Which tartan for MacClive?

[Nathan]

A lot of Irish references say MacClave is a variation of Mac Flaitheamh or Mac Laithimh (These are both pronounced MacClave. In the North of Ireland Mac Flaitheamh is rendered as MacClave and in the south it is rendered as Claffey or MacClaffey. Anotehr variation is MacLevy.

It is just as possible that MacClive is a variation of this name as it is that it is a variation of Dunnshleibhe (Dunlevy, MacLeave, Livingston, MacLeay).

http://www.ancestry.ca/name-origin?surname=mcclave

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.co...-11/0974169725

Based on phone books and Facebook searching, I think the biggest pocket of MacClives on earth is actually in Michigan. There are also some in West Africa which may provide a clue.

[MacCorquodale]

I found many in Canada and a bunch of marriages in the 1980's in Inverness. There is a restaurant in upstate new York owned by a McClive as well. I visited the Battle of Lundy's Lane battlefield in Niagara Falls ( which is in a cemetery) and was shocked to see my name in large letters on a large family tombstone as we parked at the gates. So they were there as well.


I still very much doubt the Irish thing as it has not been mentioned once by my grandmother or father, uncle, etc.

I did have a bit of contact with my uncle back around the time my father died and he had also mentioned Fraserburgh. We hunted together for a few years , until we had a falling out, and he always mentioned the highlands but I never got much more than that, though he had done quite a bit of research and had a lot more knowledge of the family than I. He was a strange bird.

I don't see a reference to Ireland in any of the genealogy places either. Most seem to refer to around Glasgow.

I found the Ayrshire mention on a 1920 US census from Detroit.

[MacCorquodale]

A lot of Irish references say MacClave is a variation of Mac Flaitheamh or Mac Laithimh (These are both pronounced MacClave. In the North of Ireland Mac Flaitheamh is rendered as MacClave and in the south it is rendered as Claffey or MacClaffey. Anotehr variation is MacLevy.

It is just as possible that MacClive is a variation of this name as it is that it is a variation of Dunnshleibhe (Dunlevy, MacLeave, Livingston, MacLeay).

http://www.ancestry.ca/name-origin?surname=mcclave

http://archiver.rootsweb.ancestry.co...-11/0974169725

Based on phone books and Facebook searching, I think the biggest pocket of MacClives on earth is actually in Michigan. There are also some in West Africa which may provide a clue.

Yeah, most of those are my relatives. My father had 8 or so brothers, all of whom lived to a ripe old age, some as old as 108 years old, and had lots of children. They all moved from the old Scottish neighborhood in Detroit around Warren and Greenfield avenue and moved to Brighton during the late 1940's.

Most fought in the war, including my grandfather.
He was an engineer and landed at Normandy.

Mt grandmother stayed in the old neighborhood until she was forced out due to old age and needing care. I last saw her when she was 78 or so. Luckily she got to meet my children and was tickled to death that I named my son after her husband. Unfortunately, she was a shell of her former feisty self. Damned old age...

[MacCorquodale]

BTW, Nathan and all, I very much appreciate all of your help and don't want to be "that guy" that argues against suggestions and help given. I just very much doubt the Irish connection.

I really can't see my family having a problem with being Irish if that was the case, but they were so proud of being from the Scottish highlands it was mentioned often during the little time I got to be around them.

I wish I knew more but outside of My Grandfather's parents and his birthplace, I'm stumped.

[Nathan]

BTW, Nathan and all, I very much appreciate all of your help and don't be "that guy" that argues against suggestions and help given. I just very much doubt the Irish connection.

I really can't see my family having a problem with being Irish if that was the case, but they were so proud of being from the Scottish highlands it was mentioned often during the little time I got to be around them.

I wish I knew more but outside of My Grandfather's parents and his birthplace, I'm stumped.

Fair enough, and if they were from Aberdeenshire, they were from the Highlands by some definitions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands

There's also a good possibility they had no idea about the Irish connection. The Highland clan system ended after 1745. If a family had come to Scotland from Ireland in say 1770 and then moved to the New World in say 1900, would they not consider themselves Scots? After a couple of generations of marrying Scots would not the Irish arrival story be a bit of a footnote?

I have a Canadian friend who is married and living in Cambodia. He's Canadian and hangs out with the other ex-pat Canadians there. The fact that his family came to Canada from Ireland and to Ireland from Wales a couple of hundred years before that probably doesn't come up in conversation much. I'll bet if he stays there, his descendants will know he was Canadian and that will likely be the end of it. See what I'm saying?

I'm just saying to follow the evidence and try to be open to wherever it takes you.

[MacCorquodale]

Fair enough, and if they were from Aberdeenshire, they were from the Highlands by some definitions.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Highlands

There's also a good possibility they had no idea about the Irish connection. The Highland clan system ended after 1745. If a family had come to Scotland from Ireland in say 1770 and then moved to the New World in say 1900, would they not consider themselves Scots? After a couple of generations of marrying Scots would not the Irish arrival story be a bit of a footnote?

I have a Canadian friend who is married and living in Cambodia. He's Canadian and hangs out with the other ex-pat Canadians there. The fact that his family came to Canada from Ireland and to Ireland from Wales a couple of hundred years before that probably doesn't come up in conversation much. I'll bet if he stays there, his descendants will know he was Canadian and that will likely be the end of it. See what I'm saying?

I'm just saying to follow the evidence and try to be open to wherever it takes you.

Well, that is all fine and I'm open to the possibility, but I'd still like to see some hard proof why we should throw Mr. Smith's research out the window first.

Something better than anecdotal accounts of "first hand knowledge" and my father called it "tartans for everyone."

Perhaps Peter could fill us in on something a bit more in the way of evidence that Mr. Smith's research is bunk.

Using phone records doesn't strike me as any less valid than any other type of record as a research tool. I mean, are census records also not to be used to try to trace back?


I highly doubt that someone as well known and with such acclaim and awards as well as degrees is such a sloppy historian as to just see who lives there now to proclaim who belongs to a clan. That dog just doesn't hunt.


Sorry if I'm ruffling feathers here but it just doesn't make sense.

[MacCorquodale]

Oh and as for Aberdeenshire, I don't find much other than my grandfather being born there and that is it. So, it is doubtful they originated there.

[MacCorquodale]

This is a link to Mr. Smith's credentials on the tartan authority:

http://www.tartansauthority.com/rese...p-d-smith-jnr/

A link that isn't his own website as far as I know and one that has been referred to in this thread as credible besides their CYA policy.

It's gonna take some real evidence to throw his research out in my eyes.

Anyway, I'm going to bow out of this thread unless something else happens in the meantime that seems to hurt the credibility of Mr. Smith.

I appreciate your help immensely, Nathan and all. Thank you!

[Downunder Kilt]

Hi MacCorquodale, could you give us the record of your granfathers birth. I have gone throught the 1841 to 1891 census for Scotland and do not get a hit for MacClive anywhere. In the 1851 I get a MacLive family in Gamrie -Banffshire where the father and son are listed as Coopers
The village is in the same part of Scotland as Fraserburgh (within 60 miles) but I cannot find the family again in subsequent census. The son James was 16 at the census, so could possibly be yor GGF. James father is named William, born 1800 in Glasgow. Cheers

[MacCorquodale]

Yeah, no problem.

His name was Ian Robert McClive. He was born in 1909 in Fraserburgh. This comes from Scotland's people statutory births. His father was Thomas Edward McClive and he was listed as a journeyman Cooper. His mother's name was Hutcheson.