John Livingston and Jane (Jeannie) Hood of Rutherglen Parish

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Canadian Livingstone
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Joined: Wed Jul 15, 2009 9:00 pm

Re: John Livingston and Jane (Jeannie) Hood of Rutherglen Pa

Post by Canadian Livingstone »

Hi Gordon,

That is true. It is a lot to follow spanning those generations past. I think your family will find the Donald Livingstone research I have been working on for several years now, of particular interest. I was of course not certain whether your branch of the Donald Livingstone family would be aware of an ancestral connection with this old Argyllshire Jacobite or that your family was of Savary, MOrvern Livingston ancestry. I am glad that your Aunt did some digging into your families highland past and discovered the likely connection with Old Donald of Savary, Morvern. The one thing I realized upon first learning about Donald Livingstone and his story more than 10 yrs ago,was that next to nothing was really known about his family or his children who lived in Morvern Parish. That started me several years ago trying to identify some of his family that lived in Savary and neighbouring settlements along the West coast of Morvern and to see if I could find who their children were and so forth and see if follow a branch of old Donald's family into the twentieth century with the faint hope that somehow I could find a living Livingstone descendant of Donald Livingstone somewhere in the world in the 21st Century.

Your ancestor Donald Livingstone was an 18 yr old private in the Jacobite Appin Regiment and was at the Battle of Culloden on April 1746 with other Jacobite regiments with Bonnie Prince Charlie on that historic day that put an end to the 1745 Rebellion. He might have long been forgotten after that day had he not bravely retrieved the Appin Regiment banner after the last standard bearer for his regiment had fallen and safely evaded capture by Red Coats and returned the banner to the Appin Stewarts. Most of the other banners of Jacobite regiments were captured by the Duke of Cumberland's soldiers and subsequently burned together in a formal ceremony.

The earliest account of Donald rescuing the banner at Culloden that I have found refers to him as "Mac-ant-leigh" of Morvern or something like that. Actually Maconlea or Maclea. To make a long and complicated story short our Clan living in parishes throughout Western Argyll in the 18th century at the time of the Battle of Culloden, generally referred to themselves as Maconleas or Macleas back then. Our Maconlea or Macleas varied the spelling bit from time to time but never in any Argyllshire records that I have seen from the 18th century spelled their name Macanleigh or any spelling like that. There were however a number of later historians who picked up on that and continued to refer to old clan name as Macanleigh or Maconleigh considering the "leigh' to be of some significance" in the history of the highland clan which I don't think is actually the case.

A study of the Argyllshire Parish indicates that by the 1750's our clan folk who had referred to themselves previous as Maconleas or Macleas in the 18th century were now being recorded in the parish records of the 1750's and thereafter in parishes throughout Western Argyllshire with the surname "Livingston or Livingstone". There are number of notions of why the Maconleas/Macleas adopted seemingly the name of a old aristocratic lowland family from Stirlingshire, but regardless it is a fact that our Clan members in highland Argyllshire stopped referring to themselves as Maconleas or Macleas in the 1750's it would seem. While everyone today tends to refer to old Donald as "Donald Livingstone" and to the other clansmen who served also in the Appin Regiment in the 1745 and 1746 years of the Rebellion of 45 as "Livingstones" , a copy of an old Jacobite document by a secretary of Bonnie Prince Charlie with a list of casualties of the Appin Regiment circa 1746 refers to our clan as "Maclea" and not Livingstone. Later transcriptions of another 18th century casualty list done long after the rebellion in the 19th century apparently refers to casualties of "Macleas or Livingstones" probably to prevent any confusion and to make sure that it was understood that these Macleas who participated in the 1745 Rebellion from Argyllshire were from the same Clan that subsequently became known as highland Livingstones or Livingstons.

Yes it interesting to discover what occupations your Livingston ancestors had. I also noticed there was a Livingston in your family who was a tailor or who worked for a tailor. And I noticed that Jane Hood's father Robert Hood in the 1850's at the time of her marriage was also a tailor in Cambuslang Parish, Lanarkshire.

My great-great-great grandfather Miles Livingston b.1775 according to his 1812 marriage record from Islay, Argyllshire was a native of Morvern and and he was hired by Lord Selkirk along with another Livingston cousin Donald Livingston (1791-1876) to be a boatbuilder for a colony which Lord Selkirk was establishing in Hudson Bay Company Territory in then British North America. Miles left for this Colony just days after marrying his wife Janet also a Livingston from Morvern according to their marriage record. She was apparently his second wife since he brought with him his teenage son also named Donald. No doubt the voyage over was quite monotonous but fortunately a group of Mcleans from Mull on the ship with my ancestor Miles and his Livingston group, had brought with them a highland fiddler and according to published account of the voyage by a doctor aboard the ship, there was much highland music dancing aboard the ship. The highlanders were also quite fascinated by the Icebergs as they journeyed to the first destination of their long journey which was a port at Hudson's Bay. Eskimos and polar bears also caught the interest of the highlanders and some Irish folk aboard the ship.

It has been a long process in the search for a descendant or descendants of Donald Livingstone. Several years ago I found a documented descendant of Dr. Livingstone's older brother John, so it seemed a logical next step to find a descendant of descendant of another famous Livingstone.

Once I had established with some documentation some of the children of Donald Livingstone and his wife Jean/Jane Stewart that lived in Savary and other nearby settlements along the west coast of Morvern, the next step was to find out as much as I could regarding any children they might of had and see if I could follow a later family line. Two of Donald Livingstone's children did not marry and or some had children who did not marry, so I ended up finding some kin to Donald Livingston led to me a dead end as far as finding next kin that lived into the twentieth century. I think I ended up find one other Livingston who served in world war 1 survived that war and died in the 1950's in Morvern but married late in life with no available records indicating that he had descendants.

Your branch of the old Savary Livingston line I could see seemed to hold some promise and as you noticed I made much progress with that to the point to following a branch of that family branch that led to me your father and to ultimately discovering your existence. Oddly enough I was thinking just last week I would go back and do another Renfrewshire search perhaps of the Livingstons connected to your grandfather's Livingston family. I have been working as I mentioned on trying to connect a Livingsto in Texas USa with Donald's brother Hugh Livingston of Savary, Morvern. Not much is known about the brother except that some his kin ended up settling in New York State and Ohio apparently in the 1800's. The Texas family is connected to one of these 19th century Ohio Livingston USA families. I must admit it is somewhat satisfying to know that all that hard work back then was worthwhile and that there really is a Gordon Livingston descended from our highland Clan Maclea Livingstone Morvern hero.


regards,

Donald
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