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MacKenzie: A Clan History: From the Highlands to the New World
The MacKenzies came to hold more of the northern Highlands than any other name, and the grandchildren of the men who held that land for their chiefs were moved off their townships or put on emigrant ships.
On 2 October 1721 Donald Murchison's men waited with Spanish firelocks on a birch knoll at the head of Glen Affric and turned back the stewards the Crown had sent with soldiers to take an attainted earl's rents. Their chief, the Earl of Seaforth, was in exile, and they paid his rents to his own factor. Murchison carried 800 pounds of them through Edinburgh to France, and nobody laid a hand on him. Within a century and a half the chief's heirs had sold Lewis for 190,000 pounds.
This second edition follows the name through the the tenants who ransomed their chief with cattle after Pinkie in 1547, Eilean Donan blown apart in 1719 with the Spanish powder found inside it, the sixteen families of Mealista disposed of in one sentence of a chamberlain's letter, the women of Coigach who burned the summonses in 1852, and the Park raiders acquitted in 1888.
Abroad it follows Alexander Mackenzie, a Stornoway boy who painted his name on a rock on the Pacific in 1793, and a stonemason from Logierait who became Prime Minister of Canada. It ends at Castle Leod, where the chief of the name lives today.
With the chiefs, the houses of the name, places to visit, a chronology, a guide to finding your MacKenzies and, in print, an index.
On 2 October 1721 Donald Murchison's men waited with Spanish firelocks on a birch knoll at the head of Glen Affric and turned back the stewards the Crown had sent with soldiers to take an attainted earl's rents. Their chief, the Earl of Seaforth, was in exile, and they paid his rents to his own factor. Murchison carried 800 pounds of them through Edinburgh to France, and nobody laid a hand on him. Within a century and a half the chief's heirs had sold Lewis for 190,000 pounds.
This second edition follows the name through the the tenants who ransomed their chief with cattle after Pinkie in 1547, Eilean Donan blown apart in 1719 with the Spanish powder found inside it, the sixteen families of Mealista disposed of in one sentence of a chamberlain's letter, the women of Coigach who burned the summonses in 1852, and the Park raiders acquitted in 1888.
Abroad it follows Alexander Mackenzie, a Stornoway boy who painted his name on a rock on the Pacific in 1793, and a stonemason from Logierait who became Prime Minister of Canada. It ends at Castle Leod, where the chief of the name lives today.
With the chiefs, the houses of the name, places to visit, a chronology, a guide to finding your MacKenzies and, in print, an index.
255 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 24, 2025
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