Re: MacGregors

[Plumpett@aol.com]

JULI --

There is no answer for what you want to know !!

I too have seen records which say " -----   ------, born ------- MACGREGOR  " 
.
The dash marks are where a last name was in use other  than MacGregor !!!

It was hard to kill a book or a tombstone .

Part of the Prosciption 's legal effects  were that real property could not 
be held in the
MacGregor name , so at best , a split set of records exist from that time 
period .

Even in the USA , I have seen records that said , for example , James 
-------. born James MacGregor !!

Without question , today there are Sinclairs , for example , who are 
MacGregors
by bloodline but have 400 years of history under the name of Sinclair !!

All this makes Genealogical efforts much harder but it also seems that the 
assumed name spelling was often much more consistent in a family line than 
was the case where a name was an adopted one --not always the case , but not 
uncommon . 

Add the effect of the Clearances , and you have Highlanders being displaced 
from Scotland to England thence to Ireland and then migrating to North 
America . People find an ancestor coming from Ireland and are immediately 
under the wrong impression that they have a link to Ireland whereas it was 
only a boarding point for a ship to America .

There were also other name proscriptions in Scotland , for example , that of 
the Clan RUTHVEN .

JOE
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