dates and contradictory statements soon begins to grow, under careful attention, into an orderly and consistent story” (Croslegh, pp. 211-212).  In other words, he took discontinuous data and filled in the gaps with estimated dates and surmised relationships where necessary in order to create a continuous narrative.  There is nothing wrong with doing this, as building hypotheses is a necessary part of the process of discovery.  However, equally necessary to the process is the critical examination of hypotheses to determine which parts hold up and which do not.  Let us consider the two streams of evidence Croslegh used:  the oral tradition handed down in his family, and the set of documents he cites.

Croslegh mentions an oral tradition passed down through “the Irish branch” of the Calhouns, by which I presume he meant specifically his own family, the Colhouns of Crosh, County Tyrone.  According to Croslegh’s preface (quoted above), this tradition stated that (1) the Colhouns of Crosh believed they were somehow descended from the old Chiefs of Colquhoun in Scotland (i.e., the Luss family), and (2) the first of the Crosh ancestors to come to Ireland was a Colquhoun perhaps named Robert, born somewhere near Luss, who came to Ireland when still a young boy as the ward of an uncle named McCausland.  Because this tradition was more than 200 years old by the time Croslegh wrote it down, it is possible and even likely that errors had crept into it through repeated retelling.  Furthermore, we have only Croslegh’s version of the story, so we can’t know which parts might have been his own additions.  Nonetheless, such traditions often contain at the very least a kernel of truth, and we have to respect this possibility.

Croslegh also mentions his reliance on “trustworthy written or printed statements.”  As far as I can tell, these statements include not much more than the following, at least among those he cites specifically in his endnotes:

• Fraser’s discussion of the Battle of Glen Fruin.  (Endnote 12; from Fraser vol. 1, chapter XIV.)
• Fraser’s transcription of the will of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, specifically the statement about Adam and the Irish lands.  (Endnote 17; from Fraser vol. 1, p. 231.)
• Statements that Adam Colquhoun married a daughter of Lindsay of Bonneil and that John McAuselan went to Ireland.  (Endnote 16; from William Buchanan of Auchmar.  A Historical and Genealogical Essay upon the Family and Surname of Buchanan.  Glasgow: William Duncan, 1723, pp. 88; 122-123.)
• General residency requirements for all undertakers to the Plantation of Ulster.  (Endnote 17; from George Hill.  An Historical Account of the Plantation in Ulster at the Commencement of the Seventeenth Century, 1608-1620.  Belfast: M’Kaw, Stevenson, and Orr, 1877, pp. 80-83.)
• Pynnar’s Survey of the Ulster Plantation from 1619, entry for Corkagh.  (Endnote 17; from Hill, pp. 511-512.)
• Instructions to the Lord Deputy of Ireland regarding denization and inheritance.  (Endnote 17; from Sir Richard Cox.  Hibernia anglicana, or, The history of Ireland…, p. 51.)
• Letter Patent of Denization for Robert Colquhoun of Corkagh, 1630.  (Endnote 17; from James Morrin.  Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland of the Reign of Charles the First, vol. III.  Dublin: Alexander Thom, 1863, pp. 538-539.)

These documents may be trustworthy and provide important information (like the identities of laird Alexander’s children and his family’s ownership of Corkagh), but upon close examination, many of them prove to be of a general historical nature, and those that do refer to Calhouns don’t speak to the other specific relationships he proposes. 

Given the oral tradition and the set of documents above, one might imagine that Croslegh came up with the hypothesis that he did using the following reasoning.  He was aware that his ancestor Rev. Alexander Colhoun was born around 1663 and was the son of William Colhoun of Newtownstewart.  The oral tradition within his family stated that the first of them to come to Ireland was a Robert Colquhoun, who arrived from Scotland at a very young age, to be raised by an uncle named McCausland.  Therefore, he reasoned, this Robert must have been the father of William.  The tradition also stated that Robert had come from Luss and that the family had somehow descended “from the old Chiefs of Colquhoun.”  This is a vague statement, but Croslegh took it literally to mean that Robert must have been the son or grandson of one of the lairds of Luss.  He then searched Fraser’s work to see where such a connection might be made.

In Fraser’s book, Croslegh came across two “loose ends” among the children of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss:  a son Adam, who Croslegh believed inherited Alexander’s Irish estate at Corkagh, and a daughter Nancy, whose husband Fraser could not identify.  Adam’s connection to Ireland via Alexander’s will, and the fact that Robert physically went to Ireland, suggested to him that Adam must have been the father of Robert.  Why would Robert go to Ireland as a young boy in the company of an uncle and not his parents?  Perhaps it was because his mother had recently died, and his father could not care for him.  Who was this mother?  In Buchanan of Auchmar’s book, Croslegh found reference to an Adam Colquhoun, merchant of Dumbarton, who married a daughter of Lindsey of Bonneil and had a daughter named Helen.  He figured this was the same Adam mentioned in the will of Alexander of Luss and that, in addition to daughter Helen, Adam must have had a son Robert whom Buchanan neglected to mention.  Buchanan also mentioned a John McAuselan who went to Ireland in the last days of the reign of James VI/I, and so Croslegh reasoned that John must have been the uncle of his Robert and therefore the husband of one of Adam’s sisters, probably Nancy.

Croslegh was constrained by the birth of Rev. Alexander Colhoun in 1663 (which he probably knew from Trinity College records) and the marriage of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss in late 1595 (known from Fraser and references therein).  Between these two dates, he had to squeeze in the births of three other generations, and so he estimated the following birthdates to make it work:  Adam Colquhoun ca. 1601, Adam’s supposed son Robert ca. 1622, and Robert’s supposed son William ca. 1643.  This was a very tight fit:  most men from the Scottish gentry did not marry until their mid-20s at the very earliest, but Croslegh’s timeline required three successive generations of men to marry at ages 19-21.  Again, these birth dates do not appear in any of the written sources he cites, and because he does such a good job of referencing, it seems unlikely that they came from uncited sources but rather were his own estimates. 

If you have read my previous three blog posts, you already know that I believe that Adam was not born until about 1612, that Adam did not inherit Corkagh, that he did not have a son named Robert and in fact was not even married until 1644, and that if Nancy married at all, she did not marry John McAuselan, at least not before her father died in 1617.  If I convinced you of the truth of even a single one of these statements, Croslegh’s hypothesis falls apart.

From Croslegh to Orval

Croslegh’s hypothesis was expanded 70 years later by Orval Calhoun in his book series Our Calhoun Family (OCF).  As many have pointed out, Orval was not as diligent as Croslegh in referencing his sources, in part because he relied heavily on information sent to him by other family members from around the world.  Although we do not know what sources were or were not available to him, we must use the sources now available to us to cross-check his statements as best we can.  To do so, we must first identify statements that are Orval’s and not also Croslegh’s––in other words, statements in OCF that were not also present in Croslegh’s earlier work.  For example, Croslegh says the following:

That the Laird of Luss should exchange the bonny banks of Loch Lomond for the wilds of Donegal was out of the question. He fulfilled the condition of residence by deputy. He sent his son-in-law, John MacAuselan or MacCausland, a younger son of the last Baron MacAuselan who was then living in the parish of Luss, to Ireland, to live on the estate, and to manage it. He also made certain arrangements, the precise nature of which does not appear, concerning this newly acquired property. But whatever these arrangements may have been, he cancelled them by his last will….

Croslegh p. 213-4.

If these “certain arrangements” that Alexander supposedly made regarding the Corkagh estate “do not appear”, how did Croslegh know about them?  Fraser, who unlike Croslegh actually worked from the documents at Rossdhu, did not mention anything about this, so I tend to believe this was speculation on Croslegh’s part, although again, we cannot know for sure.  Orval tells the same story as follows, with the underlined portions being new elements that he added:

The Laird of Luss, had no desire to exchange the Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond, for the wilds of Donegal. That is how it became possible for him to place his daughter, Nancy & her husband John McAuselan (Younger son of the last Baron McAuselan) to live on the land in Ireland, to develop it according to the directions of the Crown. They had proceeded with these instructions according to schedule and received the O.K. from the Royal Commission on each of the Surveys that were conducted about every two years, so that Nancy & John were still living on the Irish Lands, when Sir Alexander died on May 23rd 1617, but they did not inherit Manor Corkagh from her father at his death, like an earlier WILL had stated they would, as Sir Alexander Colquhoun had made some previous arrangement for this estate with John & Nancy. But for some unknown reason he cancelled them by his last WILL….

Regardless of the disappointment on not inheriting Corkagh, Nancy and John McAuselan, continued living at Corkagh, & managing it for Adam Colquhoun, her brother, who had inherited it. Sir John realizing what expenses Adam would be up against at Corkagh, agreed upon a sufficient provision for his brother Adam, to maintain the Estate.

OCF vol. 1, p. 20.

As a first new story element, he mentions biannual surveys that apparently mention Nancy and John McAuselan living at Corkagh before and after 1617.  Indeed, four Plantation surveys were conducted between 1611 and 1622, but at best, they simply recorded the number of tenants on each proportion of Irish land, not the names.  I have been able to find no surveys, nor any other document, stating that John and/or Nancy McAuselan either lived at Corkagh or were associated with the property in any way.  The earliest record of anyone of that surname I have found living there is a Patrick McCausland recorded in the townland of Corkey in the Hearth Money Rolls of 1665.

Second, Orval states that the “certain arrangements” made for Corkagh, which Croslegh provided no evidence for and told us were unrecorded, were in fact detailed in an earlier draft of Alexander’s will.  Neither Fraser nor Croslegh described such a document, and only one version of the will is currently deposited at the National Records of Scotland.  If in fact no such earlier draft of the will exists, as I believe to be the case, this statement most likely arose from a misunderstanding of Croslegh’s use of the phrase “last will” (meant as in “last will and testament” and not “last of several wills”).

Finally, he states that the provision that Sir John Colquhoun made for his brother Adam was intended to maintain the estate of Corkagh.  Not so.  Sir John was obligated by his father’s will to provide for each of his younger siblings as they came of age, essentially giving each of them the share of inheritance they were owed.  As I mentioned in a previous post, Fraser notes that around 1631, when Adam was about 19, “Sir John agreed upon a sufficient provision for his brother Adam” (Fraser p. 248).  The details of this provision have not survived, so there is no evidence that it was for the purpose of maintaining Corkagh.  Since we know for certain that Adam acquired the estate of Glens in Stirlingshire, the provisions more likely had to do with arranging money for the purchase or long-term lease of Glens, but even this is not known for certain.  

I have summarized how I believe the well-known story about the relationship between the Colhouns of Crosh in Ireland and the Colquhouns of Luss in Scotland came into being.  I recognize that there may have been sources known to Croslegh in 1904 and Orval in 1976 that I am not aware of, but I believe the story as we know it today is largely the product of their work and not from pre-existing sources.  In the next post, I will go into more specifics of what I believe is true, false, and unknown concerning Adam, Nancy, and Robert Colquhoun, so stay tuned!

Do you disagree with me based on your own research?  For example, have you seen the mysterious early draft of Alexander’s will, or tenant lists showing the McAuselans at Corkagh, or the details of any provisions made by Sir John to Adam Colquhoun?  If so, I’d love to see them for myself!

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I am greatly indebted to Paul Calhoun and to a second reader (you know who you are!) for critical reading of this post and helpful edits. I believe this article was much improved thanks to their efforts.

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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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