Clan MacGillivray
The MacGillivrays were a member clan of the Clan Chattan confederation and are recorded at the great gathering of the confederation in 1609. The tradition that their chief placed himself under Mackintosh protection around 1268 is flagged as tradition by the clan’s own sources, and an asserted connection to Somerled in 1153 is unsupported. The first accurate record of the family is 1549, at Dunmaglass in Strathnairn, Inverness-shire, which the chiefs held from at least the sixteenth century.
The clan’s best-known moment is its worst. At Culloden in 1746 Alexander MacGillivray of Dunmaglass, Alasdair Ruadh, led the Clan Chattan regiment in the Jacobite charge and was killed at the spot still called the Well of the Dead. The line ran out in the twentieth century: John Farquhar MacGillivray of Dunmaglass, who succeeded in 1914, died without issue at Toronto on 20 August 1942, and the chiefship has been dormant ever since. The Lord Lyon appointed Colonel George B. Macgillivray of Thunder Bay, Ontario, as Commander of the clan in 1989; he served until his death in 1994. A family convention was held on 15 April 2016 and Iain Donald MacGillivray received his commission as Commander. He is Commander, not chief — the distinction is a real one and the clan remains without a chief.
The MacGillivray tartan
The Scottish Register of Tartans holds three MacGillivray records: MacGillivray, reference 2440, Clan/Family, dated 1819; MacGillivray Hunting, reference 5388, Clan/Family, with no date specified; and MacGillivray Dress, Janice, reference 10811, registered on 11 November 2011 in the Name category, which is a personal tartan rather than a clan one.
The clan sett of 1819 falls within the working life of Wilsons of Bannockburn, the Stirlingshire firm that named and numbered most of the early clan patterns, which makes a Wilsons origin plausible; we have not been able to read the register’s designer field and will not state it as fact. What can be said firmly is a negative: no MacGillivray entry carries the 1842 date, so no MacGillivray sett comes from the Vestiarium Scoticum, the Sobieski Stuart book of that year that was exposed as a forgery and that lies behind a great many clan tartans.
A note on honesty: MacGillivray Ancient, Modern, Weathered and Muted are dye colourways of the 1819 sett, not separate tartans, and the Janice dress pattern is a personal registration that no one need feel obliged to buy as clan dress. No MacGillivray sett predates the commercial era — the register date of 1819 is seventy-three years after Culloden.
Clan facts
| Chief | None. The chiefship has been dormant since the death of John Farquhar MacGillivray of Dunmaglass on 20 August 1942. Iain Donald MacGillivray has held a Lord Lyon commission as Commander since 2016 |
|---|---|
| Motto | Touch not this cat — recorded more fully as “Touch not the cat bot a glove”, bot meaning without; shared with Clan Chattan |
| Plant badge | Red whortleberry; boxwood is also recorded |
| Lands | Dunmaglass and Dalcrombie in Strathnairn, Inverness-shire; the lodge is now in private hands |