Clan Graham

The Grahams are usually reckoned Anglo-Norman in origin, the name linked to the manor of Gregham in Domesday Book. Their earliest Scottish lands were around Dalkeith in Midlothian; they later held Mugdock Castle north of Glasgow, built about 1370, with lands in Menteith and Montrose.

Sir John de Graham, William Wallace’s companion, was killed at the Battle of Falkirk in 1298. James Graham, 1st Marquis of Montrose, won Tippermuir, Aberdeen, Inverlochy, Auldearn, Alford and Kilsyth for Charles I before his defeat at Philiphaugh in 1645, and was executed in 1650. John Graham of Claverhouse, Viscount Dundee, was beaten at Drumclog, victorious at Bothwell Brig, and died leading the Jacobite army at Killiecrankie in 1689.

The Graham tartans

The Clan Graham Society treats Graham of Montrose #2 as the clan’s official sett. A sample labelled “Graham” survives in the Cockburn Collection, assembled between about 1810 and 1820 and held by Glasgow Libraries; Wilsons of Bannockburn wove the pattern in 1819 under the name “Abercrombie” or No. 64, and it was first published as Graham in Authenticated Tartans of the Clans and Families of Scotland in 1850.

The plain Graham of Montrose is a different sett, distinguished by the position of the white stripes, a thinner black stripe and the absence of black within the blue; a four-inch sample is held by the Highland Society of London. Graham of Menteith first appears in 1819 under the name “Cobourg” and was recorded as a Graham tartan in The Scottish Gael in 1831.

A note on honesty: the tradition that a Graham first breached the Antonine Wall is legend, and the Domesday origin of the name is long-standing tradition rather than proven descent.

Clan facts

References

1. Tartans — Clan Graham Society
2. Graham tartans — The Scottish Register of Tartans
3. The Cockburn Collection — Glasgow Libraries