Hebridean Case Studies

"Our original client was from Waipu in New Zealand, where she was very much involved with the House of Memories, the museum dedicated to the families who left Cape Breton with Rev Norman MacLeod in 1851 to sail to a new life in New Zealand. She knew that her grandfather Neil MacLeod was born in about 1852, and that he was a son of Donald MacLeod and Catherine Morrison of Tarbert, Harris. Neil’s birth predated the beginning of registers of births in Harris, but from oral tradition we were able to establish that Donald was Domhnall mac Neill mhic Thormoid (Donald son of Neil son of Norman) from the Faoilinn in Tarbert, and that Catherine was Catriona an Domainaidh - daughter of the Dominie or schoolmaster in Tarbert. Again from local tradition, we knew that Donald MacLeod had a half-brother Norman, who had been a merchant in Tarbert, and some of whose children had emigrated as merchants to the Philippines. Unfortunately, none of the family were left in Harris, but the client in Waipu was fascinated to know that she had had relatives in the Philippines!"

"Some years later Co Leis Thu? were approached by another client in Nova Scotia, trying to trace MacLeod ancestry from Harris. We were able to do so, but even more interesting was to find that the client’s great-grandmother had been a sister of Norman MacLeod, the merchant in Tarbert! We wrote to ourclient, giving her this information, and mentioning her great-grandmother’s nephews in the Philippines. Back came a letter, enclosing a copy of an old letter that she had found in her great-aunt’s attic - a letter of 1899 from one of the family in the Philippines to his aunt in Cape Breton, reminiscing about the family in Tarbert!"

"Several years later again Co Leis Thu? were approached by a gentleman in Skye, whose people were MacLeods, who had been merchants in the Philippines! They were all put in touch with each other, and so the circle which had been broken in the 1860s was closed once again."