Select McKenzie Miscellany



Here are some McKenzie stories and accounts over the years:

Mackenzie Clan Symbols


The chiefs of Clan Mackenzie (or MacCoinnich in Gaelic) are known as Caberfeidh, from the Gaelic for "deer's antlers."   This Gaelic title is derived from the crest of a stag's head in the old MacKenzie Coat of Arms.   The clan slogan is Tullach Ard, meaning "high hill" or "high hillock."  This hill was the traditional Mackenzie rallying point in Kintail.

The Mackenzie tartan now used is the regimental tartan for the Seaforth Highlanders, raised in 1778 by the Earl of Seaforth (the MacKenzie chief).


Mackenzies and Fitzgeralds

Dr. W.F. Skene in his authoritative Highlanders of Scotland wrote:

"The Mackenzies have long boasted of their descent from the great Norman family of Fitzgerald in Ireland and, in support of this origin, they produce a fragment of the Records of Icolmkill and a charter by Alexander III to Colin Fitzgerald, the supposed progenitor of the family."

The story behind this account is that Colin Fitzgerald saved the life of the King from an infuriated stag whilst on a hunting trip in a forest near Kincardine.  The King supposedly granted Colin a coat of arms, with the crest of a stag's head, and a charter for the lands of Kintail.  However, this charter has not survived and many doubt the genuineness of the document and the story behind it.  It seems to have been first advanced in the 17th century when there was a desire and ambition in Scotland to fabricate or magnify all ancient and lordly pedigrees.


The Findon Tables

The Findon Tables were published by Major James D. Mackenzie of Findon in 1879, based on the earlier work carried out by his brother Lewis Mark.  The tables are in the form of family trees, showing the origin of different branches of the Mackenzie clan, their progression, and their relation to each other.  

There are twelve main sheets, a supplementary sheet, and a booklet:

Sheet 1 gives the "Main Stem" of the Kintail, Seaforth and Cromartie families, with the details of their immediate offshoots.  The other eleven main sheets look more closely at the individual families that branched off from the main stem, with their cadets.

The supplementary sheet gives the descent of some ancient families deriving from the early rulers of the country where the possessions of Clan Kenneth afterwards became fixed, and with whom it was connected by marriage ties. 

The 24 page booklet gives an introduction by Major Mackenzie and extensive notes about the tables with references, a list of Kintail or Seaforth charters, and an index of families and names.

The Brahan Seer

For all the power of the Seaforth Mackenzies, it was the mysterious power of one of the estate workers, Kenneth Mackenzie, which made the Brahan estate world famous.  Better known as the Brahan Seer, this shadowy figure from the 17th century was renowned for the many prophesies which, for generations following his execution, continued to come true.  

It was the Brahen Seer who foresaw in detail the downfall of the Seaforth Mackenzies and that their possessions would be "inherited by a white-coiffed lassie from the east and she is to kill her sister."  That indeed was the fate of Lady Caroline Mackenzie in 1823 in the hands of her sister (who was dubbed the "hooded lassie.")  A monument on the estate marks the exact spot where she died.

When Isabella, the wife of the third Earl of Seaforth, asked the Brahan Seer for news of her husband who was away in Paris, he described the man's infidelities with a Frenchwoman.  When she demanded to know more, he told her everything that he saw.  This earned the oracle the traditional reward for the bearer of bad tidings - execution by being pitched alive into a barrel of boiling tar at Chancery Point.


An inscription there reads:
"This stone commemmorates the legend of Coinneach Odhar better known as the Brahan Seer.  Many of his prophesies were fulfilled and tradition holds that his untimely death by burning in tar followed his final prophecy of the doom of the house of Seaforth."

Legend has it that the Brahan Seer was living near Loch Ussie when he was apprehended.  Before being taken to Fortrose on the Black Isle to be tried for witchcraft, he threw his oracle stone into the loch and said it would one day be found in the belly of a fish.  So far as is known, it has not yet turned up!

MacKenzies and McKenzies

While the clan name is MacKenzie the McKenzie spelling has generally taken root, even in Scotland.
 


 MacKenzie
 McKenzie
Scotland (1901 census)
   35%
   65%
Ireland
   15%
   85%
USA
   25%
   75%
Canada
   40%
   60%
Australia
   30%
   70%
New Zealand
   30%
   70%


Alexander MacKenzie and the Pacific

Alexander MacKenzie was a Scot who grew to become a Canadian hero.  A fur trader and explorer, he became convinced that Cook's river, in present day Alaska, could provide a water route from the Atlantic to the Pacific.  South a route - the mythical Northwest Passage - would provide a gateway to the vast trading markets of the Orient.


In 1789, MacKenzie's crew - which included French Canadian voyagers, his wife, and several others - paddled off in a birchbark canoe from Fort Chipewyan in central Canada.  Other canoes, navigated by Indian hunters and interpreters, followed on behind.  Over a hundred days later, they returned, however, with details of a route to the Arctic, not to the elusive Pacific Ocean.  Mackenzie remained determined to find the "Western Sea."

Therefore, on May 9 1793, MacKenzie set out with nine others, packed into a 25 foot canoe at Fort Fork along the Peace river for a second voyage.  This time he succeeded.   With the guidance of native Indians, he became the first European to reach the Pacific Ocean on an overland route, beating the American explorers Lewis and Clark there by a full twelve years. 


Agnes McKenzie's Craigflower Dream House

On May 1, 1856, Agnes McKenzie finally moved into her new house.  It was only a few yards from her first Craigflower house, little more than a shack where she and her family had lived in crowded discomfort for their first three years in the colony of Vancouver Island.

Kenneth McKenzie was hired by the Hudson’s Bay Company to manage one of their large agricultural enterprises around Fort Victoria.  He and his family were led to expect living quarters suitable for a person in charge of a 900 acre establishment, but found only a solid plank floor where the house should have been.

The timber foundation of Craigflower farm house was built by Hudson’s Bay Company workmen in the early 1850s.  The two-storey frame house was built on the older foundation by Kenneth McKenzie’s Scottish carpenters between 1853 and 1856.   It is thought to have been designed to resemble the Georgian style architecture of his family home in Scotland.  Inside, the rooms are not large, but would have been considered grand compared to the modest cottages of most settlers in the 1850s. 

It was a grand house for its time, second only to the Douglas mansion on the shores of James Bay, torn down in 1906.  Craigflower was spared the fate of this first Government House, surviving 150 years of various tenants and threats of demolition to become a National Historic Site. 

A careful restoration to its 1856 configuration was completed in the 1970s by the of the BC Government’s Heritage Properties Branch, owners of the site.  The Land Conservancy, which now manages the historic site, has furnished the house as Mrs. McKenzie might have liked in the 1860s.


Alexander MacKenzie and Ann Clarke in Australia


Alexander MacKenzie, known as Sandy, had enlisted with the 73rd Regiment at Inverness in 1808 and his regiment arrived in Sydney a year later.  Alexander was there until the early part of 1814 and it was during that time that his Australian daughter Mary MacKenzie was born.  The mother Ann Clarke (a convict from Liverpool) was probably living with him at that time.

When Mary was six months old Alexander was ordered to leave New South Wales with an advance party of his regiment which was being sent to Ceylon.  He completed his term of service there and was discharged at the end of 1815.  Instead of returning home to Britain he went back to NSW, first writing to Ann with the apparent intention of rejoining her in Sydney.

However, things did not work out for them at that time.  Alexander had received approval to select a grant of land in Tasmania.  He moved there and began to develop the land while he worked as well in Launceston as an overseer of convicts.  It was from this occupation that he became known as 'Sergeant MacKenzie' (although his rank in the army was never higher than private).

When he had left Ann was no longer 'on stores,' that is, no longer being supported by the Government.  She moved to Newcastle and formed a new partnership with a convict named James Wells with whom she had a child.  At about the same time she received the letter from Alexander which prompted her to go to Tasmania to join him.  She went almost immediately, arriving there in October 1818 with her three children.

Now things started to get complicated.  A few months before Ann had left James Wells in Newcastle to join him, Alexander married a 14 year girl named Elizabeth Murphy.  Not only that but when Ann arrived in Launceston she was already pregnant with another child by James Wells, which she might not have known about when she had left Newcastle.

Ann;s four children were all listed with Alecxander's surname in the population muster for the area of 1819. So Alexander and Ann might finally have settled down!  However, before the end of the year Alexander was dead.  And six months later Ann Clarke married Thomas Brennan.


Reader Feedback - The Writer Donald Mackenzie


Donald Alexander Mackenzie was a Scottish journalist and a prolific writer on religion, mythology, and anthropology in the early 20th century.  His penned well over 50 books, his works including Indian Myth and Legend, Celtic Folklore and Myths of China and Japan.

He was born in Cromarty in the Scottish Highlands and began his career in Glasgow.  Between 1903 and 1910 he owned and edited The North Star in Dingwall and then moved to the People's Journal in Dundee.  From 1916 he represented the Glasgow paper, The Bulletin, in Edinburgh.  As well as writing books, articles and poems, he often gave lectures, and also broadcast talks on Celtic mythology.  He was the friend of many specialist authorities in his areas of interest.

He died in Edinburgh in 1936 and was buried in Cromarty Old Gaelic Kirk, along with many of his Mackenzie forefathers.

Maggie Goodman (jgo52131@bigpond.net.au)



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