The Colhouns of Crosh, Part 3: Scottish Origins

Recap

As I mentioned when I began this series, I believe I have found a new and well-supported genealogical connection between the Colhoun of Crosh family in Ireland and an ancestral family branch in Scotland.  In the last two posts, I have tried to lay the groundwork for this new proposal.  In this post, I will describe it in detail.

In the first post of this “Colhoun of Crosh” series, I tried to establish:

• That the James Colhoun listed (as “James Cacone”) near Alexander McCausland on the 1631 muster roll from the Newtownstewart area of Co. Tyrone is the Scottish-born founder of the Colhoun of Crosh family in Ireland; more specifically, that he was the father of the William Colhoun of Newtownstewart who married Alexander McCausland’s daughter Catherine.
• That James was the brother of John Colhoun of Letterkenny, who appears on several 17^th century records including as an overseer of the will of Alexander McCausland from 1674.
• That John Colhoun of Letterkenny was the probable father of Peter/Patrick Colhoun, who moved back and forth between Aughnish and Letterkenny in Co. Donegal and Newtownstewart in Co. Tyrone, both areas with ties to the Mountjoy family.

In the second post of the series, I tried to establish:

• That the Alexander McCausland mentioned above was the son of Patrick McCausland and his wife Agnes Colquhoun, of Caldenoch in Dunbartonshire, Scotland.
• That Patrick’s will of 1616 mentions other Colquhouns in addition to his wife, Agnes.
• That for centuries, the McCausland family of Caldenoch had been closely associated with, had been feudal tenants of, and had married into, the Colquhoun of Luss family.

Hopefully I was able to convince you of at least some of those ideas.  I will now try to put the pieces together to show how all this can be used to establish a continuous male lineage of the Colhoun of Crosh family. 

Agnes and Robert Colquhoun

The pedigree of the McCausland family that I included with the last post showed three intermarriages with Calhouns.  The first marriage I mentioned was between Catherine McCausland and William Colhoun (from the “Colhoun of Crosh” family) in Ireland.  A second, probably occurring about 1538, was between one of the early 16^th-century barons of Caldenoch and Marjory Colquhoun, who I argued was a daughter of the Colquhoun of Luss; as this was probably a second marriage for both parties, there is a good chance that Marjory was not an ancestor by blood of the later McCauslands.  The third, perhaps occurring in the late 1580s, was between Patrick McCausland and Agnes Colquhoun.  As Patrick and Agnes were the parents of Alexander McCausland, determining Agnes’s identity is critically important.

Some secondary sources state that Agnes was the daughter of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 14^th/16^th of Luss, who was assassinated in 1592, but this is not true.  Sir Humphrey died leaving three daughters:  Jean, Margaret, and Annas (see Fraser vol. 1, pp. 163-166 and 168, and references therein).  Some may mistake Agnes for Annas, but Annas married Colin Campbell of Carrick in 1610, and the other two daughters are also accounted for (ibid).  Agnes was indeed the daughter of a Humphrey Colquhoun, but not that Humphrey.  James Dennistoun’s research dated June 1828 (PRONI D669/52) states that Agnes was the daughter of Humphrey Colquhoun of Tullichintaull.  I don’t know what sources Dennistoun used or how he came to this conclusion, but I believe he was 100% spot-on.

Recall that Patrick McCausland’s will of 1616 mentions two other Colquhouns in addition to his wife, Agnes: Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, to whom money was owed, and Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, who was named as an executor of the will (although he declined the position).  The appearance of the Colquhoun of Luss is perhaps not surprising since he was Patrick McCausland’s feudal superior, hence the money owed.  Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, on the other hand, was almost certainly a very close relative given that his surname was the same as Patrick’s wife and that he was named an executor of the will.  I propose that Robert was Agnes’s brother, and I will show evidence to support this.

Excerpt from the legacy portion of Patrick McCausland’s estate records. First line reads, “At Caldonoche the second day of August 1616.” Boxed in red are the following names: (1) executor “Ro’t Colquhoune of Balornok”, (2) spouse “Agnes Colquhoune”, and (3) sons “Ro’t & Alex’r McCausland”.

The Colquhouns of Ballernick

In volume 2 of his work, Fraser devotes chapters or sections to numerous cadet branches of the Colquhoun family.  I provided a pedigree showing the relationships of these family branches to each other in one previous post, and I highlighted members of these families who might have living male-line descendants in another.  Since then, I have noticed that not every land-owning branch of the Colquhoun family received such treatment from Fraser.  Those branches that did not may not have had as much land, or been as wealthy, or held onto the land for enough generations to warrant a dedicated chapter.  One such branch of the family is the Colquhouns of Ballernick.  Although Fraser did not devote a chapter to this branch, he provided enough scattered references to them from which to build a pedigree.  I will try to do just that here, collecting and rearranging Fraser’s references into roughly chronological order. 

Ballernick (also spelled Balernock, or in Gaelic, Balarnaig) actually comprises two properties, Ballernick-beg (“little Ballernick”) and Ballernick-mor or Meikle Ballernick (“great Ballernick”).  Both are located in Dunbartonshire, just east of Faslane on the slopes of Gare Loch.  Originally part of the parish of Luss, in the mid-17^th century they were transferred to the parish of Row (Fraser vol. 2, p. 102).  Although the family is often referred to simply as Colquhoun of Ballernick, the property from which they got the title was specifically Ballernick-mor.

Topographic map of the isthmus sometimes called the Isle of Ben-Leven. Colquhoun strongholds of Luss and Camstradden are highlighted in boxes, and several other place names relevant to this post have been added. Most of these are not marked on modern maps, as they are archaic names or refer to settlements now gone or in ruins. Source: Google Maps.

Sir John Colquhoun, 11^th/13^th of Luss and the lands of Ballernick-mor and Tullichintaull.  The association of Colquhouns with the lands of Ballernick-mor begins with Sir John Colquhoun, 11^th/13^th of Luss (d. 1536).  Sir John first married Elizabeth Stewart, by whom he had four sons (including Humphrey, ancestor of the later lairds of Luss, and Walter, ancestor of the Colquhouns of Kilmardinny) and four daughters (including Marjory, wife of Sir Duncan Campbell and also, as I propose, of Patrick McCausland of Caldonach).  He second married Margaret Cunningham, by whom he had two sons and two daughters.  As if that weren’t enough, he also had four illegitimate children, a daughter and three sons.  (See Fraser vol. 1, pp. 84-102.)  During his lifetime, he provided financially for his sixteen children by distributing at different times a number of lands to them.  Fraser reproduces two charters of particular importance here:

• Sir John’s charter to Patrick Colquhoun, one of his “natural” (illegitimate) sons, of the lands of Tullichintaull and Gortane:  “Charter by John Culquhoun of Luss, Knight, to Patrick Culquhoun, his son, of the lands of Twllichintawell and Gortane.  29^th August 1522” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 334).
• Sir John’s charter to Thomas Colquhoun, his eldest son by his second wife, Margaret Cunningham, of lands including Ballernick-mor:  “Charter by John Culquhoun of Luss, Knight, to Thomas Culquhoun, his son, of the lands of Fynart, Portcaple, and Forlinbrek, and lands of Ballernik Moir.  22d August 1532” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 335).

Besides Patrick, Sir John’s other illegitimate sons were Adam Colquhoun of Blairvaddoch and David Colquhoun of Stronratan.  I have already mentioned Adam as having sold to his probable half-sister Marjory and her husband, Patrick McCausland of Caldonach, the annual rent of the lands of Letterwald-mor, in 1543.  That same year, Adam purchased the lands of Faslane and Ballernick-mor from the Earl of Lennox, suggesting that Thomas had by that time died without heirs, with Ballernick-mor reverting to the earldom (Fraser vol. 1, p. 100).  Adam died by 1558, apparently unmarried, leaving his brother David of Stronratan sole heir to the lands of Blairvaddoch, Letterwald-mor, and Ballernick-mor (Fraser vol. 1, p. 101).  David himself died in 1559, with these lands again reverting to the earldom.  In 1564, the reversions were purchased from the earl by David’s nephew and lord superior, Sir John Colquhoun, 13^th/15^th of Luss (Fraser vol. 1, p. 121).

Patrick Colquhoun of Ardinconnal and Tullichintaull, son of Sir John above.  It seems therefore that Thomas, Adam, and David all died without male heirs.  Of the brothers mentioned above, it is only Patrick Colquhoun, recipient of Tullichintaull and Gortane in 1522, whose line continued.  Patrick, often styled “of Ardinconnal”, married Isabel McAulay of Ardincaple sometime before 1528 and died sometime between 1565-1577 (Fraser vol. 1, p. 98).

Tullichintaull (also Tullich-in-Taul) was a settlement at the west end of Glen Douglas, just north of the lands of Gortan.  (See Alistair McIntyre and Tam Ward.  “The History and Survey of Several Settlement Sites in Argyll.”  North Clyde Archaeological Society, p. 5.)

Humphrey Colquhoun of Tullichintaull, son of Patrick above.  A document dated 17 January 1559 at Rossdhu names “Patrick Colquhoun of Ardinconnal, and Humphrey Colquhoun, son and apparent heir to the said Patrick” in regards to the redemption of Ardinconnal (Fraser vol. 1, p. 99).  There is also a citation:  “Protocol of Instrument of Sasine in Notarial Transumpt (Original), dated 23d April 1577, obtained from the Sheriff of Dumbarton by Humphrey Colquhoun of Tullichintaull, son and heir of the deceased Patrick Colquhoun of Tullichintaull, at Rossdhu” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 97, footnote 2).  Note that a different source states that this sasine was from 1569, not 1577 (McIntyre and Ward, “Argyll”, p. 6.)

Humphrey married Agnes Kelso, based on the following record pertaining to his son Robert:  “On 8^th October 1589, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun [14^th/16^th of Luss] was infefted in the lands of Ardinconnal, Finnart, Portincaple, Forlingbrek [Fairholmbreck], Tullichintaull, and others.  Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick acted as his attorney on the occasion; and among the witnesses was Gilchrist Macaulay, servant of Agnes Kelso in Ballernick-mor, mother of the said Robert Colquhoun” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 150).  Humphrey died by 1587 according to the record below.

Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, son of Humphrey above.  The Cartulary of Colquhoun includes the following record dated 1587:  “Precept of clare constat by Sir Vmphry Colquhoun of Luss in favour of Robert Colquhoun of Ballernickmoir, as heir of the deceased Vmphry Colquhoun of Tullichintaull, his father, in the lands of Gortan” (McIntyre and Ward, “Argyll”, p. 6).  In 1587, Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick was likely a young man in his 20s, as he seems to have died sometime around 1640.

In 1616, Robert was named an executor of the will of Patrick McCausland of Caldonach, and it is now evident why:  he was indeed the brother of Patrick’s wife, Agnes.  The records above state that Robert was the son of Humphrey Colquhoun of Tullichintaull, and the research of James Dennistoun (PRONI D669/52B and C) states that Agnes was also the daughter of this same Humphrey.

As mentioned in a previous post, the will of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss from 1617 mentions a bequest of 1000 merks to Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick (Fraser vol. 1, p. 231).  While there is evidence of a close relationship between the Luss and Ballernick families, it is unclear exactly why this was given.  It could have been in gratitude for support at the Battle of Glen Fruin in 1603, or it could have been compensation for the loss of land by Robert’s family.  Following that battle, and probably in the period 1603-1610, there seems to have been an exchange of lands between the Colquhoun and MacFarlane clans intended to help quell the blood feud between them.  Among the lands that transferred from Colquhoun to MacFarlane ownership were Tullichintaull and Gortan, representing a loss to the Colquhoun of Ballernick family.  (See McIntyre and Ward, “Argyll”, p. 6).

In 1631, Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick purchased the lands of Bannachra from Alexander, brother of Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss (Fraser vol. 2, p. 64).  The lands of Ballernick and Bannachra were mentioned as being in Robert’s possession in 1639 when the parish of Row was formed (Fraser vol. 2, p. 102).  Robert likely died that year or in 1640, when his son Humphrey became infefted in this same property.

In addition to Humphrey, Robert had a daughter named Christian or Christina.  The first wife of Robert Colquhoun, 10^th of Camstradden was Mary Macaulay, eldest daughter of Alexander Macaulay in Ballernick-mor (Fraser vol. 2, p. 201).  Their son and Robert’s successor, Alexander Colquhoun, 11^th of Camstradden, married secondly Christian, daughter of “Robert Colquhoun in [sic] Ballernick” (see Fraser vol. 2, pp. 208-209).  This may have been a second marriage for Christian as well, assuming she is the same person as the “Christina” in the following reference:  “This latter Quentin Lindsay [in possession of Bonhill 1641] was married to Christina, eldest daughter of Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, and had an only daughter, Anne, upon whom he settled the estate in 1660, on condition of her marrying some gentleman bearing the name and arms of Lindsay” (Joseph Irving.  The Book of Dumbartonshire, vol. II.  Edinburgh: W. and A. K. Johnston, 1879, p. 174.)

Fraser mentions Robert one other time, in the context of the 1647 marriage of Walter Stewart and Jean, daughter of Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss.  The minister performing the ceremony was admonished by church authorities for doing so without the consent of the bride’s father.  As Sir John died in 1647, this may have been because he was either ill or deceased at the time of the wedding.  The minister stated that in fact “he had received her father’s consent, through Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 251).  This reference is cryptic in that I believe Robert died between 1639-1640, as I stated above.  Possible explanations include:  Robert did not actually die by 1640 but survived until at least 1647; this is a mistaken reference to Humphrey Colquhoun of Ballernick; or, Robert had a son of the same name not mentioned elsewhere by Fraser, and this record refers to the son.

Humphrey Colquhoun of Ballernick, son of Robert above.  As mentioned, Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick purchased the lands of Bannachra in 1631.  “His son Humphrey and his wife, Margaret Sempill, were infefted therein in 1640” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 64).  In 1656, “Humphray Colquhoun of Balernik” was among numerous Colquhouns subject to a letter of complaint by the provost and bailies of Dunbartonshire (Fraser vol. 1, p. 264).  In 1659, Humphrey is mentioned as heritor of the lands and castle of Bannachra when it was transferred from parish Row to Luss (Fraser vol. 2, pp. 62-63).  Interestingly, Fraser indexed Humphrey as “Colquhoun, Humphrey, fourth of Ballernick” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 398).  He does not similarly refer to him as “fourth” in the text, nor any other members of the family with ordinal numbers, so this may have been the remnant of a reference system that Fraser considered but abandoned by the time of publication.

Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, son of Humphrey above.  Fraser states, “Humphrey’s eldest son, Robert, married in 1664, for his second wife, Jean, eldest daughter of Mr. John Darleith, in Dumbarton.  His first wife was Margaret Sydserf” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 64).  “After the decease of her husband, Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, Jean Darleith having married, secondly, Robert Colquhoun, son of Alexander Colquhoun of Camstradden, sold, with the consent of her second husband, by disposition dated 10^th April 1675, to Aulay Macaulay, her liferent and conjunct-fee in the lands of Easter and Wester Bannachra” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 66).  Robert’s estate records are dated 27 April 1675.  Records cited below show that Robert had a brother named Archibald Colquhoun.

Robert Colquhoun of Bannachra, son of Robert above .  Robert, “only lawful son of Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 307), was a minor in 1675 when his father died, and he was not immediately served heir to his father’s estate (Fraser vol. 2, p. 65).  Shortly after the elder Robert’s death, Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss, received from the Duchess of Lennox the property of Bannachra “by reason of ward and non-entry of the said lands through the decease of Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick.  This gift thereof was of all years bygone since the death of the said Robert, and in time coming, until the entry of the next lawful heir thereto, being of lawful age, with the relief of the said ward when the same should happen, with the marriage of Robert Colquhoun of Bannachra, son and apparent heir of the said deceased Robert, and failing of him by death unmarried, with the marriage of any other heir or heirs, male or female, that should happen to succeed” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 276; this issue is also discussed in vol. 2, p. 65).

During Robert’s minority, bonds were issued on his family’s lands, which eventually fell into the hands of James Smollett of Stainflett and Bonhill (ca. 1648-1731).  To recover the money in the bonds, James took legal action, raising letters of general and special charge “against Robert Colquhoun, son of the deceased Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, dated 6^th December 1687, charging him to enter himself heir to his father.”  Courts ruled in Smollett’s favor, agreeing in 1690 that the total owed to him on the two bonds, for the lands of Ballernick and the lands and mill of Bannachra, totaled £5231.  (See Fraser vol. 2, pp. 65-66.)

The court decree “further decerned [Smollett] to be infefted in the said lands, etc., by Frances Duchess of Lennox, or any other the immediate and lawful superior thereof.  Soon after obtaining this decreet, James Smollett sold the lands of Ballernick and Bannachra to Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss, who obtained from him a disposition of them, dated 12^th May 1691.  This purchase of the lands was afterwards confirmed in the favor of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Luss, by the said Robert Colquhoun, younger, with consent of Archibald Colquhoun, brother-german to the said deceased Robert Colquhoun, his father, by disposition, dated 4^th November 1692” (Fraser vol. 2, p. 66).

In 1698, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun paid Robert 2300 merks as the remainder of the price for the lands of Ballernick-mor and Bannachra.  The bond was later redeemed by Sir James Colquhoun, 23^rd/25^th of Luss, 8^th Baronet.  (See Fraser vol. 1, pp. 307 and 362.)  I have not determined what happened to Robert after the loss of his family’s lands, or whether he married or had children.

Connection to the Colhouns of Crosh

Having now worked out a pedigree of the Colquhoun of Ballernick family, we can begin to see where the Colhoun of Crosh family fits in.  In the accompanying tree, I have placed the founders of the Crosh family in Ireland, probable brothers James Colhoun of Newtownstewart and John Colhoun of Letterkenny, as sons of Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick.  There do not appear to be surviving estate records for Robert, so there is no documentary proof of these relationships at present.  However, in my opinion the circumstantial evidence is quite strong.

Pedigree of the Colquhouns of Ballernick and their relationship to the Colquhouns of Luss and Colhouns of Crosh in Ireland. Ancestors of the Colhouns of Crosh are in boldface, and those who went to or were born in Ireland are shaded in green. Not shown is Christian, daughter of Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick (d. 1640). Birth dates are to be taken as very approximate in most cases. Dates for the Colquhouns of Luss at left are the dates each served as laird of Luss. Dotted lines indicate proposed relationships that do not yet have documentary support.

The placement of James and John Colhoun in this tree does not contradict what we know about the Ballernick family, since none of the few records pertaining to Humphrey Colquhoun of Ballernick (who seems to have lived, very approximately, during the period 1595-1670) states that he was Robert of Ballernick’s only son.  As inheritor of the estate, he was clearly the eldest son, but he could well have had younger brothers, as I show here.  The Crosh family’s financial and social position in Ireland suggested to me that it originated with a branch of the Scottish gentry, and this tree is consistent with that hypothesis.

In addition, note that Humphrey Colquhoun’s wife was Margaret Sempill, whom he probably married in the 1620s.  John Colhoun of Letterkenny became the “servant” (likely the estate agent) of Sir William Sempill in Ireland.  I do not yet know what the relationship was between Margaret and Sir William, but a family connection certainly explains how John could have attained the position that he did.  

Finally, and most importantly, this tree structure is strongly supported by the oral tradition within the Colhoun of Crosh family.  Recall Croslegh’s summary of this tradition (on p. x of his book):

The Irish branch [i.e., the Colhoun of Crosh family] 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.

By the Crosh family’s “first ancestor in Ireland, Robert Colquhoun”, Croslegh was referring to the man of that name made denizen of Ireland in 1630 and grantee of the Luss family’s estate of Corkagh.  Croslegh identified this Robert, incorrectly, as a grandson of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss.  In an earlier post, I argued instead that he was probably Robert Colquhoun later 10^th of Camstradden, as stated by Burke’s and other sources.  While this is still possible, I now feel that an equally strong if not stronger candidate is Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, evidently another close associate of the Luss family.  I suggested that in the early years of the 1600s, the Colquhoun of Ballernick family suffered loss of property including Tullichintaull as a result of a land exchange with the MacFarlanes engineered by the Luss family.  One can imagine that the Colquhoun of Ballernick family’s brief ownership of Corkagh in 1630 was part of a complex land transaction intended to belatedly compensate them, just as the bequest from Alexander’s 1617 will might have been.  It is possible that Corkagh’s reversion to Luss ownership coincided with the Ballernicks’ acquisition of the lands of Bannachra from the laird of Luss’s brother Alexander in 1631, only a year later.

This is all speculation on my part, and I will return to Robert’s identity in the future if further evidence is found supporting either thesis.  In the meantime, this has been a long winded way of saying that the proposed tree agrees with the oral tradition in that an early ancestor of the Irish Crosh family was named Robert, even if Robert did not live “in Ireland”.  Instead, it seems to have been Robert’s son James who was the first to migrate to Ireland, and at the time he did so, Ballernick-mor belonged to the parish of Luss.  Thus, the oral tradition’s statement that this first ancestor had come “from Luss” is also accurate, even if he did not belong to the senior-most branch of the family, the Colquhouns “of Luss”.

Most importantly, the proposed tree shows Alexander McCausland as the first cousin of James and John Colhoun, explaining why Alexander and James settled near each other in Ireland and why Alexander chose John, who lived some distance away in Letterkenny, as an overseer of his will in 1674.  The 1642 muster roll of Sir William Stewart’s regiment that includes Alexander McCausland also includes several Calhouns, but not James.  I now believe that James probably died during the Rebellion of 1641, leaving his son William as a fatherless child who was taken in by (therefore “under the charge of”) Alexander McCausland.  This tree shows Alexander to have been William’s first cousin once removed, which is about as close to an uncle/nephew relationship as you can get without Alexander having been an actual uncle, as the oral tradition states.  In short, this proposed tree structure supports just about every element of the oral tradition maintained by the Colhoun of Crosh family.

There remain plenty of unanswered questions and plenty of research to be done, but I think we’re getting somewhere!

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Today marks the first anniversary of my first post to this blog. Special thanks yet again to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits, and for his valuable input into almost all previous posts over the past year. This blog has been much the stronger for his help. Please check out his own blog about the Calhoun family, calhoun.info.

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© 2024 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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For a list of posts, visit The Genealogy of the Calhoun Family homepage.

The Colhouns of Crosh, Part 2: The McCausland Connection

Alexander McCausland’s Ancestral Family

In the last article, I discussed James Colhoun of Newtownstewart, the Scottish native who I suggest to have been the founder of the Colhoun of Crosh family in Ireland.  I also discussed his family’s close relationship with Alexander McCausland:  James and Alexander were neighbors in 1631, and James’s son William later married Alexander’s daughter Catherine.  I then speculated that James and Alexander might have served together in the army during the civil wars of the 1640s, that James died during that period, and that Alexander afterwards became William’s guardian.  What I did not say is that Alexander McCausland was also the crucial piece of the puzzle that enabled me to connect the Irish Colhoun of Crosh family with their Scottish roots.  Because of that important link, I will devote this post to Alexander McCausland’s family.

Since this blog is about the Calhouns and not the McCauslands, I won’t go into the ancient history of the McCausland (also spelled McAusland, McAuslane, McAuselan, etc.) family in Scotland.  Instead, I will focus on the period from the late 16^th through the 17^th centuries when McCauslands first migrated to Ireland.  In the last blog post I said the following:

“The association between McCauslands and Colquhouns can be traced back to at least 1395 in Scotland, when John McAuslane of Caldenoch witnessed a charter in which Humphrey Colquhoun, 6^th/8^th of Luss granted the lands of Camstradden to his brother Robert.  In 1631, the Colquhoun lairds of Luss were the immediate feudal superiors of the McCausland barons of Caldenoch, the family from which Alexander came.”

In Scotland, the term baron was not a title of nobility, but instead meant the owner of a small estate; in other words, a minor laird.  It was the McCausland of Caldenoch (in Gaelic, Cùlanach), the chieftain of clan McCausland, who in the 17^th century came to be referred to as “baron McCausland”.  The fact that the barons were designated “of” Caldenoch and not “in” Caldenoch indicates they held the property by charter, as opposed to simply being residents there.  Some derivative sources state the barons McCausland were from Glen Douglas, but this does not seem to be quite correct.  In the 17^th century at least, they did hold additional properties not far from Glen Douglas, but their seat seems to have been at Caldenoch, near Glen Mallan.  Since all these areas were very close to each other, this may seem like splitting hairs.  However, since it is claimed that the Irish McCauslands were from the baron’s family, knowing that the barons were of Caldenoch enables us to properly identify their ancestral home and possible ancestors. 

Although their precise father-to-son lineage has proven hard to determine, the McCauslands of Caldenoch were mentioned as early as the 1395 charter noted above and as late as the late 1600s.  There is an excellent blog at lammermoor.org (formerly called McAuslandGenes) that describes the barons McCausland and their properties, and the article by McIntyre and Ward that I referenced above also provides a superb history of Caldenoch:

• Post at Lammermoor entitled “The McAusland Barons of Caldenoch, Prestilloch, Innerquhonlanes and Craigfad”.  Includes a nice chronological history of the barons McCausland.
• Post at Lammermoor entitled “The McAusland Barony Became Part of the Lands and Barony of Luss”.  Describes the reversion of the Barony of McCausland to the Colquhoun of Luss family and includes some nice portraits of a few of the 18^th century lairds of Luss.
• Alistair McIntyre and Tam Ward.  “The History and Survey of Cùlanach Settlement in Argyll.”  North Clyde Archaeological Society.  Includes a comprehensive timeline of records pertaining to Caldenoch from 1395 to 1860.

For those interested in the McCausland family in further detail, all of these sources are well worth reading.

Buchanan’s Story of the McCausland Migration to Ulster

Writing in 1723, William Buchanan of Auchmar stated the following:

Alexander, last baron McAuselan, having only one daughter, who was married to a gentleman of the name of Campbel, after whose death, she sold her interest to Sir Humphrey Colchoun of Luss, her superior.  The remainder of the Scotch McAuselans, reside mostly in Lennox.  But the greatest number and of best account of that name, reside in the counties of Tyrone, Derry, and Down, in the north of Ireland.  The ancestors of the principal men of these last, were Andrew, and John McAuselans, sons of the baron McAuselan, who went out of the paroch of Luss to that kingdom, in the latter part of the reign of king James VI.  This Andrew had a son called Alexander, upon whom he bestowed a good education, by which means, becoming a prudent, active gentleman, he obtained a commission in the army, in time of the civil wars, in the reign of king Charles I.

William Buchanan of Auchmar. A Historical and Genealogical Essay upon the Family and Surname of Buchanan.  Glasgow: William Duncan, 1723, p. 275.

To summarize, Buchanan claims that two brothers named Andrew and John, sons of one of the barons McCausland, went to Ireland “in the latter part of the reign of king James VI”, which likely meant sometime during the period 1620-1625.  He speaks, in vague terms, of both brothers as being the ancestors of Irish McCauslands who by 1723 had spread out into Cos. Tyrone, Derry, and Down.  However, he mentions only one child born to either of them, namely Andrew’s son Alexander.  His description of this Alexander’s military service and the lands he was awarded (quoted in my previous post) identify him as the Alexander McCausland who died in 1675 and who was the father-in-law of William Colhoun of Newtownstewart.

This narrative, largely unquestioned as far as I can tell, has formed the basis for nearly all subsequent accounts of the settlement of Ireland by McCauslands.  However, as I will discuss below, I believe it is incorrect regarding which McCauslands went to Ireland.  Before doing so, I want to mention three early derivative works, each of which introduced additional errors into Buchanan’s original.  Because they too have served as source material for later pedigrees, accounts, and research, their errors have also been perpetuated.

Betham’s pedigree (1814-1830).  Included in the McCausland file at PRONI (D669) is a hand-drawn pedigree with the following certification:

I do hereby Certify that the above Pedigree has been faithfully compiled from authentic & sufficient documents, and now remains upon Record in the office of Ulster King of Arms of all Ireland.  Witness my hand & seal of office this 19^th day of Jan’y 1814 (signet).  –W. Betham, D[eput]y Ulster King of Arms of Ireland.

Continued [this?] 23^rd of April 1830 by your Humble servant, Richard B. McCausland.

PRONI D669/?

Betham’s 1814 and 1830 tree (PRONI D669/45). Image kindly provided by Dave McCausland. Check out his blog entry describing his discovery of the tree here!

Although I am not certain, my guess is that the original tree was compiled by Betham himself, with later additions by Sir Richard Bolton McCausland (1810-1900).  At the root of this pedigree is “… Baron McAuslane of Glendouglass in Dumbartonsh:, Chieftain of the Clan and last who assumed the title.”  Three things mark the first three generations of the tree as being derived from Buchanan’s account.  The first is that the baron is not named directly, just as Buchanan did not name him.  The second is that the tree includes only the two sons and one grandson of the baron that were named by Buchanan (Andrew, John, and Alexander, respectively) and no others.  (The generations beyond Alexander appear to be from original research, in part using Alexander’s 1674 will.)  The third is the terminology describing the patriarch at the root as the “last” baron McCausland.  

In his account, Buchanan mentions an “Alexander, last baron M’Auselan.”  However, the reason he was the last baron is that he had only a daughter; therefore, he is not also the baron who was the father of Andrew and John, as this pedigree states.  The claim that Andrew and John’s father was the “last baron McCausland” is an error that has been perpetuated in many later accounts.  In addition, this pedigree seems to be the origin of the idea that the barons McCausland were from Glen Douglas and not Caldenoch, something not stated by Buchanan and another likely error.

Burke’s (1836).  Because the 1814 pedigree above was given official approval by the Ulster King of Arms, it was undoubtedly used as source material for the entry “Mac Causland of Strabane” in Burke’s Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry (London: H. Colburn, 1836, p. 791).  This is clear because Burke’s repeats the claim that the baron McCausland was from Glen Douglas.  However, the article also explicitly states that it used Buchanan’s account directly.  While much of the article is most likely trustworthy, the genealogy opens with the following erroneous statement:

“Baron M’Auslane, of Glenduglas, came over to Ireland in the latter end of King James I.’s reign, about the year 1600, and left two sons, Andrew and John.  Of the younger, the line is now extinct.  The elder, Andrew M’Auselane, had a son, Alexander M’Auslane….”

Burke’s, p. 791.

This statement tells us that in addition to the two sons, the baron McCausland himself went to Ireland, perhaps even 20 years before his children.  This seems highly unlikely to me since the baron had his own ancestral lands in Scotland to manage and would not have left them.  Any McCauslands who resettled in Ireland were likely younger sons who were not destined to inherit property in Scotland.  The statement that the baron himself moved to Ireland, while almost certainly untrue, has been perpetuated in at least one later work (Thesta Kennedy Scogland.  Genealogy of McCasland.  Baltimore: Gateway Press, 1984, p. 2.).  (In the paragraph preceding the passage above, the Burke’s author quoted from Buchanan but truncated the original sentence, and it can be conjectured that the resulting loss of key information from the original source caused the misunderstanding.)  

Croslegh (1904).  In addition to its extensive chapter on the Calhoun family, Croslegh’s Descent and Alliances includes a brief chapter on the McCausland family (pp. 229-232).  Like Burke’s, Croslegh provides an extensive recap of Buchanan’s account, but he probably used either Betham’s pedigree or Burke’s as an additional source since he repeats the “Glen Douglas” claim.  Croslegh adds Alexander, the “last” baron McCausland mentioned by Buchanan, as a brother of Andrew and John, which, although probably incorrect, was not an unreasonable assumption.  The major new error that Croslegh introduces is the idea that John McCausland married Nancy, daughter of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss.  I have discussed this error, which was repeated for over a century, at length in previous posts.

Buchanan’s own account (1723).  Even laying aside these derivative works, I believe Buchanan’s own account is problematic.  Alexander’s birth date is often cited as 1617 (with no evidence that I am aware of), and from this we might guess that his father was born about 1590 and came to Ireland when Alexander was a young boy, consistent with what Buchanan tells us.  However, as I argued in the last post, Alexander’s appearance on the 1631 muster roll in County Tyrone suggests he was born between 1600-1610.  If Alexander were born on the earlier side of that range, he could have come to Ireland himself as an adult.  Furthermore, I have seen no records of Alexander’s supposed father and uncle, Andrew and John, in Ireland, and the derivative works say virtually nothing about them, suggesting their authors found no records of them either.

A 1642 roster of soldiers in Sgt. Maj. James Galbraith’s company of Sir William Stewart’s regiment, mustered at Raphoe, Co. Donegal, includes the following names:

• Alex’r McCarsan, corporal
• Andrew McCawslan

Alexander’s father, who according to Buchanan was named Andrew, would have been well over 60 years old in 1642 and not likely to have gone into combat.  This Andrew, while probably related to Alexander, was more likely a younger relative.

The Barons McCausland

Buchanan never names the baron McCausland who was the father of the supposed Irish settlers, Andrew and John.  Most subsequent researchers, assuming the general correctness of Buchanan’s account, identify him as John McCausland of Caldenoch, who appears on a list of gentry whose property was despoiled during the Glen Finlas Raid of December 1602.  Researcher Polly Aird notes that this John died shortly after the Battle of Glen Fruin in 1603, and several researchers identify his wife as Margaret Graham or Grahame.  I have not independently verified any of this information, but this has been the consensus so far.

The following McCauslands of Caldenoch from the 16^th and 17^th centuries, who presumably belong to the lineage of the “barons”, have been previously identified by other researchers.  Importantly, two of them are stated to have married Colquhouns.

Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch (fl. 1535-1543).  Sources can be found at Lammermoor.org.  This Patrick had a brother named Donald and a wife named Marjory Colquhoun:

“Mr. Adam Colquhoun of Blairvaddoch sold to Patrick M’Causlane of Caldenocht, and Marjory Colquhoun, his spouse, an annual rent of ten merks Scots, from the lands of Letterwald-mor ; and on 20th February 1543 they granted him letters of reversion, engaging, on his payment of one hundred merks Scots, to renounce this annual rent in his favour.”

Fraser vol. 1, p. 100.

Adam Colquhoun of Blairvaddoch was a son of Sir John Colquhoun, 11^th/13^th of Luss.  The property of Letterwald-mor passed between several of Adam’s siblings, and so my guess is that Marjory Colquhoun was Adam’s half-sister of that name.  Marjory (likely born in the early 1490s) married Sir Duncan Campbell, who died in 1536 (Fraser vol. 1, p. 93).  Fraser does not state what happened to Marjory after that, but she could well have remarried to Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch.  Marjory would have been in her forties when they married, so she may or may not have been the mother of his children.  I suspect she was a second wife.

Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch (fl. 1599).  There is only a single known record that mentions this Patrick (see Lammermoor.org).  Although I cannot be certain, I suspect that he had no children and that the John McCausland below was his brother.

John McCausland of Caldenoch (fl. 1602).  This is the John McCausland generally identified as the father of the Irish settlers, Andrew and John, mentioned in Buchanan’s account.  Again, Polly Aird states he died in 1603, and his apparently short tenure as baron may be because he inherited the title from a brother and not his father.

Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch (d. before 1617).  The research of Bruce Andrews, citing earlier research of James Dennistoun deposited at PRONI, mentions this Patrick, who is said to have married Agnes Colquhoun.  I will discuss Patrick at length in the next section since I believe he is the true father of the Irish settlers.

John McCausland of Caldenoch (fl. 1657).  Mentioned on a valuation roll from 1657, he probably died in or shortly before 1664 (see Lammermoor.org for references).

Alexander McCausland of Caldenoch (fl. 1664).  Mentioned on a 1664 sasine of Caldenoch and other lands that states, “Alexander McCauslane as eldest lawful son and heir of the late John McCauslane of Caldenoch” (see Lammermoor.org).  I assume he is one and the same as the “last baron McCausland” whose daughter Janet sold Caldenoch and the rest of her family’s lands to her feudal superior, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 21^st/23^rd of Luss, sometime between 1694-1718.

Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch and his will

I was particularly intrigued by this Patrick McCausland because of the claim that he married Agnes Colquhoun, as stated by Bruce Andrews.  In his well-referenced work, Bruce relied heavily on research performed in June 1828 by James Dennistoun and deposited at PRONI as part of the McCausland file (D669/52B and C).  James Dennistoun (1803-1855) was a Scottish lawyer, historian, and record scholar whose skill with challenging genealogical material seems to have rivaled that of Fraser (see Richard Marsden.  “Cosmo Innes and the Sources of Scottish History c. 1825-1875”.  University of Glasgow Ph.D. thesis, 2011).

Since the time this article was originally posted, I have been able to view a transcription of Dennistoun’s research, thanks to Matthew Gilbert.  Although Dennison defers to Buchanan of Auchmar regarding the brothers Alexander and John who supposedly went to Ireland, the remainder of his research appears sound and independent.  He states that Patrick McCausland died by 1617; that he married Agnes, daughter of Humphrey Colquhoun; and that they had a son John McCausland who married Alison Napier of Kilmahew (near Cardross, Dunbartonshire) on 2 August 1611.  Like Fraser, Dennistoun was a Scotsman working from Scottish records, and he seems to have done little or no independent research on the Irish branch of the family, at least by 1828.  However, he did recognize the Irish branch’s importance with the following statement:

In case any of the Irish Macaslands should feel any interest in their Scottish progenitors, I shall always be happy to communicate any particulars of which I may become possessed: and in return it would give me great pleasure to obtain from them an authentic account of their branch.  Indeed I presume they must now be the chiefs of the name — and I believe that at all events they are likely rather to confer than to derive lustre from the old house of Calderoth.  With this view, in compiling the genealogies of Dumbartonshire, it would be a matter of importance that I should have the details of the Macaslands of the County of Tyrone.

James Dennistoun, June 1828 (PRONI D669/52).

(I will revisit this idea that the McCauslands of County Tyrone were generally recognized as the heirs to the leadership of the clan in the next section.)

Curious about the connection to Agnes Colquhoun, I looked for supporting evidence and came upon the probate records of Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch (dated August 1616, probated November 1617).  Like the Colquhoun wills from the same period, it is written in old Scottish secretary hand and is very challenging to read.  With the help of Jeff Homes and Mike Barr, we have managed to read some portions of it, particularly the names of family members.  They include the following:

• Patrick’s wife, Agnes Colquhoun.
• Patrick’s children, Robert, Alexander, Isabelle, and Janet McCausland.
• Patrick’s brother John McCausland.
• Patrick’s sister Catherine McCausland.
• Patrick’s eldest son, the late John McCausland, who was apparently married to Alison Napier, sister of John Napier of Kilmahew.
• John McCausland, son of Alexander McCausland.
• Agnes McCausland, widow of the late John Campbell.
• Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, Alexander McAulay, and Patrick’s son Robert McCausland, all executors of the will.
• Alexander Colquhoun of Luss, to whom some money was owed.

The will confirms that Patrick was indeed married to an Agnes Colquhoun, and that he had at least five children, one of whom was named Alexander.  As one of the younger sons, Alexander could well have relocated to Ireland after their father’s death.  I suspect this is exactly what happened:  Buchanan was correct in that at least one son of a baron McCausland went to Ireland in the 1620s, but that settler was Alexander, son of Patrick, and not Andrew and John, sons of John.  (Alexander’s brother Robert seems not to have gone to Ireland, since a sasine dated 30 June 1651 mentions Patrick of Caldenoch [presumably a son of John and Alison] as well as a Patrick, son of Robert in Caldenoch.)

A Proposed Tree of the McCauslands of Caldenoch

Based on the evidence above, I propose the pedigree of the McCauslands of Caldenoch to be something like the figure below.  We have no real evidence for birth dates for anyone from that time period, so I have filled in approximate dates as a way of verifying that the tree is reasonable.  Relationships with strong support are drawn with solid lines; for example, Patrick’s will of 1617 names his wife, his children, and two siblings.  Relationships that are proposed in the absence of support are drawn with dotted lines; for example, Patrick’s will notes two other McCauslands who could be his siblings, but are not explicitly stated to be so, and Buchanan’s account mentions a third, Andrew.  Those in the lineage of barons of Caldenoch, chieftains of clan McCausland, are marked in boldface.

Those who I propose went to, or were born in, Ireland are shaded in green.  There may have been others that I am unaware of since there were other McCauslands recorded in Ireland in the 17^th century who I cannot place.

Proposed tree of the McCauslands of Caldenoch from the 16^th and 17^th centuries. See text for the conventions used.

An important piece of evidence linking Alexander (d. 1675) of Ireland with Patrick (d. 1617) of Scotland is a letter in the McCausland file at PRONI from Lt.-Col. Redmond Alexander Macausland of Woodbank, Garvagh, Co. Derry, N. Ireland to Peter MacAuslane of Glasgow dated 14 February 1942 (PRONI D669/56).  Redmond states, “I also have in my possession the original of a letter written to Oliver McCausland dated 171- (between 1710 & 1715) asking him to return to Scotland to ‘heid’ the Clan.  There is no record of his reply but there is a tradition in the family that he refused on the grounds that he was an Irishman and not a Scot.”  The original letter, also at PRONI (T609.1), is in fact dated 1711, suggesting that the recipient, Oliver McCausland, Esq., of Strabane, was Alexander McCausland’s eldest son of that name, who died in 1721.  

Opening lines of the letter from the McCauslands of “Kilbride in Glen Fruin” to Oliver McCausland, Esq. of Strabane dated 6 December 1711. (PRONI T609.1.)

An offer to assume the leadership of the clan would not have been sent to anyone, but rather to the person next in the line of succession.  Presumably, it was written shortly after the death of Alexander, the last baron McCausland, who had no sons and, we must assume, no surviving brothers or nephews to inherit the title and property.  While there were other McCauslands living in Dunbartonshire at that time, this offer was made specifically to Oliver, suggesting that he was the next in line of succession despite his having been born in Ireland.  Oliver was the eldest son of Alexander McCausland (d. 1675), and for him to have been next in the line of succession, his father must have been the younger brother of baron John McCausland (d. ca. 1664).  This supports the idea that Alexander McCausland (d. 1675) of Rash and Mountfield, Co. Tyrone, father-in-law of William Colhoun of Newtownstewart, was the son Alexander mentioned in the 1616 will of Patrick McCausland of Caldenoch.

This brings us full circle to the Calhouns.  I have marked the three known Calhouns who married into the McCausland family in red in the tree above.  Since this post has gone on waaaaay too long already, exactly how all of the Calhouns associated with the McCausland family in Scotland and Ireland fit together will have to wait for next time.  See you then!

Acknowledgements

This work grew directly out of a fruitful correspondence with Mike Barr, a long-time researcher of the McCausland family, with additional help from Elaine Hamilton, Matthew Gilbert, and Paul Calhoun.  They, in turn, built on earlier research by Bruce Andrews, Dave McCausland, Polly Aird, and others.  At different times Mike, Matthew, and Dave all sent photos or transcripts of important documents relating to the McCausland family.  Jeff Homes, Mike, and I together helped transcribe the probate records of Patrick McCausland as best we could.  Paul, Mike, Matthew, Elaine, and Dave all provided helpful comments on the early draft of this article.  I am grateful for all of their help in what has truly been a collaborative project.

Update, May 1, 2024

Thanks once again to help from others, I was able to update this article shortly after its original publication.  I would particularly like to thank “Captain Craigengelt” for his very helpful comments, which can be found below.  His comments helped interpret the will of Patrick of Caldenoch, correct the McCausland family chart, and update the links to his blog.  I would also like to thank Matthew Gilbert once again, this time for sharing his transcriptions of James Dennistoun’s research.

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© 2024 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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For a list of posts, visit The Genealogy of the Calhoun Family homepage.

The Colhouns of Crosh, Part 1: The First Generations in Ireland

The Importance of the Crosh Family

Of the Colhouns of the Irish gentry, undoubtedly the most well-known group came to prominence near Newtownstewart, parish Ardstraw, County Tyrone, a family I refer to as Colhoun of Crosh.  (I realize this term does not accurately describe the family as a whole, but it is a heck of a lot more convenient than referring to them as “The descendants of James Colhoun of the Newtownstewart area, one particular group of whom later lived in a manor house in the townland of Crosh in County Tyrone.”)  They owe much of their renown (among genealogical researchers, at least) to a book published in 1904 by Charles Croslegh, who was himself a member of that family.  The pedigree that Croslegh proposed shows his family to be the patrilineal descendants of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, the first well-documented Scottish Colquhoun landowner in Ireland.  Because William Fraser had in 1869 published a pedigree of the Colquhoun of Luss family stretching from Alexander all the way back to the Colquhoun family’s 13^th-century founder, anyone claiming descent from the Colhoun of Crosh family in Ireland could boast of an unbroken pedigree back to the year 1240 or so.

The idea of an unbroken pedigree back to Luss proved too tempting to resist for many Calhoun genealogists, whether amateur or professional, casual or serious.  Many Calhouns left Ireland for the Americas and other parts of the British Empire in the 18^th century as part of the Ulster Scot migration, and modern-day descendants of those emigrants who try to trace their ancestors often find their paper trails end at the Atlantic Ocean.  Because Croslegh’s has been the most readily accessible pedigree of Irish Calhouns from the 17^th and 18^th centuries, many of these modern-day descendants make the assumption that their immigrant ancestor belonged to the Colhoun of Crosh family.  And why wouldn’t they?  Doing so would not only allow them to claim specific 18^th-century ancestors in Ireland, but would seemingly join their family to a ready-made pedigree stretching back an additional 500 years.

As I have tried to lay out in previous posts, there are two problems with this.  The first is that the Colhouns of Crosh were only one of many Calhoun families in Ireland in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, each founded by a different settler from Scotland; therefore, it stands to reason that most Calhouns of the Irish diaspora are not closely related to the Colhouns of Crosh.  The second is that even if one’s connection to the Crosh family were to prove true, the part of Croslegh’s pedigree connecting the Colhouns of Crosh in Ireland to Alexander Colquhoun of Luss in Scotland is seriously flawed.  I described all the reasons why in two earlier posts (here and here), so I direct anyone interested to those articles rather than repeat the reasoning here.

In the last section of a previous post, I discussed the importance of finding at least one living Calhoun with both a genealogical and a Y-DNA genetic connection to the family’s 13^th-century founder, Humphrey of Kilpatrick:  it would enable us to at least begin to map William Fraser’s extensive pedigrees onto the Y-DNA genetic tree, thus helping to interpret the ancestry of many modern Y-DNA testers.  While the senior Scottish Colquhoun families have all died out in the male line, many people pointed to Croslegh’s pedigree as providing a critical male lineage through an Irish branch of the family.  If my posts managed to convince you that Croslegh’s proposed connection between the Crosh and Luss families is not correct, then we were stuck, since to my knowledge at least, there was no alternative.

This left us in the following quandary.  We had a number of living people who could claim genealogical descent from Humphrey of Kilpatrick, including the present-day Colquhoun lairds of Luss, but none followed the Calhoun male lineage continuously, meaning their Y-chromosome is not inherited from the earliest Colquhouns.  Conversely, we had many others who could claim genetic descent from Humphrey in the male line, namely those men belonging to Y-DNA haplogroup E-Y16733, but none had a well-supported, unbroken genealogical connection to him.  Therefore, we had people who could satisfy each one of our two necessary conditions, but no one who could satisfy both.

As it turns out, I believe we do have a group of living Calhouns that satisfies both conditions, and it is … the Colhoun of Crosh family!  I have now managed to construct a new genealogical connection between the Crosh and Luss families.  It is quite different from the one Croslegh proposed, but in my opinion, it is well supported by evidence.  Furthermore, those of the Colhoun of Crosh family who have tested do indeed belong to Y-DNA haplogroup E-Y16733.  We’re back in business!

I originally envisioned writing a series of two or three posts about the Crosh family, the first of the Colhoun families of the Irish gentry that I planned to tackle.  However, it was in the course of writing and researching this first post that I discovered what I believe to be the family’s true origins in Scotland.  To thoroughly discuss not only the various generations of the Crosh family in Ireland but also this new proposal will now probably take five or six posts altogether.  Oh, well.  In this first post of the series, I will discuss the family’s earliest days in 17^th century Ireland and the other Calhouns from that time who may have been related to them.  In the next two posts, I will lay out my new proposal and invite feedback, so stay tuned!

The Mountjoy Family

The Colhouns of Crosh can be traced in Ireland back to 1631, when they were living on the manor of Newtownstewart in County Tyrone.  Newtownstewart was named for Sir William Stewart, the senior-most owner of the property at that time.  A Servitor who came to Ireland in the early days of the Plantation and diligently developed his land, Sir William was rewarded with numerous properties, including Newtownstewart.  His descendants in the Stewart and Gardiner families were elevated to the peerage, and for simplicity, I will often refer to this family in its entirety as the Lords Mountjoy or the Mountjoy family.  Subsequent generations of Mountjoys added to the family’s holdings before all of it was finally sold off in the mid-19^th century.

As a family of the gentry, the Colhouns of Crosh had ownership rights to various properties, but property rights were multilayered in those days, and their rights to most if not all of their holdings seem to have been subordinate to the Lords Mountjoy.  Before discussing the Colhouns themselves, I want to describe those of the Mountjoys’ holdings in the Counties of Tyrone and Donegal most relevant to the Colhouns:

• Manor of Ramelton and Fortstewart (parish Aughnish, barony Kilmacrenan, Co. Donegal).  Originally the manor of Clonlarie [Glenleary] granted by patent in 1610 to the Servitor Sir Richard Hansard, it quickly passed to Sir William Stewart to become his first Irish holding.
• Manor of Tirenemuriertagh [Tirmurty] (parishes Cappagh and Bodoney Lower, barony Strabane Upper, Co. Tyrone).  Originally granted by patent to James Haig, it was surrendered in 1613 to joint ownership of Sir William Stewart and George Hamilton.
• Manor of Mountstewart (aka Aghanteane, aka Rashmount Stewart; parish Clogher, barony Clogher, Co. Tyrone).  Originally the manors of Ballyneconolly and Ballyranill granted to Edward Kingswell, Esq., probably a Servitor.  Kingswell sold these lands in 1616 and they were enfeoffed to Sir William Stewart shortly thereafter.  Except for a single mid-19^th century marriage record, I have found no Colhouns living in parish Clogher.
• Manor of Newtownstewart (parishes Ardstraw and Cappagh, baronies Strabane Upper and Lower, Co. Tyrone).  Originally the manors of Newtown and Lislap granted to James Clapham in 1610, they were soon transferred to Sir Robert Newcomen, from whom they passed by inheritance to his son-in-law Sir William Stewart in 1629.
• Part of the manor of Wilson’s Fort (aka Killynure, aka Cavan; parishes Convoy, Raphoe, and Donaghmore, barony Raphoe, Co. Donegal).  Originally the estates of Aghagalla and Convoigh [Convoy] granted to the Wilson family, it was around 1661 inherited by a descendant, Charles Hamilton, son of Andrew Hamilton, Esq.  In 1676, a portion went to a Wilson relative, Capt. John Nisbitt of Tullydonnell, and the rest was sold in 1712 to Col. Alexander Montgomery of Croghan, Co. Donegal.  Part was soon after acquired by the 2^nd Viscount Mountjoy.  (Marilyn Lewis. “William Willson: From Clare to Donegal.”  Ivan Knox, “The Houses of Stewart from 1500-” (2003), pp. 24-25.)

With the exception of Mountstewart, Colhouns lived or held property in all of these places (such as the townland of Crosh itself, which belonged to the manor of Newtownstewart).  Because of the Colhoun of Crosh family’s long association with the Mountjoys, it is worth considering that Colhouns living on any of these Mountjoy estates––not just Newtownstewart––prior to the mid-19^th century might have been related to the Colhouns of Crosh.

Pedigree of the Mountjoy family. Owners of Newtownstewart are shown in boldface. Upon the death of Sir William Stewart, Earl of Blessington, Newtonstewart and the majority of the Stewart estates passed to Charles Gardiner, for whose son the title of Mountjoy was recreated. The Baronetcy of Ramelton, meanwhile, passed to Sir Annesley Stewart. Presumably, ownership of the Donegal estate went with the baronetcy, since at the time of Griffith’s Valuation, Sir James Stewart (8^th Baronet, son of the 7^th) was a significant landowner in the parishes of Aughnish, Conway, and Tullyfern in Co. Donegal.

James Colhoun and Alexander McCausland

A 1631 muster roll of men living on Sir William Stewart’s estates in Co. Tyrone includes the following names, located relatively near each other on the long list:

• 80. James Cacone, sword and pike
• 111. Alexander McCaslane, sword and snapchance

As I mentioned in a previous post, despite the butchering of the names, I believe these two men to have been James Colhoun and Alexander McCausland (the presumed future father-in-law of James’s son William), respectively.  As they were considered old enough to fight in 1631, I estimate that both men were born between 1600-1610.  Given that time frame, both men were probably born in Scotland.  Unfortunately, the muster roll does not specify which townland, or even which manor, these tenants were living on.  However, both the Colhoun of Crosh and the McCausland families later lived in the vicinity of Newtownstewart, so my best guess is that Alexander and James were living in that portion of the manor of Newtownstewart lying in parish Ardstraw. 

Alexander McCausland was a soldier in the Wars of the Three Kingdoms, ultimately siding with Oliver Cromwell, and through this service he became entitled to a share of forfeited land in 1653.  “[Alexander] obtained a commission in the army, in time of the civil wars, in the reign of king Charles I.  At the end of those wars, partly by debenture, partly by purchase, he acquired the estates of Resh and Ardstraw in the county of Tyrone” (William Buchanan of Auchmar.  A Historical and Genealogical Essay upon the Family and Surname of Buchanan.  Glasgow: William Duncan, 1723, pp. 274-5).  Alexander’s land holdings in County Tyrone included the following:

• Manor of Ardstraw (parish Ardstraw, barony Strabane Lower).  Also known as the Termon, Erenach, or Churchlands of Ardstraw, this property was leased from the Bishop of Derry starting sometime prior to 1674.  It appears that the McCauslands’ rights to Ardstraw were subordinate to the Earls of Abercorn.
• Manor of Mountfield (parish Bodoney Lower, barony Strabane Upper).  This property was first purchased or leased by the McCauslands from Sir Henry Tichbourne of Blessing in 1658 (patent rolls #3455, 18 Jun 1658, Merze Marvin Book, James II, p. 43).  Alexander McCausland’s will states rent was owed to Sir William Tichbourne, suggesting the McCauslands’ rights remained subordinate to the Tichbournes’.
• Manor of Rash (parish Cappagh, barony Strabane Upper).  Located in the southern part of parish Cappagh.  The townland of Rash was later called Mountjoy Forest, and it appears that the McCauslands’ rights to this property may have been subordinate to the Mountjoys.

Alexander’s will of 1674 states that his daughter Catherine was married to William Colhoun of Newtownstewart, who I presume was the son of the James Colhoun with whom Alexander appears on the muster roll.  

The association between McCauslands and Colquhouns can be traced back to at least 1395 in Scotland, when John McAuslane of Caldenoch witnessed a charter in which Humphrey Colquhoun, 6^th/8^th of Luss granted the lands of Camstradden to his brother Robert.  In 1631, the Colquhoun lairds of Luss were the immediate feudal superiors of the McCausland barons of Caldenoch, the family from which Alexander came.  While it is by no means clear that James Colhoun was closely related to the Colquhouns of Luss, based on the long-standing connection between their ancestral Scottish families, it is certainly possible that James Colhoun and Alexander McCausland were friends and/or kinsmen in addition to being neighbors.  Given the marriage between their children, the two men were probably also of similar social standing.  Since Alexander was the supposed grandson of one of the barons McCausland, it seemed likely that James belonged to one of the Colquhoun families of the Scottish gentry.  Initially, I tried to identify a candidate for James among the “missing links” of the various senior Scottish Colquhoun families, but to no avail.  Eventually, I was able to determine that he was indeed from the Scottish gentry, as I will detail in an upcoming post.

At the risk of creating a new false narrative, (look out!) here come my unproven speculations.  Alexander McCausland served in the army in the 1640s, likely as a middle-aged officer, and was rewarded with Irish property.  James Colhoun, meanwhile, disappears from all records after the 1631 muster roll.  My working hypothesis is that James either died in the Rebellion of 1641 or served in the army alongside Alexander McCausland and died in the ensuing war, in either case leaving his son William Colhoun an orphan, or at least fatherless.  I speculate that after James’s death, the McCauslands “took charge” of William’s upbringing, in which arrangement William had the opportunity to meet and marry Alexander’s daughter.  This scenario seems to me a plausible origin of the oral tradition handed down in the Colhoun of Crosh family (as related by Croslegh on p. x of his book) that states the family’s “first ancestor in Ireland … had come from Luss, as a child, under the charge of his uncle MacCausland.”  Alexander McCausland was married to Jane (aka Janet, Jennett, Gennet) Hall, but we do not know anything about James Colhoun’s wife.  While it is possible that she was a McCausland or a Hall, making Alexander a true uncle of William, I think it is equally possible that Alexander was more distant kin or even a family friend, with the oral tradition casting him as an “uncle” as a term of affection.

Again, Alexander McCausland was probably born between 1600-1610; William Colhoun was probably born about 1635 and married Alexander’s daughter Catherine about 1660.  Records of the two men include the following (note that the 1659 Pender’s Census for County Tyrone does not survive):

Commissioners appointed for Poll Money Ordinances:

• 1660, County Tyrone, includes William Cahoon and Alexander mac Castguile (p. 627).
• 1661, County Tyrone, includes William Cahoon and Alexander mac Castlan (p. 646).

Hearth Money Roll, Co. Tyrone (1666):

• Rathkelly [Rakelly], parish Ardstraw, William Colhoune, 1 hearth.
• Lisnaresh [Lisnacreaght], parish Cappagh, Alexander M’Causland, 1 hearth.

Alexander McCausland’s Will

Fortunately, complete transcripts of the will of Alexander McCausland, Esq., dated 11 January 1674 and probated 1 July 1675, have survived the centuries (PRONI D669/29D).  Here are a few of the relevant highlights:

• To his “dearly beloved wife Jennett McCausland” he leaves half his moveable property and one third of the rents from the manors of Ardstraw and Mountfield.  She is to pay the proportionate share of the rents due to the Bishop of Derry and Sir William Titchburne, Knt. on these manors, respectively.
• To son Oliver McCausland he leaves the other half of his moveable property, plus the rights to the manors of Ardstraw and Mountfield with the exception of several townlands left to son Andrew.  Rent profits to be paid to his wife.
• To son Andrew McCausland £150; the outright ownership of the townland of Eskeradooey (parish Cappagh); the reversion of the leases of John Cunningham, Gent. for the townlands of Cullion and Lislap (parish Cappagh) in manor of Mountfield; rights to “the two towns of Aldclife” [Altcloghfin, parish Errigal Keerogue ?] and the townland of Ballykeel (parish Cappagh) held by lease from Lord Mountjoy.
• To daughter Anne McCausland £150.
• “I leave and bequeath to my grandchildren, viz., Alexander Coulhound and Gerrard Colhound £100 sterling English money equally to be divided between them, which I do hereby ordain and appoint my son Oliver McCausland to pay to them, and if it happen that they or any of them die that then the said sum to be paid by my son Oliver to the rest of the children begotten to be betwixt my daughter Catherine and my son in law William Colhoune.”
• Should Oliver and Andrew and their heirs die, the manors of Ardstraw and Mountfield to be divided equally among his daughters Catherine Colhoun, Margery McClenahan, and Ann McCausland, “always reserving thereout to my daughter Catherine Colhoune more than to any other of my said daughters the castle of Ardstreagh with the other House, Gardens, Orchards, and two Parks adjoining to the Bridge of Ardstreagh” in addition to her equal share in the remainder.
• Appoints sons-in-law William Colhoun of Newtownstewart and David McClenaghan of Newtownstewart, and son Oliver McCausland, as executors.
• Appoints his “truly and well beloved friend[s]” Sir William Stewart, Bart. [Lord Mountjoy], John Colhoune of Letterkenny, John Johnston of Clare, and John Logan the Elder of Newtownstewart as overseers of the will.
• Witnessed on 11 January 1674 by John Logan, Peter Colhoune, and John Logan Jun’r.

Selected passages from the will of Alexander McCausland, Esq. relevant to the Colhouns. (PRONI D669/29D; cropped from image kindly provided by Matthew Gilbert.)

From the will, we know that his eldest daughter Catherine married William Colhoun of Newtownstewart and that they had two children by that time, Alexander and Gerrard.  It appears that these two were William and Catherine’s only children at that time, since he also held out the possibility that the couple might have more children in the future.  We also know that among his trusted associates were two other Colhouns:  John Colhoun of Letterkenny and Peter Colhoun of unstated residence.  What are the odds that he would have such close ties to other Colhouns, at least one of whom was living a considerable distance away in Letterkenny, unless they were close relatives of his son-in-law William?

John and Peter Colhoun

The following Irish records mention a John and/or Peter/Patrick Colhoun that I believe refer to the men of those names in Alexander McCausland’s will.  (As I have mentioned before, the names Peter and Patrick have highly similar Gaelic cognates and were often used interchangeably in those days.)

Prerogative will of Sir William Sempill of Letterkenny, dated 12 May 1644 (transcribed in Betham’s genealogical abstracts.):  “To my servant John Colhoune, £18.”  Witnesses to the will included Rev. Preb. Alix’r Coninghame, and John Colhoune.  

Pender’s Census (1659):  names Peter Colhoune and John Colhoune, Gents., of Letterkenny town (see p. 54).  Also associated with them was Levinis Semphill.

Hearth Money Rolls (1660s):

• 1663 and 1665, Co. Donegal, Barony Kilmacrenan, parish Aughnish, Aughnish.  John Colhoune.
• 1666, Co. Tyrone, Barony Strabane, parish Ardstraw, Lisnaman (Newtownstewart).  Peter Colhoune.

Will of Henry Wray of Castle Wray, Co. Donegal, dated 9 August 1666 (Charlotte Violet Trench.  The Wrays of Donegal.  Oxford: University Press, 1945, p. 60.):  mentions Henry Wray is to be buried in the church of Letterkenny, and names his wife as Lettice née Galbraith.  A John Colhoune served as witness to the will.

List of representatives to the Laggan Presbytery during the period 1672-1700 (Rev. Alexander G. Lecky.  In the Days of the Laggan Presbytery.  Belfast: Davidson and M’Cormack, 1908, p. 144.):  a John Colhoun was named as representing congregations at Donaghmore and Letterkenny as a Presbyterian elder or commissioner.  

Chancery Bill, dated 25 Oct 1684 (PRONI T280, pp. 62-63.):  Plaintiff Patrick Hamilton, Gent.  Defendants Thomas McCausland (of Claraghmore, Co. Tyrone), Oliver McCausland, and John Colhoune.  Defendant Thomas McCausland sold to the plaintiff his half-interest in the town of Drumragh in the Barony of Omagh, on lease from Bishop of Derry, for £131 on 23 Aug 1684.  Will of Alexander McCausland left half-interest to son-in-law William Calhoune, other half in dispute but claimed by defendant Thomas McCausland, Alexander’s grandson, now age about 29 but a minor at the time of the will.  Although the plaintiff paid the money, the defendant and his trustees, Oliver McCausland and John Colhoune, have refused to execute the deed.  

Will index entries:

• Patrick Colhoun, Aughnish (townland or parish), Co. Donegal, 1703.
• Patrick Colhoune, Ardrummon (parish Aughnish), Co. Donegal, 1704.

An analysis of these records now follows.

John Colhoun appears first in 1644 and last in 1684, so we might estimate he lived in the general range 1610-1685, of similar age to James Colhoun of Newtownstewart.  John appears in three wills, all associated somehow with Letterkenny.  In the will of Sir William Sempill from 1644, John is described not only as a witness, but also as Sir William’s “servant”, to whom he left a small bequest.  The other witness, Rev. Alexander Conyngham (d. 1660), was the Dean of Raphoe and a powerful and influential cleric in the Church of Ireland.  This, along with the fact that John was a Gentleman, i.e. had some social standing, suggests John was not a menial servant but rather served in some administrative capacity, perhaps as Sempill’s estate agent.  Importantly, not only was Sempill the owner of the Manor of Letterkenny (later the Manor of Manor-Sempill) and other lands in Donegal, but he was also the son-in-law of Sir William Stewart of Ramelton, owner of the manors of Ramelton in Donegal and Newtownstewart in Tyrone (see the tree of the Mountjoy family above).  

In 1659, Pender’s census lists among the ten titled land-owners in Letterkenny, John and Peter Colhoun, Gents.  Also with them were Rev. Alexander Conyngham (co-witness with John Colhoun on Sempill’s will) and his son James, and Levinis Sempill (not a son of Sir William, but presumably a relative).  These names suggest this is the same John Colhoun who witnessed Sempill’s will in 1644, and that he and Peter were associated and likely related. 

In both 1663 and 1665, the Hearth Money Rolls for the Barony of Kilmacrenan, Co. Donegal show a John Colhoun in Augnish, parish Aughnish.  This was on the lands owned by the Mountjoy family, close relatives of Sir William Sempill, suggesting this is again the same John.  About that same time (1666), John was a witness on a second will, that of the young Henry Wray, from a land-owning family related to the Gores and Galbraiths.  Wray lived at Castlewray and Bogay in parish Aghanunshin, which is sandwiched between parish Aughnish to the north and Letterkenny to the south.

The last records of John of which we can be relatively certain are his appearance on Alexander McCausland’s will in 1674, where John is described as “of Letterkenny,” and a chancery bill from 1684 to resolve a disputed claim from that will.  Whether he was the same person as the John Colhoun of Letterkenny who was a Presbyterian elder during that period is less clear.  Most of John’s other known associations were with solidly Anglican gentry, namely the McCauslands, Stewarts, and Conynghams.  However, it cannot be ruled out.

Peter Colhoun first appears in Pender’s census in 1659, when he and John were among the tituladoes of Letterkenny.  At the time of the Hearth Money Rolls (1663-1666), Peter is found only in County Tyrone (1666), when he was living in Lisnaman (which probably referred to Lislas, the original name of the townland of Newtownstewart), parish Ardstraw.  He was likely still living there in 1674 when he served as witness to the will of Alexander McCausland.  However, he may have later returned to Donegal, since will index entries for a Patrick Colhoun of parish Aughnish can be found in 1703 (Aughnish, parish or townland) and 1704 (Ardrummon townland in parish Aughnish).  (These two entries may refer to the same person, since the 1703 entry is for a testamentary and the 1704 entry for an administration bond.)  If we assume that the Peter of Pender’s census was born about 1630, he could certainly have died around 1703.  Both Aughnish in Co. Donegal and Newtownstewart in Co. Tyrone were Mountjoy properties, and movement back and forth between properties under the same landlord is not unreasonable.

If in fact Peter were born about 1630, he was of an age to have been a son of James and brother of William Colhoun of Newtownstewart.  Despite the fact that Peter lived near William in 1666, I think this is unlikely for two reasons.  First, it appears that Peter lived near John in Letterkenny before moving to parish Ardstraw, suggesting a closer association with John.  Second, the name Peter/Patrick does not appear among William’s known descendants.  I therefore think it is more likely that Peter was a son of John (or perhaps a brother or some other relationship).  Finding John and/or Peter on the 1631 muster rolls would have been very informative, but unfortunately the rolls for the Barony of Kilmacrenan in Donegal (where he/they would most likely have been living at that time) have not survived.  Finally, although I think it is unlikely that Peter was a brother of William, I do think it is quite possible that John of Letterkenny was the brother of James from the Newtownstewart muster roll.

Either way, both James and John appear to have been Scottish natives, meaning that to date, Colhoun of Crosh is the only Irish Calhoun family for which we can name the Scottish founder(s).  Now if only we could place them in Scotland….

Are you aware of any other records pertaining to James, John, and Peter/Patrick Colhoun?  Can you shed any further light on the relationships between them?  If so, I’d love to hear from you!

*****

Special thanks to Paul Calhoun and Mike Barr for critical reading of this post and helpful edits, and thanks as well to Matthew Gilbert for the photos of Alexander McCausland’s will.

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© 2024 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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For a list of posts, visit The Genealogy of the Calhoun Family homepage.

The Colhouns of the Irish Gentry

Why the Gentry?

The 17^th century saw many Scots resettle in Ireland, particularly in the northernmost province of Ulster.  This migration was driven by a series of events throughout that century, including:

• The privately-financed settlement of Scots in Counties Antrim and Down engineered by Hugh Montgomery and James Hamilton in 1606.
• The royally-sanctioned Ulster Plantation, which covered most of the rest of Ulster, starting in 1609.
• The conclusion of the Wars of the Three Kingdoms in 1653, after which many Scottish Covenanter soldiers stationed in Ireland chose to remain.
• The conclusion of the Williamite War in the 1690s, at which time famine in Scotland and cheap rents in Ireland caused many Scots to relocate.

Among the Scottish settlers who came to Ireland were numerous Colquhouns.  Exactly how many we cannot say since we have to assume that many were tenant farmers and tradesmen who went largely unrecorded, or at least are underrepresented in surviving records.

This post focuses on the wealthier minority of Irish Colhoun families.  Although ancestrally Scottish, they would have been considered part of the Anglo-Irish elite, the so-called Protestant Ascendancy that dominated political, legal, and economic life in Ireland until the reforms of the mid-19^th century.  Being in the good graces of the Crown, they belonged to the Church of Ireland, the state-sanctioned Anglican church that held most of the ecclesiastical power and property in Ireland.  Although none of the wealthier Calhouns (whether in Scotland, Ireland, or elsewhere) ever made it to the peerage (the highest tier of British nobility), they did belong to the gentry (wealthy, land-owning commoners eligible for coats of arms, with titles ranging from “Gentleman” to “Baronet”; see here for descriptions).  

You might ask, If these guys were the minority, why focus so much attention on them?  Don’t the rich get enough resources already?  The fact is that from the 17^th to early 19^th centuries, the Calhouns of Ireland most often recorded in surviving documents were those of the Irish gentry:  they bought and sold land, acted as landlords on estate records, appeared in court proceedings, petitioned the Crown, left wills, etc.  As a result, these families tend to have relatively long paper trails.  Tenant farmers also appeared in rental records, but in general these appearances were fewer and farther between, making their families harder to trace.

The long paper trails of the Irish gentry can be genealogically useful not only to members of those families themselves, but also to the rest of us.  Using Y-DNA genetic information, we can often estimate when the most recent common patrilineal ancestor of two Calhoun men lived.  If the first of those men has a long paper trail, perhaps because he is a descendant of the gentry, and if the second man shares a common ancestor with the first during the timeframe of that trail, then the second man might reasonably assume that some of his own ancestors appear in the pedigree of the first.

These relatively long paper trails also mean that if any Irish Calhoun family might be traced back to Scotland, it would be one of the gentry.  Furthermore, there was not a lot of room for upward social mobility in Britain in the 17^th and 18^th centuries, so I have to assume that the Colhouns of the Irish gentry were descended from Colquhouns of the Scottish gentry.  (Some Irish families did initially acquire land through military service rather than by purchase, but I tend to think that most soldiers receiving larger Irish land grants were military officers––who again tended to come from wealthier families––rather than foot soldiers.)  Thanks in part to the work of Sir William N. Fraser, many of the Colquhoun families of the Scottish gentry have the benefit of a relatively solid pedigree back to Humphrey of Kilpatrick, the 13^th century founder of the family.  If we could join ourselves to the Irish gentry, and the Irish gentry to the Scottish gentry, we might be able to trace our Calhoun lineages back to the year 1240.  Wishful thinking, of course, but we have to try, don’t we?

Although there was limited upward social mobility in centuries past, there was certainly downward mobility.  Those who were financially unsuccessful, or were younger sons of younger sons that did not inherit much, could fall out of the gentry class.  Those of us with Irish Calhoun ancestry who do not have long paper trails (i.e., most of us) might be descendants of working-class Colquhouns who came to Ireland as tenants, or we might just as easily be descendants of Irish gentry families who for whatever reason eventually lost title and property.  With enough Y-DNA data, we may eventually be able to distinguish between these two scenarios, at least in certain cases.

Below are brief descriptions of the distinct Colhoun families of the Irish gentry that I have been able to identify so far.  (I use the spelling “Colhoun” because all of them came from western Ulster where that spelling predominated, as opposed to eastern Ulster, where “Cahoon” and “Cohoon” were more common.)  In Scotland, the senior Colquhoun families were styled (at least by Fraser) by the principal property they owned, like “Colquhoun of Luss”, “Colquhoun of Camstradden”, “Colquhoun of Kilmardinny”, etc.  In Ireland, I have not seen this tradition used as consistently, or at least not in a hereditary fashion, so I have had to make up my own titles to describe these families.  Previous posts discussed Colquhoun of Corkagh.  I will devote future posts to each of the other families in turn, but for now, I simply want to enumerate them.

Selected properties held by the families Colquhoun of Corkagh (orange), Colhoun of Crosh (magenta), Colhoun of Taughboyne (green), Colhoun of Letterkenny (blue), Colhoun of Tironeill (yellow), and Colhoun of Labbadish (red). (Source: interactive parish map at http://www.johngrenham.com; used with permission.)

Colquhoun of Corkagh

Corkagh was an estate, located in parish Raymoghy, Co. Donegal, that was created in 1610 as part of the original Plantation of Ulster.  Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss purchased this property from his nephew, Sir Walter Stewart of Minto, in the 1610s.  The two previous posts concerning the history of this property mention that those of the family who actually lived in Ireland included just two generations from the male line:  Alexander’s grandsons James Colquhoun (later 19^th/21^st of Luss) and Alexander Colquhoun (later 1^st of Tillyquhoun) from the first generation, and James’s son Capt. James Colquhoun of Manorcunningham from the second.  This is the only family of the Irish gentry for which we know the Scottish founder with certainty [WOOHOO!].  However, it is also one where the male line quickly died out, precluding its participation in Y-DNA comparisons [D’OH!]

Shown on the map above in orange:  Corkey and Manorcunningham.

Colhoun of Crosh

This family can be traced back to about 1630 to the area around Newtownstewart, a village in parish Ardstraw, Co. Tyrone.  Around 1725, the senior member of the family, William Colhoun, acquired property in the townlands of Crosh and Croshballinree, just outside Newtownstewart, and Crosh is the place name most commonly associated with the family.  However, many family members lived elsewhere in western Tyrone and Donegal, notably Rev. Alexander Colhoun Sr. (1663-1719), one of several Church of Ireland ministers in the family.

One might be forgiven for thinking that the Colhouns of Crosh were the only Calhoun family living in Ireland in the 1700s.  This is because until recently, many if not most Calhouns with Irish origins claimed descent from this family, particularly from the above-mentioned Rev. Alexander Colhoun Sr.  It seems that virtually every Calhoun immigrant to America born within 20 years of 1700 was stated to have been a son of Rev. Alexander.  Thanks to widespread availability of more records and to Y-DNA genetic testing, we now know that in most cases this is simply not true.

Y-DNA haplogroups associated with this family are MF104747 for select members, and its parental haplogroup, FT350465, for the entire family.

Shown on the map above in magenta:  Crosh/Newtownstewart, Strahulter, Sixmilecross, and Ballyhallaghan.

Colhoun of Taughboyne

The Colhouns of Taughboyne included several lawyers and clerks as well as John Colhoun (d. 1755), the estate agent for the Earl of Abercorn in the 1740s and 1750s.  The family originated in parish Taughboyne, Co. Donegal about 1665, and the senior members owned the townland of Corncammon (aka Corncamble) in the adjacent parish of Allsaints.  However, the family was also associated with Buncrana and Carnamoyle on the Inishowen Peninsula, Strabane in Co. Tyrone, Dublin, and other places.

In Our Calhoun Family, Orval Calhoun states that the John Colhoun (d. 1755) mentioned above was a son of Rev. Alexander Colhoun Sr. of Crosh (as was every other Calhoun, it seems!)  However, the Y-DNA haplogroup associated with the Colhoun of Taughboyne family is BY153907, which originated early in the Ulster Plantation years.  The Crosh family is negative for BY153907, which indicates the Crosh and Taughboyne families were descendants of different Ulster settlers from Scotland.  Nonetheless, due to the popularity of Orval’s books, the misconception that they were a single Irish family persists to the present day. 

Shown on the map above in green:  Corncammon, St. Johnston, Buncrana, Carnamoyle, and Strabane.

Colhoun of Letterkenny

This family, associated with the town of Letterkenny (parish Conwal) and the townland of Carrickballydooey (parish Raymoghy), both in Co. Donegal, was the subject of an entry in A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Ireland (Sir Bernard Burke and A. C. Fox-Davies.  London: Harrison & Sons, 1912, p. 121).  The article traces the family to John Colhoun and Susanna Leslie, who lived in the early 18^th century.  It seems that with each generation after about 1750, the family produced only a single male heir, inevitably named Charles.  Unfortunately, as best I can tell, this male line of Charleses came to an end in 1972 with the death in London of Charles K. Colhoun, a literary scholar and translator.  Unfortunately, unless other members can be identified, we will have no Y-DNA information about this family.

Shown on the map above in blue:  Letterkenny and Carrickballydooey.

Colhoun of Tironeill

This family held property in parish Clonleigh, Co. Donegal, including the townland of Tironeill and the estate of Bullock House in Boyagh, as well as the townland of Lisanelly, parish Cappagh, Co. Tyrone.  They have been traced as far as a Robert Colhoun Sr. who was probably born in the mid-1700s.

I confess I’m cheating a bit here.  Y-DNA results show this family belongs to haplogroup FTA80569, which is a subgroup of BY153907.  Because BY153907 originated around the time of the Ulster Plantation, it appears likely that the Colhouns of Tironeill are a branch of the Colhouns of Taughboyne; however, the connection between the two families has not (yet) been documented.

Shown on the map above in yellow:  Tironeill/Boyagh and Lisanelly.

Colhoun of Labbadish

The townland of Labbadish is adjacent to Carrickballydooey in parish Raymoghy, Co. Donegal, so it is possible that this family is in fact a branch of the Colhouns of Letterkenny described above.  However, there is as yet no documentary or genetic proof of this, and no one from this family has participated in the Colhoun Y-DNA Project as of yet.

It is also not clear whether every Colhoun from Labbadish was part of the same family.  Early “members” include John Colhoun, Esq. of Labbadish, born about 1740; and William Colhoun, Esq. of Green Cottage in Labbadish, born about 1777.  How they and others from that area were related, if at all, is not clear.

Shown on the map above in red:  Labbadish.

Conclusion

From the records I have seen, all of the Calhouns living in Ireland in the 17^th-19^th centuries who appear to have had money, title, or land can be connected to one of the six families mentioned above.  However, the records I have seen are limited, so there could well have been others.  These families tended to marry within their own social class, and marriage contracts often involved the acquisition or exchange of land rights with spouses’ families.  The map above shows the result of this process after several generations, with land holdings of members of the same gentry family sometimes extending to different parishes and different counties.

In a previous post, I mentioned that Y-DNA data indicated that Calhoun testers of Irish ancestry from haplogroup E-Y16733 were descended from as many as seven Scottish Colquhoun settlers of Ireland.  Additional testing since that post was written (July 2023) suggests an eighth settler.  At least two of these settlers had descendants among the six gentry families above.  In addition, Calhouns from two non-E haplogroups (R1b1a2_N and J2) also have Irish ancestry.  Both of these groups likely arose through NPEs, and it is not yet known whether they arose before or after the 17^th century settlement of Ireland by Scots.  As always, Y-DNA testing of more Irish Calhouns may help to give us a clearer picture.

Are you aware of other Calhouns of the Irish gentry who cannot be connected with one of the families above?  Can you shed any light on the relationships between these families?  If so, I’d love to hear from you!

*****

Thanks again to John Grenham for the use of the map from his website, and once again, thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2024 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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The Manor of Corkagh: Part 2 of 2

The Colquhouns of Corkagh 1659-1665

At the end of Part 1, I mentioned that the Galbraiths claimed they were the legal owners of much of the original manor of Corkagh, but that Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss and his brother James Colquhoun had illegally occupied the property to prevent them from exercising their ownership rights.  The following independent records show that the laird of Luss’s brother James did indeed reside in Corkey.  While one can only speculate as to whether, as the Galbraiths claimed, he tried to force possession of the remainder of the manor of Corkagh, the influx of Colquhoun family members to the townland after 1662 does suggest a show of force.

Pender’s Census of 1659.  Tituladoes (landowners claiming title to the land) in the Barony of Raphoe, County Donegal:

• Robert Galbraith, Esq., Dowish, parish Ray [not part of the manor of Corkagh]
• James Calhoune, Esq^r, Corkey, parish Ray

Subsidy Roll for Co. Donegal, 8 May 1662.  Those who paid a grant in aid to the crown (i.e., the wealthiest of society such as nobility, clergy, and gentry):

• James Colhoune, parish Ray, £7-3/-.
• Alex Colhoune, parish Ray, £7-10/-.

Hearth Money Roll, County Donegal, Barony of Raphoe, 1663:

• James Colhoune, Esq., Corka, parish Raymoghy, 2 hearths
• Alex Colhoune, Corka, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth
• David Colhoune, Corka, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth

Hearth Money Roll, County Donegal, Barony of Raphoe, 1665:

• Adam Colhoune (sen.), Corcy, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth
• David Colhoune, Corcy, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth
• James Colhoune, Esq., Corcy, parish Raymoghy, 2 hearths
• James Colhoune, Corcy, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth
• John Colhoune, Corcy, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth
• John Colhoune (jun.), Corcy, parish Raymoghy, 1 hearth

These lists are not equivalent in terms of how much of the population they included, with the 1659 and 1662 lists including only the wealthiest and the Hearth Money Rolls also including the middle class.  However, the two Hearth Money Rolls should be equivalent, and they show the number of Calhouns living in the townland of Corkey to have doubled from 1663 to 1665.  This is the time period when the laird of Luss was trying to regain the rest of the manor of Corkagh, and again, the increase suggests that he may have been packing the area of the manor that he still legally possessed with his family members and allies.  (Compare this with the situation in 1630, when the muster roll showed no one named Calhoun living anywhere in Corkagh.)

A total of seven Calhouns are listed in at least one of the records above.

• James Colhoune, Esq. was the younger brother of Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss, the one mentioned in the Chancery Bill (discussed in Part I of this article) as having tried to illegally occupy Corkagh.  More about James below.
• Alexander Colhoune was most likely another younger brother of Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss.  He disappears from the Hearth Money Rolls after 1663, having likely returned to Scotland.  In 1664, he married Annabella Stewart and shortly thereafter acquired the estate of Tullichewan in Dunbartonshire, becoming the first in the line of that cadet branch.  (See Fraser vol. 2, pp. 161-166.)
• David Colhoune, present in 1663 and 1665.
• Adam Colhoune, Sr., present in 1665.  There was also an Adam, Jr. listed in the 1665 Hearth Money Roll in nearby Balleghan, which was on the estate of James Cunningham, Esq.  The two Adams may or may not have been father and son.
• James Colhoune, presumably a younger man distinct from James, Esq., present in 1665.
• John Colhoune [Sr.], present in 1665.
• John Colhoune Jr., present in 1665.  The two Johns may or may not have been father and son.

Aside from James, Esq. and Alexander, the identities and relationships of the other Calhouns living in Corkey at the time of the Hearth Money Rolls are unknown.

James Colquhoun of Corkagh, of Balvie, and of Luss

The only known member of the Colquhoun of Luss family to put down roots in Ireland was James Colquhoun, younger brother of Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss.  His father, Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss, married Lady Lilias Graham in the summer of 1620 (Fraser vol. 1, p. 242).  As James was one of six children and the second son, a reasonable timeframe for his birthdate is 1625-1630.  Upon the death of his nephew in 1680, James succeeded as laird of Luss, and so Fraser devotes a chapter to him in volume 1 of his work (pp. 294-301).  However, Fraser appears largely ignorant of the time James spent in Ireland and makes essentially no mention of it in the book, so I hope to correct that record here.

Fraser notes that James was still in Scotland in 1655, when he obtained the following letter of safe passage from General Monck for a trip to England:

Permitt the bearer hereof, Mr. James Colquhoun, with his servant, horses, and necessaries, to passe with his travayling armes to London or other pairts of England, and to repasse into Scotland without molestation, hee doing nothing prejudiciall to his Highnesse.  Given under my hand and seale att Dalkeith the 22th day of September 1655.   –George Monck.

Fraser vol. 1, p. 294, citing “Original Letter of Protection at Rossdhu”.

Sometime between late 1655 and 1659, James moved to Ireland, settling at Corkey, one of the only townlands of his family’s original estate still in their possession, perhaps accompanied by his younger brother, Alexander Colquhoun.  As one of the wealthier residents of that area, James was recorded among the tituladoes in Pender’s Census of 1659 and in the Subsidy Rolls of 1662, as well as in the Hearth Money Rolls of 1663 and 1665 (where he was taxed on 2 hearths, again indicating wealth).

As I mentioned above, James’s older brother Sir John, 17^th/19 of Luss was interested in regaining the parts of the Manor of Corkagh that his father had sold off to the Galbraiths.  It may be that James and Alexander were sent to reside there as a way of bolstering the laird’s position during this reclamation.  Other Colquhoun family members also seem to have been installed in Corkey during the 1660s, as the Hearth Money Rolls show.

Sir John Colquhoun, 17^th/19^th of Luss, 2^nd Baronet. Portrait from Fraser vol. 1, after p. 254.

During his time in Ireland, James was styled “of Corkagh”.  For example, in the probate records of his uncle Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Balvie, drawn up in 1672, he is called “James Collquhown of Corkie” and, as best I can read the old document, was recipient of one of Humphrey’s brown mares.  Even a later biographical sketch refers to him as, “Sir James Colquhoun, Baronet [s. 1625], of Luss aforesaid, uncle and h. male, formerly of Corcagh, co. Donegal” (Complete Baronetage: English, Irish, and Scottish, 1625-1649, vol. II.  Exeter: William Pollard and Co., 1902, p. 294).

It was also during his time in Ireland, and likely in the early 1660s, that James married Penuel Cunningham.  Penuel was the daughter of John Cunningham, Esq. of Ballyachen (son of the Undertaker of Ballyachen, James Cunningham, Esq.) and Ann Cunningham (daughter of the Undertaker of Portlough, Sir James Cunningham of Glengarnock).  Both Fraser (in vol. 1, p. 294) and Complete Baronetage (in footnote (d) on p. 294), as well as some other sources, err in naming Penuel’s father, with Fraser calling him “William” and Baronetage calling him “Sir James.”  The following documents enable the proper determination of her parents:

• Abstract, prerogative will of James Cunningham, Esq., of Ballyachen (dated 7 May 1664, probated 11 Mar 1667), names eldest son John (to whom he bequeathed all his land), son Robert, and daughters Giles and Frances.  
• Index entry, will of John Cunningham, Esq., of Ballyachen, 1674.
• Abstract, prerogative will of John Cunningham, Gent., of Tully, Co. Donegal (dated 15 Nov 1669), names sisters Catherine (wife of Robert Sanderson, Gent., of Co. Cavan) and Pennell (wife of James Colquhoun).
• Legal brief from the Wicklow Collection #69 (dated 10 Jan 1669; National Library of Ireland, MS 38,556), which states Sir James Cunningham died 1620, leaving wife Katherine, son and heir George, and daughter Ann; that George died ca. 1640, leaving only a daughter; that James Cunningham, Esq. [of Ballyachen] served as George’s trustee; and that John Cunningham, Esq. [son of James] died leaving heirs Katherine and Pennuel “who are sisters by the father but not the mother” but also “daughters and heires to Ann, the daughter to the said Sir James and sister to George.”

The legal brief is 77 pages in length, and I have not consulted the original, only a brief abstract, with further details to be found here.  In the will of John Cunningham of Tully, both Catherine and Penuel were treated as his sisters, and in the legal brief both women were described as “daughters and heires to Ann” with no distinction, so the other statement that they were half-sisters with different mothers is puzzling.  No matter who her biological mother was, Penuel was clearly treated as the heir of Ann as well as of John of Ballyachen.

The marriage with Penuel may have been advantageous in that it cemented an alliance between the Colquhouns and two neighboring Cunningham families.  In his will of 1664 noted above, James Cunningham, Esq. named his “trusty and well-beloved friend” “James Colquhowne, Esq. of Corcagh” as beneficiary of an annuity of £110.  Also to be given to beneficiaries were proceeds from a debt owed to Cunningham by “the Galbraiths.”  Although James Colquhoun was not described as a grandson-in-law, he was likely already married to Penuel at the time.  Through Penuel’s dowry, the marriage also provided James Colquhoun an ownership interest in several townlands in parish Allsaints that Penuel inherited from her mother, Ann (originally part of the Manor of Portlough issued to Ann’s father, Sir James Cunningham), plus several townlands in parish Raymoghy that she inherited from her father, John (originally part of the Manor of Ballyachen issued to John’s father, James Cunningham, Esq.)  On 10 Jul 1672 James Colquhoun, along with his wife’s sister and brother-in-law Catherine and Robert Sanderson, sold the townlands in Allsaints, namely Portlough, Colmakiltraine (Chúil Mhic an Tréin, later known as Castleforward), and Drummay, to John Forward (NLI Wicklow Collection, MS 38,522/5).  The absence of Penuel’s name from the record is again puzzling and could reflect an omission in the transcript, since she was alive at the time.

In 1664, James’s brother Alexander returned to Scotland, with several other people of the name Calhoun taking his place in Corkey.  Shortly after the sale of the Allsaints properties in 1672, James himself returned to Scotland, bringing his family.  James’s uncle, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Balvie, passed away that year, and as mentioned above, his probate made some special consideration for James.  Fraser picks up the account of James’s life from the point of his return to Scotland, having been unaware of events in Ireland.  

While James was still styled “of Corkagh” in his uncle’s will of 1672, by 28 Jul 1674, when he was made a burgess of Dumbarton, he was styled “of Balvie” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 294, citing Dumbarton Records vol. i).  James gained official possession of his late uncle’s property on 19 Apr 1679, when he was infefted in “the lands of Balvie and others” (Fraser vol. 1, p. 294).  Thus, it appears he was already absent from Ireland when the court battle with the Galbraiths over Corkagh was settled in 1678.

Penuel died in Scotland sometime between April and October 1679, after which James returned to Ireland for an extended period to visit her friends and family.  His eldest son, Humphrey, was left money to handle her funeral expenses (Fraser vol. 1, p. 295).  In 1676, James’s brother Sir John died at Luss and was succeeded by his son, another Sir James Colquhoun, 18^th/20^th of Luss.  The young laird’s tenure was brief, as he died in 1680 while a minor and unmarried.  Fraser notes that “Sir James Colquhoun of Balvie for some time after the death of his nephew, Sir James Colquhoun of Luss, declined to enter himself as his heir” (vol. 1, p. 296).  Nonetheless, he eventually relented and by commission he was officially served heir on 17 Feb 1685, becoming Sir James Colquhoun, 19^th/21^st of Luss, 4^th Baronet.  He died in the second half of 1688 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20^th/22^nd of Luss, who would be the last laird of Luss in the original, unbroken male line from Humphrey of Kilpatrick.

James and Penuel had three children altogether:  Humphrey, James, and Elizabeth.  Son Humphrey, who succeeded as laird of Luss, has already been mentioned, and daughter Elizabeth married Alexander Falconer of Kipps, Linlithgow, West Lothian, Scotland (Fraser vol. 1, p. 301) in Edinburgh in 1708.  Fraser says that son James “is mentioned as the second son of Sir James Colquhoun in the renunciation dated in 1682.  There is no later trace of James among the family papers” (vol. 1, p. 301).  This is because son James (who I will now refer to as Capt. James) returned to Ireland, again out of Fraser’s purview.  I will return to Capt. James in a subsequent section.

The Colquhouns of Luss associated with Corkagh and their Cunningham relatives; not all children of each family are shown. Undertakers of Ulster and their successors are indicated in bold. Those who resided in Ireland as adults are shaded in green.

Sale to the Leslies

In 1678, the majority of the Manor of Corkagh was surrendered by Sir James Colquhoun to the Galbraith heirs.  What of the remaining townlands, Corkey and Rosamonil?  They were sold by Sir James, perhaps even before 1678, to Rev. John Leslie, Rector of Kilmacrenan, son of George Leslie, 9^th of Kincraigie in Scotland.  (Interestingly enough, this is not the same Rev. John Leslie who was married to the daughter of Humphrey Galbraith, nor were they closely related.)  According to a dubious printed account from 1869, upon the death of his father, the Rector of Kilmacrenan returned to Scotland and attempted to claim the estate of Kincraigie, but he was blocked from doing so by the machinations of his stepmother.

John Leslie was obliged to compromise matters with his stepmother and her family, and relinquished his claim for £5000, a large sum in those days.  With this money he returned to Ireland, and purchased from Sir James Colquhoun the manor and castle of Rosamonil and Corkee, to which he gave the name of Kincraigie.

Charles Joseph Leslie. Historical Records of the Family of Leslie from 1067 to 1868-9, vol. III. Edinburgh: Edmonston and Douglas, 1869, pp. 338-339.

The source above also states that John Leslie’s father was served heir to Kincraigie in Scotland in 1705, which implies that John purchased the Irish properties no earlier than 1705.  This is echoed by a second source, likely derivative, that states, “John Leslie, of Durosamount, now called Kincraigie, co. Donegal, who settled in Ireland about 1705, and had issue, a son, Charles, of whom presently…” (Ashworth P. Burke.  Family Records.  London: Harrison and Sons, 1897, p. 385.)  However, Rev. Leslie died in 1693, so the entire backstory related in the 1869 book is questionable at best.

Despite this, we know the sale did indeed occur, since Rev. John Leslie’s will, dated 31 Aug 1693, notes that Corkey and other townlands were in his possession when he died.  So when did the sale happen, if not in or after 1705?  Clearly, it must have taken place after the Hearth Money Rolls in 1665 and before the death of Sir James Colquhoun in 1688.  I believe the two most likely times for the sale to have occurred are about 1672 (when Sir James left Ireland) and about 1680 (when Sir James became laird of Luss and Corkagh became undisputedly his to dispose of).

Captain James Colquhoun

Capt. James Colquhoun, son of Sir James, returned to Ireland sometime between 1682 and 1687, during his father’s lifetime.  About 1685, he married Deborah, daughter of Sir Henry Blennerhasset, becoming the second of her four husbands.  Deborah married first Christopher Irvine (1654-1680), son of Sir Gerard Irvine, by whom she had no children (John Irvine. A Brief Account of the Irvine Family, County Fermanagh. Dublin: Robert T. White, 1828, p. 33).  A Chancery Court case from 1687 involved plaintiffs “Sir John Hume, Bt., James Colquhoune, Esq. and Debora his wife,” and defendant “Sir Gerrard Irwine.”  By Capt. James Colquhoun, she had two daughters, Lilias and Penuel.

Capt. James served in the English army during the time of the Nine Years War between France and the Grand Alliance (1688-1697), rising (obviously) to the rank of captain.  A summary of his military service is as follows:

Jas. Cahoun or Calhoone, Ens. to Lt.-Col. Geo. Macgill in Scots Foot Guards, 1/11 Sep 1691.  Promoted to Lieutenant to Lt.-Col. Jas. Scott in same regiment, 1 Mar 1694.  Appointed Captain in Col. Jno. Buchan’s Regt. of Scots Foot, in Flanders, 21 Mar 1695.  Died of wounds at siege of Namur, 1696.

English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661-1714, Vol. III (1689-1694).  London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1896.

The second Siege of Namur took place between July and September 1695 in the Spanish Netherlands, so that is the most likely time and place when Capt. James Colquhoun died.  He was the last known male Colquhoun from the Luss family to live in Ireland.  

By the time Capt. James returned to Ireland, all of the original manor of Corkagh had probably passed out of his family’s hands.  Although he didn’t own any of Corkagh, he did inherit his father’s properties derived from the manor of Ballyachen, namely a half interest in the townlands of Balleeghan, Drean, Maghera Beg, and Errity, plus numerous houses in the village of Manorcunningham (at that time known as the Manor of Fort Cunningham).  Accordingly, Capt. James was styled “of Manorcunningham” and not “of Corkagh” (Earl of Belmore. Parliamentary Memoirs of Fermanagh and Tyrone from 1613 to 1885. Dublin: Alex. Them & Co., 1887, p. 38).  Upon Capt. James’s death in 1695, the Ballyachen lands passed to his two daughters, Lilias and Penuel.  A deed, partially summarized below, describes the property.

Memorial of deed of conveyance tripartite dated 8th Sep 1715 between Henry Lecky of the City of Londonderry, Gent, 1^st part; Alexander Squire of same city, Alderman and Lilias Squire alias Calhowne of the 2^nd part; Robert Houston Junr of same city, gent, 3^rd part.  Whereas the one half or moiety of the Manor and Lands of Fort Cunningham, Barony of Raphoe containing the town and lands of Bellaghin and the milln [sic] thereunto belonging, the town and lands of Drecan, Magherybegg and Errily als Eerity and also twelve houses and Gardens in and about the town of Man. Cunningham with abt 40 acres belonging to the said houses were the estate of Sr James Calhown Knt, deceased, being seized thereof in fee simple, the same came from him to his second son James Calhown the said of [?] being so seized died in possession thereof leaving issue only two daughters (viz) the said Lilias his eldest & Penwell his second daughter, late wife of Doctor James Erwin.

Transcripts of Memorials of Deeds, Conveyances and Wills (FamilySearch.org). Book 22, p. 489, no. 12,661.

The deed goes on to indicate that Henry Lecky had purchased the Squires’ fourth part of the manor and that it was in actual possession of Robert Houston.  Further, “The intention both by the fine and said conveyance and by all the parties, that the use of the premises shall be forever hereafter remain to the said Alexr Squire and his heirs and assigns exclusive of any estate or use therein to or for the said Lilias his heir or assns.  Which said deed of conveyance tripartite was effected the aforesaid 8^th day of September.”  I confess I don’t really understand exactly what was going on in this deed and what the various types of ownership meant, but perhaps someone else can explain it to me.  Regardless, it does seem like some interest and benefit from these properties were retained by the heirs of Capt. James Colquhoun for generations afterward.  All of his descendants, apparently down to the present day, are through his grandson James Squire.

Later Colhouns in and Near Corkagh

The Colquhoun of Luss family, owners of Corkagh for decades, left no known descendants of the name in Ireland.  However, there were Calhouns living on the former Manor of Corkagh (both the part sold to Leslie and the part that went to the Galbraith heirs) long after 1678.  Their relationships to the Colquhouns of Luss and to each other are for the most part not known, but at least some of them may have been descendants of the Calhouns listed in the Hearth Money Rolls in the townland of Corkey.

One such resident, a William Colquhoun, was living in or near Corkey in 1688, during the lifetime of Capt. James Colquhoun.  On 9 Dec 1688, at the time the apprentices locked the gates of Derry against Catholic army forces, many Protestants in the area declared openly for William of Orange, and many went to Derry to offer service.  “Soon afterwards, … Mr. William Colquhoun, of Corkey, near Manorcunningham…, and many other gentlemen from different parts of the North, accompanied by their tenants and followers, came to this city of refuge to fight for the faith and freedom they which they held so dear.”  (Rev. Alexander G. Lecky.  The Laggan and Its Presbyterianism.  Belfast: Davidson & M’Cormack, 1905, p. 30.)  It is possible he is the same William Calhoon who served as lieutenant in the 20^th Regiment of Foot under Col. Gustavus Hamilton in 1689, but his identity is unknown.  (English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661-1714, Vol. III (1689-1694).  London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1896.)

Rev. John Leslie’s 1693 will makes mention of a John Colhoune residing at Carrickballydooey, a townland of Corkagh that Leslie must have purchased from the Galbraith heirs; and a David Colhoun residing at “Drumlans” (which might have referred either to Drumcarn in Raymoghy or Drumleene in Clonleigh).  Records from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, including the Tithe Applotment Books, show Colhouns living at Drumcarn, Roosky, Corkey, Lisclamerty, Carrickballydooey, and Labbadish, all in or adjacent to the former Manor of Corkagh.  It is not known whether they are descendants of Colhouns who lived there continuously from the 1600s or were later transplants, but it is clear that they were not direct descendants of Sir James Colquhoun, 19^th/21^st of Luss.

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Thanks once again to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2024 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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The Manor of Corkagh: Part 1 of 2

From Minto to Luss: Corkagh 1609-1637

For much of the 17^th century, the Colquhoun lairds of Luss possessed a 1,000 acre property in County Donegal, Ireland, the manor known as Corkagh, from the Irish corcach (“marsh”), the same derivation as for the city and county of Cork.  Corkagh, one of the original Ulster Plantation grants for the precinct of Portlough, was located in parish Raymoghy (aka Ray) and included the townlands of Labbadish, Carrickballydooey, Roosky, Lisclamerty, Corkey, Tully, and Carricknamart, as well as a place called Gortmore, which I have not been able to locate.  To distinguish them in this blog, I will refer to the manor as Corkagh (a more common 17^th century spelling) and the townland within it as Corkey (the present-day spelling).

Approximate boundary of the manor of Corkagh as originally granted to Sir Walter Stewart in 1610. The parish of Raymoghy is shaded yellow, Raphoe green, Lock gray, and Taughboyne (at right) purple. (Source: interactive parish map at http://www.johngrenham.com; used with permission.)

The original grantee of Corkagh was Sir Walter Stewart, son of Sir Matthew Stewart of Minto and Jean Colquhoun.  His letter patent of denization of Ireland dated 20 July 1610 states, “Sir Walter Stewart, born in Scotland (together with a grant of the small proportion of Corragh [sic] in the precinct of Portalough, Co. Donegal” (Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603-1700, in The Publications of the Huguenot Society at London, vol. XVIII. Lymington: William A. Shaw, 1911, p. 17).  As an Undertaker, Sir Walter was tasked with populating his Irish lands with English-speaking, Protestant tenants from Scotland and England, as well as developing and fortifying the land against the native Irish.  However, based on the first two Plantation surveys, it appears that he never did so.  

Carew’s Survey, 1611.  “July 29….  Sir Walter Stewart, Knt., Laird of Mynto, 1,000 acres; hath taken possession in person, the summer 1610; returned into Scotland, done nothing.”  (J. S. Brewer and William Bullen.  Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts Preserved in the Archepiscopal Library at Lambeth.   Public Record Office, 1873, reprinted 1974, p. 75.)

Bodley’s Survey, 1613.  “1,000 [acres] to Lord Minto … I found not any man to give account of their purposes, but, as I was informed by their neighbour undertakers and others, these parties are as yet wholly unplanted.”  (Francis Bickley, ed.  Report on the Manuscripts of the Late Reginald Rawdon Hastings, Esq., vol. IV.  London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1947, p. 170.)

Following the death of his father around 1610 or 1611, Sir Walter succeeded as laird of Minto, so I speculate that he abandoned his Irish property to focus on tending to the affairs of the estate of Minto back in Scotland.  At some point thereafter, he sold Corkagh to his uncle, Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss (as confirmed in the 1654 Civil Survey; see below).  I have been unable to determine an exact date of this sale, but it must have occurred sometime between 1613 (when Bodley’s survey stated it was in Minto’s possession) and 1617 (when Alexander Colquhoun’s will mentioned “the Ireland landis”).  Perhaps to secure proper title to the land, Alexander obtained letter patent of denization of Ireland, issued three days before his death.  His son Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss was probably the man made denizen on the same day but inexplicably called “Daniel Colquhoun of Corkie.”  (See my previous post for details.)

From the time of Alexander’s death in 1617 to 1630, Corkagh was in the hands of his widow and then his son and heir, Sir John.  While the Colquhouns did a better job than their predecessor of developing the property, by 1622 they had only managed to do the bare minimum of what was technically required of Undertakers.

Alleyne’s Survey (“A Muster Roll of all the Undertakers, Servitors, and Natives in the county of Donegal”), 1618.  “Barony of Raphoe, 1,000 acres:  The Lady of Luce.”  [Rev. Charles W. Russell and John P. Prendergast.  Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland of the Reign of James I, 1615-1625.  London: Longman & Co., 1880, p. 223.)

Pynnar’s Survey, 1619.  “The Laird of Luss hath 1,000 acres, called Corgagh.  Upon this Plantation there is a Bawne of Clay and Stone, 60 feet square, 10 feet high, with two Flankers, and a poor House within it, which is thatched.  I find planted and estated upon this Land, of Brittish Families, [2 freeholders, 3 lessees for years, and 5 cottagers, a total of 10 families and 26 men].”  (Rev. George Hill. An Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster. Belfast: M’Caw, Stevenson & Orr, 1877, p. 512).  

Government Commission Survey, 1622.  “The proportion of Corgagh, first granted to Sir Walter Stuart, knight, leard of Mintoe, and now held by Sir John Calhoone, l[air]d of Lase, 1,000 acres.  Upon this proportion there is a bawn of clay and stone, 72 foot square with 2 round flankers, 12 foot high, part of the bawn being fallen down, within which there is a thatched house wherein a Scottish man dwells.  Upon this proportion [there are 1 reputed freeholder, 1 leaseholder for years, 5 reputed leaseholders for years, with a total of 25 British men, 22 of whom are armed].”  (Victor Treadwell, ed. The Irish Commission of 1622. Dublin: Irish Manuscripts Commission, 2006, pp. 619-620.)

The 1630 muster roll of the Barony of Raphoe, County Donegal notes 19 men on the property of “Mr. Cahoune, Lard of Luce, undertaker of 1,000 acres.”  As I mentioned in the previous post, none of these men were named Calhoun.  Many of them were probably the same tenants enumerated in Pynnar’s 1619 survey, still on their original leases.  Whether these tenants, who appeared sometime between 1612 and 1619, were planted by the laird of Minto before the sale or by the laird of Luss after the sale is not known.  If the former, the absence of Calhouns in 1630 is perhaps not surprising, since Undertakers tended to recruit from their own districts, and Minto was located in Roxburghshire, which as far as I know was not an area of Scotland where many Colquhouns lived.

Also in 1630, perhaps shortly after that muster roll was taken, a Robert Colquhoun was made denizen of Ireland and received a new grant for the same property, “…as an undertaker, of the province of Ulster, of the small proportion of Corkagh, in the precinct of Portlough, barony of Raphoe, and county of Donegal, containing 1,000 acres….  The lands are created into a manor, to be called the manor of Corkagh, with power to create tenures, and hold 400 acres in demesne….”  I speculated in an earlier post that this was Robert Colquhoun, later 10^th of Camstradden, a close friend and associate of the Luss family.  During the period 1630-1633, Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss was under extraordinary financial strain, due in part to his obligation to provide monetarily for ten siblings as per his father’s will and in part to his own overspending and financial mismanagement.  Fraser states,

This accounts to some extent for the pecuniary embarrassments of Sir John.  The splendid heritages which had been transmitted to him—the constantly accumulating possessions of his ancestors for many generations—were nearly ruined.  He borrowed large sums of money from many parties, for the payment of which several of his friends became cautioners. 

Fraser vol. 1, p. 249.

Robert of Camstradden may have been one of these friends, and I speculate he may have acquired Corkagh temporarily, as collateral for some debt.  Fortunately, the Luss family’s assets were saved through the interventions of John’s more responsible brother, Sir Humphrey Colquhoun of Balvie, and (I again speculate) it might have been Humphrey who restored Corkagh to the Luss family.  This restoration must have occurred, if not immediately, by 1637.  That year, Humphrey Galbraith purchased the greater part of the manor of Corkagh from Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss for “a valuable consideration” (source:  Chancery Bill of 1678; see below).  This sale marked the start of more than 40 years of legal wrangling between the Colquhoun and Galbraith families over Corkagh, a battle that, it would appear, the Colquhouns ultimately lost.  

The Galbraiths and the Breakup of the Manor

The brothers James, Humphrey, and Robert Galbraith came to Ireland from Scotland in the early days of the Plantation.  Humphrey and Robert evidently had been employed as agents or bailiffs by James Spottiswood, the Protestant bishop of Clogher.  In 1625-1626, the bishop was involved in a dispute with the Undertaker James Balfour during which Lord Balfour’s son-in-law was fatally stabbed and the Galbraiths were also injured.  As a result of subsequent litigation, the bishop was forced to pay the Galbraiths a significant sum of money, which they used to purchase land.  (The details can be found in Hill’s footnote 180 on pp. 511-512.)  The Galbraiths of Scotland were neighbors, relatives, and perhaps tenants, of the laird of Luss in Dunbartonshire, so it is not surprising that the two families should have been associated in Ireland as well.

(An aside to astute readers of my last post:  yes, this is the same Humphrey Galbraith who succeeded Rev. James Colquhoun as rector of Tedavnet, Co. Monaghan and who later became Archdeacon of Clogher.  This succession occurred in 1637, the same year that Humphrey purchased part of the Corkagh estate.  I sometimes wonder whether Rev. James Colquhoun was a relative or associate of the Luss family and whether he might have brokered an introduction between Humphrey and the laird of Luss that resulted in the land sale discussed below.  Just my idle speculation.)

The 1654 Civil Survey of County Donegal describes the state of the manor of Corkagh as follows.  (Note the ownership of the townlands of Tully and Carricknamart, part of the original Corkagh grant, as well as the townland of Rosamonil or Durosamount, now called Kincraigy, are not stated, but they may have been included in Sir John’s remaining proportion.)

Sir John Colchoun, British Protestant	Corky
Robert Galbraith, besieger of Derry	Gortmore, Roosky, Lisclamerty, Labbadish, Carrickballydooey

Sir John Colchoun holds the above proportion of Corky, as we are informed, by Patent first granted to Sir Walter Stewart of Minto and afterwards purchased by the present proprietor’s grandfather Sir Alexr. Colchoun to him and his successors forever.  Robert Galbraith, Gent., and his brother Mr. Humphrey claim the Quarter land of Gortmore as executors to their brother James Galbraith who purchased the same as a freehold to him and his successors forever from the proprietor. 

1654 Civil Survey, County Donegal, Barony of Raphoe

Based on the above record, by 1654 only the townland of Corkey was still in possession of the laird of Luss, while the townlands of Gortmore, Roosky, Lisclamerty, Labbadish, and Carrickballydooey were all in possession of Robert Galbraith.  Gortmore, it states, was purchased from the laird of Luss by James Galbraith at an unspecified date, but as James was deceased by 1654, it had passed to his brothers, Humphrey and Robert.  The other townlands of the manor of Corkagh then in the Galbraiths’ possession, according to a Chancery Bill of 1678 (see below), were purchased from Luss, perhaps independently of Gortmore, by Humphrey Galbraith in 1637.  As noted above, Sir John Colquhoun, 16^th/18^th of Luss was frequently in need of money, and his sale of parts of the estate may have been done for the same reason that it was placed in the hands of Robert Colquhoun of Camstradden in 1630.  Sir John died in 1649 or 1650, and his eldest son, another Sir John Colquhoun, was served heir, becoming 17^th/19^th of Luss.  The younger Sir John apparently set about to reclaim for his family the parts of the estate that his father had sold off.  Hill’s notes on Pynnar’s Survey of 1619 state,

In 1662, Humphrey and Robert Galbraith held nearly all [of Corkagh’s] lands in fee, having purchased from Sir John Colquhoun, the laird of Luss.  His son, Sir John Calhowne, purchased back this property on the 1^st of May 1664, consisting of the quarter called Corkagh, the quarter of Lebindish, the quarter of Lesglamerty, the quarter of Ruskey, the quarter of Gortmore, and the towns and lands of Carrickballydowy al’ Carrickballyduffe—in all, 700 acres.  (See Inquisitions of Ulster, Donegal, (3) Car. II.)  The Two Galbraiths above named were probably connexions of the Colquhouns.

Hill, p. 511.

The Galbraiths evidently disputed that this 1664 purchase occurred, or at least that they never received the agreed-to sum of money.  By 1678, all three of the Galbraith brothers were dead, but Humphrey’s heirs accused the Colquhouns of having kept possession of the property by force.  Details were described in a Chancery Court Bill dated 9 Nov 1678, which “shows that in the year 1637 Humphrey Galbraith bought the Manor of Corkagh in County Donegal from Sir John Colquhoun for a ‘valuable consideration’” (Charlotte Violet Trench.  The Wrays of Donegal.  Oxford: University Press, 1945, p. 89).  The continuation of the bill is transcribed by the same source as follows.

In consideration of s^d marriage and Isabell’s marriage portion of £300 Humphrey Galbraith by deed dated in the year 1639 did settle an annuity of £60 to be paid out of the Manor of Corkagh and did settle said Manor on heirs male of said marriage with remainder over to heirs female, and said Deed was lost or destroyed in the late horrid rebellion [of 1641] … that the said Marriage Settlement [of Humphrey Galbraith] and other deeds relating to the premises came into the hands of James Colquhoune, one of the sons of Sir John Colquhoune, who is in actual possession of the Manor of Corkagh ….

That Humphrey Galbraith not having been able to recover the calamities of the late horrid rebellion and having been a constant and loyal subject of His Majesty…, John Colquhoune of Luss in Scotland … and James Colquhoune brother of said John, easily forced in possession of the Manor of Corkagh … Humphrey Galbraith having died before the Restoration without issue male, leaving plaintiffs Lettice, Marianna and Angell infants of tender years, his daughters and coheirs to whom the Manor did descend and come begotten by Isabell Galbraith als Gore, his wife.

That Sir John Colquhoune and John his son are both dead.  

That plaintiffs being orphans and of tender years at the death of their father Humphrey Galbraith and not capable to be sensible of their fathers interest in the Manor of Corkagh and continued ignorant thereof till of late….  

That James Colquhoune being demanded by plaintiffs for possession of the Manor of Corkagh doth refuse to surrender same….  Plaintiffs pray writ against said James Colquhoune.

Trench, pp. 89-90.

Perhaps the Luss family’s thinking was that even if their claimed re-purchase of the estate was in legal dispute, possession is nine-tenths of the law.  Unfortunately for the Colquhouns, the courts are the remaining one-tenth of the law, and what they say goes.  The legal record states, “Writ granted against James Colquhoune 9 Nov 1678.”

Presumably, James and his family were then forced to cede the majority of the original Manor of Corkagh to the plaintiffs, namely the three daughters of Humphrey Galbraith:  Lettice (wife of Michael Sampson, Esq.), Marianna (wife of Rev. John Leslie, D.D., Rector of Urney), and Angell Galbraith (spinster).  This left the Colquhouns with, as best I can tell, two remaining townlands:  the eponymous Corkey, and the neighboring Rosamonil (aka Durosamount).

To be continued!

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Thanks to Matthew Gilbert for help with the 1622 plantation survey, thanks again to John Grenham for the use of the map from his website, and once again, special thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

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© 2024 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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The First Calhouns of Ireland

As far as I have been able to determine, the first Calhouns to settle in Ireland came from Scotland in the early 17^th century with the private plantation of Counties Antrim and Down and the royally-sanctioned plantation of most of the remainder of Ulster.  The Plantation of Ulster, which was underway by 1609, distributed half a million acres of land seized from the native Irish inhabitants to new English and Scottish owners.  The recipients of this land belonged to several different groups:  Undertakers (wealthy, land-owning English and Scottish men who could serve as large landlords), Servitors (men who had served the Crown in some military or civilian capacity during the Nine Years War), the Anglican Church of Ireland, and certain English corporations.  Different precincts within the escheated territory were earmarked for each of these various groups.  

In this article, I will focus on the period 1606-1641, prior to the Rebellion of 1641 that drove away many planters.  Records of Calhouns in Ireland during this period are relatively scant and come from the following limited set of sources:

• Letters patent of denization, 1617-1630.
• Surveys of the Ulster Plantation, 1611-1622.
• Muster rolls for select Irish estates, 1630-1631.
• Clergy records for the (Church of Ireland) Diocese of Clogher, 1637.
• Londonderry port records, 1613-1615.

The muster rolls merit a brief description here.  Undertakers were so called because they were to “undertake” the resettlement of English-speaking Protestants, many of whom came from their own estates in England or Scotland, on the Irish land.  Among the conditions Undertakers agreed to was that they “shall have ready in the houses at all times, a convenient store of arms, wherewith they may furnish a competent number of men for their defence, which may be viewed and mustered every half year according to the manner of England.”  One might imagine that many of these men were not family members of the landed Undertakers but rather were working-class Scots enticed by opportunities to work the Irish land and willing to take up arms to defend it.  However, little biographical information about these Irish tenants has survived.

These surviving sources are far from complete:  the plantation surveys typically named only the landlords, not the tenants, and muster rolls survive for only a fraction of the estates.  As a result, there may have been more Calhouns residing in Ireland at that time than are represented in these sources.  

Calhouns in County Tyrone

For the period 1606-1641, I have found only a single Calhoun associated with County Tyrone, but he is of historical significance, as he is the likely ancestor of the Colhoun family of Crosh in parish Ardstraw.  The Colhouns of Crosh and of that parish in general were tenants of the Lords Mountjoy, and the ancestor of the Mountjoy line in Ireland was Sir William Stewart (ca. 1574-1646).  Sir William was born in Wigtownshire, Scotland and became a career soldier, serving first in Denmark and Sweden before coming to Ireland in 1608 with a company of 100 foot-soldiers.  In recognition of his military service, he was awarded 1,000 acres of land in the barony of Kilmacrenan, County Donegal, a district awarded to Scottish Servitors.  On his land, he founded the town of Ramelton and castle of Fort Stewart, and because of his success there was made a baronet in 1623 and was able to acquire additional estates in Donegal and Tyrone.  Those in Tyrone included a 2,000 acre parcel originally granted to James Chapman but subsequently in the hands of Sir Robert Newcomen, who was Sir William’s father-in-law (Rev. George Hill. An Historical Account of the Plantation of Ulster. Belfast: M’Caw, Stevenson & Orr, 1877, pp. 532-533).  On 26 Jul 1629, Sir William Stewart obtained letters patent of denization, and this property, originally the proportions of Newtown and Lislapp, was created the manor of Newtownstewart.

A muster roll from Sir William Stewart’s property in Tyrone dated 1631 includes the following two important names:

• 80.  James Cacone, sword and pike.
• 111.  Alexander McCaslane, sword and snaphance.

The muster roll is entitled “Sir William Stewart, Knight, Undertaker of 4,000 acres: His Men and Armes in the Barony of Clogher, County Tyrone, Northern Ireland.”  However, I think this title is misleading in that the list probably includes not only Stewart’s property in Clogher but also that at Newtownstewart in parish Ardstraw, in the Barony of Strabane.  The reason is that the transcription available online contains records from John Gebbie’s Ardstraw: Historical Survey of a Parish 1600-1900 (Omagh: Strule Press, 1968) and from R. J. Hunter’s Men and Arms (Belfast: Ulster Historical Foundation, 2012).  The two names above came from the latter set.

The Alexander listed above was undoubtedly Alexander McCausland or McAuselan, son of Andrew McAuselan and father-in-law of William Colhoun (b. ca. 1635) of Newtownstewart, ancestor of the Colhoun family of Crosh.  I suggest that the “James Cacone” listed above was in fact a James Colhoun and that he was William Colhoun’s father.  Thus, the Colhoun and McCausland families were neighbors in Ardstraw as early as 1631, when both were tenants of Sir William Stewart.  I will devote a future post to the Colhoun family of Crosh and its branches.

Calhouns in County Fermanagh

Two ecclesiastical sources mention a James Colquhoun who was a Church of Ireland rector in two different parishes in Ulster in 1637.  

James Colquhoun was incumbent rector in the townland of Mullanarockan, parish Tedavnet, County Monaghan from 20 May 1637 to 28 Aug 1637.  He was followed in that position by Humphrey Galbraith (collated 4 Dec 1637), who was later Archdeacon of Clogher.  (Evelyn Philip Shirley.  The History of the County of Monaghan.  London: Pickering and Co., 1879, p. 304.  Also Rev. James B. Leslie.  Clogher Clergy and Parishes.  Enniskillen: R. H. Ritchie, 1929, p. 254.)

On 28 Aug 1637, James Colquhoun was installed as rector of the parish of Boho (also spelled Boghagh), County Fermanagh, evidently having transferred from Tedavnet.  He likely served until about 1640.  (Leslie, p. 123.)

This James Colquhoun who was a clergyman in 1637 was probably not the same as the James Colhoun (Cacone) who was listed on the muster roll in Tyrone in 1631.  As I mentioned above, I believe James of parish Ardstraw in Tyrone was the ancestor of later Colhouns of that area, and this is not consistent with his having left that area for Monaghan and Fermanagh in 1637.  James the clergyman probably remained in Fermanagh after 1640, since he was likely the James Kahoon who was buried in the parish of Enniskillen, County Fermanagh on 15 Jan 1673/4.  (See Enniskillen Parish Burial Extracts 1666-1824.)

Calhouns in County Antrim

Although they have received much less attention from the genealogical community than the Calhoun settlers of western Ulster, there were also Calhouns in the east of Ulster (Counties Antrim and Down) from the early days of the Plantation Era.  Many in the east later spelled the name Cahoon or Cohoon, as opposed to Colhoun, the spelling that predominated in western Ulster.

The muster rolls of 1630 from eastern Ulster list the following Calhouns, all in County Antrim (spellings taken from R. J. Hunter (ed.), Men and Arms: The Ulster Settlers, c.1630, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2015):

Muster roll for Mr. Adare’s British Tenants on His Native Lands, 1630:

• Patrick Cahowne, Barony of Toome, Co. Antrim

Muster roll for the Earl of Antrim’s British tenants, 1630:

• Robert Cahawin, Barony of Glenarm, Co. Antrim
• James Cahowne, Barony of Glenarm, Co. Antrim
• Thomas Cahowne, Barony of Glenarm, Co. Antrim

The Barony of Toome is in the interior of Antrim, bordering Lough Neagh to the south and County Derry to the west; the Patrick named above may have been an ancestor of the Peter Cahound of parish Ballymena listed in the 1740 Religious Census.  The Barony of Glenarm is located on the coast; several Cahoons were listed there in the Hearth Money Rolls of 1669, but few or none can be found there in later times.

Calhouns in County cavan

Another county where the spelling Cahoon or Cohoon has predominated is Cavan, located in south-central Ulster.  The following muster roll record indicates that Cahoons were living in Cavan from the early days of the Plantation.

Muster roll of Sir Stephen Butler, knight, undertaker of 2,000 acres, his men and arms:

• Richard Cahowne, no arms; Barony of Loughty, Co. Cavan

Calhouns in County Derry/Londonderry

1630 Muster Roll showing “The names of the Men of the Citty and Libertyes of Londonderry”.  (The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, vol 38 no. 3 (1914), pp. 355-373):

• Edward Qualane, no arms

In addition, Calhouns appear in the following shipping records of the port of Londonderry (taken from R. J. Hunter, The Ulster Port Books, 1612-15, Ulster Historical Foundation, 2022).  However, it cannot be assumed that they lived there, or in Ireland at all.

• May and June 1613.  “Small boat of Scotland” under Capt. Robert Cohone, arrivals.  Merchants were Robert Cohone himself and Hugh Tompson.
• 30 May 1614.  The Roberte (or Robarte) of Dumbarton, 8 tons, under Capt. Robert Cohone, arrivals.  Merchants were John Balie, William Keningham, and Hugh Cohone.
• January and May 1615.  The Roberte of Dumbarton, 8 or 5 tons, under Capt. Robert Cohone, arriving Londonderry.  Merchants were Robert Cohone himself (bringing 4 tons of coal) and William Keningham (bringing salt, cloth, brass and iron pots and kettles, raw iron, alum, grains, wool, and other goods).
• 27 February 1615.  The John of Renfrew, 20 tons, under Capt. Adam Moderwell, sailing from Londonderry to Renfrew.  Merchant Andrew Cohone (taking 2 dickers of hides).

In all likelihood, the captain Robert Cohone was a resident of Dumbarton, Scotland, as that is where his ship hailed from.  The Hugh Cohone for whom he brought goods to Ireland in 1614 may have been a brother or other relative, also presumably Scottish.  The most likely Irish resident was the merchant Andrew Cohone, since he seems to have exported hides from Ireland to Scotland.  It is possible that he was a recent (in 1615) transplant to Ireland, perhaps even the Andrew Coohone of Droughedonan made denizen of Ireland in 1617 (see the Donegal discussion below).

Calhouns in County Donegal

Most of the records of Calhouns in Ireland from 1606-1641 come from County Donegal, specifically from the Laggan, a fertile valley in the northeast of the county just south of the Inishowen Peninsula, roughly equivalent to the Barony of Raphoe.  The Laggan was divided into two Plantation precincts:  the northern precinct of Portlough, which was allocated to Scottish Undertakers, and the southern precinct of Lifford, which was allocated to English Undertakers.  Because the Undertakers of Portlough came from the southwest of Scotland, where many Colquhouns lived––areas like Dunbartonshire, Ayrshire, and Renfrewshire––many Scottish Colquhouns who went to Ireland settled initially in Portlough.  This district included roughly the parishes of Allsaints, Raymoghy, Taughboyne, Killea, and Raphoe.

The parishes of County Donegal, with the boxed area (enlarged in the figure below) being the area of greatest Colquhoun settlement in the county. (Source: interactive parish map at http://www.johngrenham.com; used with permission.)

Calhoun Undertakers and Patentees.  Among the original Undertakers themselves, whether at Portlough or anywhere else, there were no Colquhouns.  A list of Scottish applicants for land in Ulster dated 14 September 1609 includes the following entries (Hill, p. 139):

• Mr. Malcolm Colquhoun, burgess of Glasgow, 2,000 acres; surety: Alexander Colquhoun of Luss.
• Parlane MacWalter, of Auchinvennell, 2,000 acres; surety: Alexander Colquhoun of Luss.

The bondsman in both cases was Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss.  Parlane was one of Alexander’s tenants, while Malcolm may have been the same Malcolm Colquhoun supported by Alexander in his (unsuccessful) 1608 bid to become minister at Luss (see Fraser vol. 1, pp. 218-220).  However, neither of these applicants appears to have received any land.  

The following Calhouns received letters patent of denization from the Crown, suggesting they were involved or potentially involved in acquiring or selling Irish land (page numbers from Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603-1700, in The Publications of the Huguenot Society at London, vol. XVIII. Lymington: William A. Shaw, 1911):

• 20 May 1617.  Sir Alexander Colquhon, of Corkagh, in Co. Donegal, Knight. (p. 324).
• 20 May 1617.  Daniel Colquhoun, of Corkie, of the Scotch nation or descent. (p. 325).
• 28 Nov 1617.  Andrew Coohone, of Droughedonan. (p. 327).
• 28 Nov 1617.  Peter Coohone, of Droughedonan. (p. 327).
• 14 Jul 1630.  Robert Colqunhowne, Esq., a native of Scotland.  Granted Corkagh (1,000 acres), which was also designated a manor. (p. 333).

As mentioned in an earlier post, the Alexander Colquhoun “of Corkagh” referred to the laird of Luss despite his not living in Ireland and not being a knight.  Sometime prior, he had purchased the manor of Corkagh from his nephew Sir William Stewart of Minto, the original patentee.  Alexander received his letter patent three days before his death, perhaps in order to obtain clear title to the Irish land before passing it on through inheritance.  The identity of Daniel Colquhoun, also evidently of Corkagh, who received his letter patent on the same day as Alexander, is somewhat of a mystery.  Fraser makes no mention of any Daniel Colquhoun in the Luss family, nor is anyone of that name mentioned in Alexander’s will as a relation, witness, or associate.  My best guess is that “Daniel” was an error either in the original letter or in the transcription.  If so, the most likely candidate for the identity of this denizen would have been Alexander’s eldest son, John Colquhoun, later 16^th/18^th of Luss.  This letter patent might have been granted as a contingency given that Alexander was so close to death at the time, but this is all pure speculation on my part.

The other Colquhoun associated with Corkagh who received a letter patent was Robert Colquhoun, who at the same time (1630) received the 1,000 acre manor as a new grant.  As I proposed in my last post, this Robert was most likely Robert Colquhoun, later 10^th of Camstradden, a close friend and associate of the Colquhoun of Luss.  Because there is no evidence that Robert had anything further to do with Corkagh, this may have been some kind of financial or legal maneuver designed ultimately to keep the estate in the hands of the Luss family.

Six months after Alexander and John (Daniel) Colquhoun received their denization, an Andrew and Peter Colquhoun, along with a William Crawford, all of Droughedonan, received theirs.  Aside from these denizations, the only other reference to a place called Droughedonan that I have found occurs in the “examination and confession of Brien M’Coyne O’Doghertie at Lifford, 13 August 1608” (Calendar of State Papers Relating to Ireland in the Reign of James I, p. 20):  “…Sir Neale Garve O’Donnell sent a messenger to Sir Cahir O’Dogherty, advising him to bring up a piece of ordnance from Derry to Droghedonan [sic], whereupon the said Sir Neale would advise Sir Richard Hansard to go with some small forces to Droghedonan to receive the said piece…”  The references to Derry and Lifford suggest that Droughedonan was likely in Portlough.  Therefore, based on phonetic similarity, it probably referred to the townland of Drumatoland (parish Raymoghy).

And who were Andrew and Peter?  Andrew was not a common name in the Luss family, but it was common in a cadet branch, Colquhoun of Bonhill, a family also associated with Milton.  As for the name Peter, at that time in Scotland and Ireland, it was often used as a nickname for Patrick.  Among the recipients of bequests mentioned in the supplement to the will of Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss were “Patrick Colquhoun of Milton” and “Andrew Colquhoun, servant of Patrick”, both of whom received 500 merks, apparently for their assistance during the Battle of Glen Fruin.  John Colquhoun, 3^rd of Bonhill, was killed at Glen Fruin in 1603, and he had younger brothers named Patrick and Andrew, as well as a son named Andrew (Fraser vol. 2, p. 263).  I suggest, without proof beyond the similarity of naming patterns, that the Peter and Andrew who became denizens of Ireland six months after Alexander’s death in 1617 were the same two men mentioned in his will, perhaps having used their bequests to acquire small amounts of Irish land for themselves.

Muster Rolls of 1630 and Estates.  All of the Calhouns listed in the muster rolls of 1630-1631 in County Donegal are from the precinct of Portlough.  Of the nine Undertakers who received land in Portlough, eight were named either Cunningham or Stewart, with the ninth named MacAulay.  Three of these Undertakers had Calhouns listed on the rolls for their estates:  Sir Ludovic Stewart, Duke of Lennox; Sir James Cunningham of Glengarnock, Ayrshire; and James Cunningham, Esq., uncle of Sir James of Glengarnock.  All three were related either by blood or marriage to the Colquhouns of Luss.

Closeup of the region of Portlough from the figure above, including the parishes of Allsaints (pink), Raymoghy (yellow), and Taughboyne (purple). The approximate extents of the holdings of four Undertakers are outlined: Colquhoun of Luss (i.e., Corkagh; green), James Cunningham, Esq. (blue), Sir James Cunningham (red), and the Duke of Lennox (orange). The townland of Drumatoland is also indicated (black). (Source: interactive parish map at http://www.johngrenham.com; used with permission.)

Sir Ludovic Stewart (1574-1624), 2^nd Duke of Lennox, was not only feudal lord superior to the Colquhoun of Luss, but also a distant cousin, both men being descendants of Sir John Stewart, 1^st Earl of Lennox.  The Duke received the largest grant in Portlough, comprising three adjoining proportions of 1,000 acres each, all located in parish Taughboyne and designated the manors of Magevelin, Lettergull, and Cashell.  Magevelin included the townlands of Momeen, Maymore, Ratteen, Creaghadoos, Mongavlin, and part of Altaskin.  Lettergull included the townlands of Dromore, Carrickmore, Tullyrap, Feddyglass, Lettergull, Ballylennan, and Carnshannagh.  Cashell included the townlands of Kinnacally, “Cashell” (probably Castletown), Clashygowan, Moness, Cloghfin, Tonagh, and part of Altaskin.  By 1630, after the deaths of both Ludovic and his brother, the Irish property was held by his nephew, James Stewart, 4^th Duke of Lennox (1612-1655).  

Sir James Cunningham (1579-1623) of Glengarnock was the maternal grandfather of Penuel Cunningham, wife of Sir James Colquhoun, 19^th/21^st of Luss.  He received two adjoining proportions of 1,000 acres each in the eastern part of parish Allsaints, designated the manors of Dacostrose and Portlough.  Dacostrose included the townlands of Castruse, Garshooey, Altaghaderry, Toberslane, Kildrum, Gortinlieve, and Bogay Glebe.  Portlough included the townlands of Portlough, Drumlogher, Corncammon, Gortlush, Leitrim, Monglass, and Tullyannan.  Following James’s death, which occurred about 1623, most of his estate was sold off as freeholds to raise money:  Drumlougher and Corncammon went to Alexander Cunningham of County Down, and most of the rest to Sir William Alexander and to his brother John Cunningham.  In 1627, however, the King intervened and returned the lands by grant to Sir James’s widow, Katherine, as noted in the 1630 muster roll (Hill, pp. 507-508).

James Cunningham, Esq., sometimes styled “of Fowmilne” or “of Homill” in Scotland, was the uncle of, but likely about the same age as, Sir James Cunningham above.  His son John Cunningham of Tully and Ballyachan married Ann, daughter of Sir James Cunningham of Glengarnock above (making husband and wife first cousins once removed).  Therefore, both grandfathers of their daughter Penuel Cunningham (wife of Sir James Colquhoun, as mentioned above) were named James Cunningham.  The Irish lands of James, Esq. were 1,000 acres designated the manor of Ballyaghan and located in parish Raymoghy along the eastern shore of Lough Swilly.  It included the townlands of Balleeghan, Moneyhaughly, Drean, Maghera Beg, Maghera Mor, Tirharan, Errity, and Grawky Glebe, as well as the later village of Manorcunningham.  James’s will (dated 7 May 1664, probate granted 11 Mar 1667) names eldest son John, son Robert, and daughters Giles and Frances.

The following Calhouns were listed on the muster rolls for the estates of the three Undertakers above:

• Estate of Duke of Lennox:  Humfrey Colquphone (sword only).
• Estate of Duke of Lennox:  Adam Quahone (no arms).
• Estate of the widow of Sir James Conningham:  James Calquahan (sword and pike).
• Estate of the widow of Sir James Conningham:  John McQuchowne (sword and pike).
• Estate of James Conningham, Esq.:  Andrew Callhown (no arms).

A list of tenants on the land of James Cunningham, Esq. dated 1 May 1613 appears on Hill p. 507.  On it, neither Andrew nor any other Calhouns were listed, so Andrew most likely settled at a later date, sometime between 1617 and 1630.  Andrew may or may not have been the Andrew of Drumatoland made denizen in 1617; for what it’s worth, Drumatoland was adjacent to the estate of Lennox, not that of James Cunningham, Esq. where Andrew of 1630 resided.  The identities of the other Calhouns from this list have not been determined, but an examination of the Colquhouns living on their respective Undertakers’ lands in Scotland in the early 17^th century might be helpful in this regard.

Conspicuous in its absence from the list above is the estate of the laird of Luss himself, known as Corkagh, in which no Calhouns were listed.  I will end this article here and pick up with Corkagh next time around.  Stay well until then!

Update, December 28, 2023

After the initial publication of this article several weeks ago, I received a great deal of additional information from researcher Matthew Gilbert taken from the muster rolls and Ulster port records.  Updates to the article include new sections on County Cavan and County Derry/Londonderry as well as a significant expansion of the discussion of County Antrim.  I am greatly indebted to Matthew for sending this information my way!

Has anyone found additional records of Calhouns in Ireland prior to 1642 that I failed to mention?  Or can anyone shed additional light on the identities and relationships of the Calhouns I mentioned above?  If so, I’d love to hear from you!

*****

Thanks to John Grenham for kind permission to use and modify the map from his website, and once again, special thanks to Paul Calhoun for critical reading of this post and helpful edits.

*****

© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

*****

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.

*****

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

*****

© 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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The Probate Records of Alexander Colquhoun, 15th/17th of Luss

Alexander Colquhoun, 15^th/17^th of Luss, who died in 1617, left a substantial probate file, some 17 handwritten pages long.  The record is of immense genealogical value, and it provides much more than just a list of his children.  As Alexander was able to leave a will, the probate is considered a testament testamentar, which contains an introductory clause, an inventory of possessions, a confirmation clause (i.e., a validation of the inventory by the court for the benefit of the executors), and the will itself.  The document on file in the National Records of Scotland (and digitized at ScotlandsPeople) is written in “secretary hand,” an old form of cursive that can be challenging for anyone not trained to read it.  To make matters worse, the 17^th century dialect in which it was written uses archaic Scots spellings, vocabulary, and legalese unfamiliar to many of us.

William N. Fraser, a trained legal scholar, transcribed the will, which appears in volume 1 of his work, pp. 230-232.  However, the will forms only the last two of the seventeen pages in the file, and the remainder (primarily the inventory) has not been transcribed or even, to my knowledge, investigated, although I am hoping that will soon change. 

Handwritten copy of the beginning of Alexander’s will.  For comparison with Fraser’s transcription, the part of the will in the image begins, “Att Rosdo, the sextein and sevintein dayes of Maij, the zeir of God…” and ends, “… Johne Colquhoun, portioner of Mylntoun, dispone his assignation of fortie….” The red slashes mark the position of an apparently missing section (see below).

Scottish probate in the 17^th century categorized property into two types.  Heritable property included land, buildings, ownership rights, and other fixed things.  Heritable property was not typically dealt with in wills, since by the rules of Scottish succession, all heritable property was automatically inherited by the eldest son by right.  Movable property included goods, money, livestock, and other things that could be moved.  Movable property was divided into three equal shares:  the widow’s part, the children’s part, and the dead’s part.  (It would be two equal shares if the spouse was not living.)  As with heritable property, the widow’s part and children’s part were determined and distributed automatically by right.  All children shared equally in the children’s part except for the eldest son, who did not participate because he received the heritable property.  The only part of the estate that the deceased could specify in the will was the dead’s part of the movable property, which could be bequeathed to the spouse or to any of the children (over and above their by-right share of the estate), or to anyone else such as extended family, friends, and associates.  Because the spouse and children were dealt with automatically, it was often the case that they were not named in a will, with the dead’s part going to others outside the immediate family. 

Provisions of Alexander’s Will

Fortunately, Alexander’s children were named in his will, since all except the oldest son, John, were designated as co-executors, and special provisions were made for several of them, including John.  This is not surprising, since Alexander took care to put all of his children on firm financial footing from very early ages.  In 1602, at age about 6, son John received liferent income from the Kirk of Luss and chaplainry of Rossdhu, and a charter from King James VI/I of the lands of Auchintorly and Dunnerbuck (Fraser vol. 1, pp. 239-240).  In 1607, at age about 5, son Alexander acquired land rights and rental income (Fraser vol. 1, p. 234).  In 1617, at age about 11, son George acquired rights to a debt owed by Thomas Fallasdaill through actions taken by his father shortly before his death (Fraser vol. 1, p. 235).  At an unknown date before 1617, son Patrick (probably 6 years old or less) acquired a mortgage on property at Aldochlay, worth 200 merks, taken out by the Colquhouns of Camstradden; upon Patrick’s death, it was transferred to his brother Adam (Fraser vol. 2, p. 202).  These are just those cases for which Fraser found documentation.

The will transcription can be found in Fraser volume 1, so I will not repeat it here.  However, I can summarize it as follows.  First, Alexander names all his sons and daughters except John as his executors and representatives with respect to his movable property.  Second, he gives to daughter Jean whatever silver and gold are in his chest, over and above what she received by right, and that she could redeem her rightful share to brother John in exchange for £10,000 as dowry.  Third, eldest son John, likely the only child of age at that time, was designated “helper and consenter” to his father’s will, and as fiar of Luss, he promised, in the presence of the witnesses, “to perform and do my father’s will in the whole premise above-written, and further to the will of my brothers and sisters, as best I can.”  At the time of Alexander’s death, most of the children were much too young to manage their own shares of the inheritance.  Perhaps because of John’s own relative youth and potential conflicts of interest, Alexander designated Rev. Andrew Boyd, Bishop of Argyll, and the laird of Buchanan (probably a close relative of his wife’s) as co-guardians of the younger children “with power to settle various matters in regard to the provision which Sir John should make for them.”  Sir John made his provisions for each sibling as they came of age, in consultation with Boyd and Buchanan.

Other stipulations in the will were that (1) youngest son Adam was to receive something related to the Irish property, and (2) second son Humphrey was to receive money through various means to help purchase the estate of Balvie for his exclusive use.  (Note the bequest to Humphrey was in the form of money [movable] and not of property owned by Alexander [which would have been heritable and therefore disallowed].)  Witnesses to the will were John Colquhoun of Camstradden, Mr. Archibald Cameron of Inchcailloch in Loch Lomond, John Colquhoun of Milton (Barnhill), and John Buntein of Ardoch. 

There is also an extensive supplement to the will, including the following bequests, most to be paid at the next St. Martin’s Day (11 November).

• To Thomas Falasdaill, 1,000 merks.
• To John Colquhoun of Camstradden, 1,000 merks.
• To Robert Colquhoun of Ballernick, 1,000 merks.
• To John Colquhoun of Milton, 500 merks “in consideration of his part of the hardship of Colquhoun,” i.e., his help in the Battle of Glen Fruin.
• To Patrick Colquhoun of Milton, 500 merks, also for his help at Glen Fruin.
• To Andrew Colquhoun and Beatrix Colquhoun, both servants of Patrick above, 500 merks and £100, respectively.
• Mr. Archibald Cameron’s debt of £100 to be discharged, as a token of goodwill.
• To James Colquhoun, 500 merks.

Witnesses to this addendum were Thomas Fallasdaill of Ardochbeg, Mr. John Campbell, minister of Luss, James Colquhoun at Port of Rossdhu, John Colquhoun “his eldest sone” (it is unclear to me whether this was James’s son or Alexander’s own son), and Duncan McInturnour of Tor.

The beneficiaries and witnesses to the will who were from outside of Alexander’s immediate family are important to recognize, since they were clearly close friends and associates of the laird of Luss in 1617.  As such, they are candidates for people who might have settled as freeholders on the laird’s recently acquired property in Ireland.  I will deal with them further in a future post.

A Break in the Will

In Fraser’s transcription, he notes a mid-sentence break in the original will, about which he says, “A portion is here evidently omitted.”  This break occurs at a crucial point in the text:  “Lykas, he ordanes his eldest sone Johne, Mr. Andro Boyd, Bischop of Argyle, the Laird of Buchanan, …. …. His will is, that notwithstanding quhatsumever provisioun is anent the Ireland landis, that Adame haif the same.”  This apparently omitted portion (the two ellipses in this quote) I have marked with two red slashes in the image of the handwritten copy above.  Note there is no physical break in the paper, no ink stain, and no acknowledgment on the part of the transcriber that anything is missing.  It is possible that this is in fact a transcription or memorial of an original copy where there is such a physical break, but there is no way to know.

In any case, the missing portion probably included details of how his eldest son John was to make provisions for his younger siblings, as he began to describe just before the break; Fraser makes some attempt to address this in his book (vol. 1, p. 248).  Right after the break is some provision to be made for youngest son Adam regarding the recently acquired Irish estate.  It seems likely that the missing portion would have included equivalent provisions for the middle sons, Alexander, George, and Walter, since there is no reason to think they should have been neglected.

It is also likely that the missing portion included some further details about the Irish estate vis-à-vis Adam.  The surviving sentence on this topic has often been interpreted as Alexander bequeathing the estate of Corkagh to Adam.  However, this is probably incorrect, since by Scottish inheritance law, Corkagh would have been considered heritable property and passed by right to the eldest son, Sir John.  This appears to be what happened, since later documents show Corkagh in the possession of Sir John, with Adam’s name never mentioned.  This sentence must instead mean that Alexander made some provision whereby a certain portion of income derived from the Irish lands was to go to Adam, given as part of the “dead’s part” of his movable property. 

There is an interesting twist to this.  Alexander was a Scottish citizen, and prior to 1707, England and Scotland were separate kingdoms.  As England was in control of Ireland, for Scots to buy and sell property in Ireland, they needed to obtain letters patent of denization.  This granted them the status of “English denizens of Ireland,” an intermediate status between citizen and alien.  Alexander obtained his letter of denization from King James VI/I on 20 May 1617, just three days before his death.  (He is called in the patent roll, “Sir Alexander Colquhon [sic], of Corkagh, in Co. Donegal, Kn’t,” although he was not in fact a knight, as I mentioned previously.)  This may have been done to make his acquisition of Corkagh retroactively legal. 

As I understand it, denizens could buy and sell Irish property, but they could not inherit property (see here).  Oddly enough, however, it seems that they could still bequeath property to non-denizen heirs.  Among the instructions to the Lord Deputy of Ireland and Council promulgated on 24 May 1629 was the stipulation that “All Scotishmen, Undertakers in Ulster, and in other Places there, ar to be made Free Denizens of that Our Kingdom; and no Advantage for want of Denization to be taken against the Heirs or Assigns of those that be dead.”  (Sir Richard Cox. Hibernia Anglicana, or, The History of Ireland, from the Conquest Thereof by the English, to This Present Time…., p. 51.)  I take this to mean that the heirs of denizens, whether denizens themselves or not, could inherit property from denizens who are deceased.  This explains why Corkagh was subsequently in possession of Sir John, for whom no letter patent of denization has been found.  I invite help with this interpretation from any expert in old Scottish probate law.

As I mentioned above, I intend to deal further with the topic of Corkagh in a future post.

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© 2023 Brian Anton. All rights reserved.

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