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Hi All,
Was reviewing some data from the north of Ireland and Scottish Old Parish Records (OPRs) and noticed something about the name McClae.

Ireland: M'Claes appear on records shortly after Ulster Plantation system started.
1641: William M'Clae on a Donegal Muster Roll.
1665: William M'Clae on Donegal Heath Tax list, along with several other McClaes.
Supposition: McClaes were part of the Ulster Plantation scheme which started after 1610.

From Scotland: Some of the earliest OPRs are of McClaes.
1618-21: Testaments for Andro and Patrick McClae of Balfron/Killearn areas of Stirlingshire
1645-46: McClae births in Baldernock, Stirlingshire, to fathers Ando and Patrick. Baldernoch is only 10 miles from Balfron/Killearn.
Supposition: The Earldom of Lennox included the Stirlingshire areas mentioned above. The Duke of Lennox was one of the biggest of the Ulster Planters, having been granted 4000 acres in Donegal. Query: Could McClaes have been part of the Lennox Plantation? John Wilson has suggested this idea. Food for thought.
Craig

Ooh, very interesting.

I haven't noticed the McClae spelling very much in Argyll, especially at that time. But I'm not sure we've comprehensively searched for it. I wonder if David remembers---did we capture this spelling in our OPR database crawl?

Either way--observing this spelling in Stirlingshire AND in the Donegal records does make a very interesting path for research. If there is some way to follow up on this lead, I would say the circumstantial evidence seems thought provoking, at the least!

Kyle=

Hi Craig and Kyle,

Not a family to be generally found in Argyll and not a common spelling in lowland Scotland either. McClaes (Mclaes) I would wager are some variation of McClays I would suspect that settled in Donegal and that is why you see both spellings in those very early records there. A few McLae's are in lowland Scotland in the mid 1800's. I think the MCKinleys may have some connection to the Lennox family but I not certain about McClaes or McClays and unfortunately I know nothing about the Lennox family in regards to McLays or McLeas. That being said this Stirlingshire and Ulster McClay (McLae) connection sounds quite plausible given what information we have in both Stirlingshire and Donegal.

The fact that that family of McClaes you found from the 1600's were geographically so close to McLays that I found at Balfron, Killean and throughout Stirlingshire and nearby Clackmannanshire in the 19th century census records suggests they are likely connected. Now doubt they are related to those earlier McClaes and McClays that went to Donegal. No doubt. In my latest posting on Mcleas Macleays, Maclays I suggested that many of those Maclays of 19th century Stirlingshire are connected to those of nearby Clackmananshire. Keeping track of all these variations of Macleas is a laborious process so what I attempted to do in a recent posting in the Ancestry section of the forum is to group them by most common spellings that I located in the 19th century census records. I thought this usefull particulary because many people may not be aware of all the spelling variations and the locations where these can be found in the Scottish census records. I wrote down every parish connected to a particular spelling of the name as it appeared in the census records. To my way of thinking these McLaes are probably connected to McClays or Mclays and could very well have originated from Stirlingshire as you have pointed out from your research.

regards,

Donald