My thanks to Mme Keime and the work of the Church of Latter Day Saints, Cergy-Pontoise, France, who have made these records accessible and amiably provided help. The records for the parish of Dores and Boleskine were kindly sent to me by Professor Harry Duckworth, Canada.
These notes taken from the parish registers cover the earliest entries until the end of the 18th century.
McFarquhars have been included because (in Cawdor at least) this name was at times an alias for McGillivray. It may be that the name KcKerchar was an alias for MacGillivrays in Nairn.
Some McIntoshes have been included on the assumption they were quite intermarried with the MacGillivrays. In fact in the 60 or so pages below of excerpts from parishes in Clan Chattan country, there are only fourteen registered marriages of a MacIntosh male with a MacGillivray female. (The reverse is more common, over thirty, but perhaps this is to be expected in McGillivray rather than McIntosh oriented genealogies). Closer to the point, Clan Chattan, being essentially a land-protection agreement , was more of a reality for the handful of inter-marrying landed gentry than for the tenant farmers or merchants of Inverness.
If you can identify ancestors, link the families below, or know whether they emigrated, please drop me a line. If you know your MacGillivray ancestors came from Nairn or Inverness and they are not recorded in these registers, it would be interesting to know too. (For example, the Daviot & Dunlichity parish registers have been held irregularly, in frequency and content, there is evidence of this, and almost everywhere the Battle of Culloden resulted in meagre registers for a ten-year period). There is sometimes more information about some of the MacGs below, and I’ll be happy to provide what I can.
Sometimes abbreviated names are used, eg Dnd, for Donald, Alexr or Al for Alexander. Please use the find in your web browser using all imaginable abbreviations. Sorry the work is not very soigné, I would appreciate corrections, including words or sentences I have found illegible. All possible spellings of MacG have been included, but I have not copied them in. *** indicates entry needs to be checked.
ROY MCGILVRAY
Most Macgillivray records in Scotland, North America and elsewhere have been collected by Roy McGilvray (his books have been deposited at Scottish Genealogy Society, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, Inverness Library, etc.)
Roy is ready to help you search for your Macgillivray; his aim is to see all McGs able to trace their ancestry into the 18th century.
He can be contacted at:
cv297@freenet.carleton.ca
Updated July 1998
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