Macfarlane Family History - Public Version

Notes For The Public Version 2, November 2021

Note:  Although V2, this is the first publicly available version; the previous V1 was only made available privately to family members, and very limited subsets to selected others.

Crest of James Macfarlane

A trunkful of documents has come down through this branch of the Clan MacFarlane family tree, descended, we believe, originally from a younger son, John, of 8th Clan Chief Duncan MacFarlane Of That Ilk.  The living family have decided that these documents may be of sufficient interest to historians and others that those sufficiently removed from living generations should be made available to be downloaded freely by the public.  These are notes on the public contents of this trunk, their scanning, and of the digital rephotographing of the family photograph albums, 2019-21, and downloads of the results which are available at the bottom of this page.

At least one document dates from the reign of Queen Anne  one or two others might be as old or older, but their provenance is obscure  and, over the generations of our Macfarlane ancestors since, there are increasing numbers of them: accounts, diaries, family trees, letters, log-books, marriage settlements, newscuttings, sketches, wills, etc.  Many pertain to public service as rectors of parishes, in the Honorable East India Co, and the British Army.  From around the 1880s there are also an increasing number of photographs, both of people and places of interest.  There are also a lesser amount of documents concerning the families that we have married into, including the Alston, Bingham, Close, and Hallewell families.

A number of ancestors served either in the Honorable East India Company or the British Army, and there are diaries, log-books, notes for public lectures, photos, etc, relating to such service.

A number also have evidenced an interest in history generally and ancestry particularly, and there are family trees and notes relating to most or all of the above mentioned families, and many notes extracted from books about Scottish history and clan ancestry, particularly Clan MacFarlane ancestry.

Some were also artists, and there are some sketches and water-colours of differing levels of accomplishment.  There are also some photographs which were re-photographed in situ in the albums, and then cropped into individual pictures.  A sample of them is displayed below.  See also, in the archive:
     /Family History/Family Photographs - Notes & Questions (public).txt

There is also an 1881 Ordnance Survey map of the Alness & Dingwall area which belonged to C E Macfarlane, 1865-1932, and which, interestingly and unexpectedly, towards its south-eastern corner, shows that at that time a former family home belonging to his elder brother Brig Gen D A Macfarlane CB DSO, 1857-1941, Dunain Park House, now the Loch Ness Country House Hotel, was not then built, suggesting that perhaps the latter was responsible for its building, a suggestion strengthened by it having a somewhat similar general plan and appearance to Staveley Rectory, now known as Staveley Hall, where he was born and raised.

C E Macfarlane also transcribed many of the letters of ancestors into a notebook, some have since been photocopied also, and these photocopies have also been scanned and been married up with the originals.  However, the originals of the letters transcribed by him including and beyond page 169 to the end, which were all letters to Janet Macfarlane from her birth family, the Alstons, unfortunately have since been lost, so were not available to us for scanning.  Hence, as far as is known, these transcriptions by him are the only copies left.

If you have previously downloaded any part of these archives, such as the files released to Dorchester Abbey last year, you may wish to know what has changed and how you should set about updating to this new version of the public archive.  For help with this, please see Updating to V2 (public version).

Whether or not you choose to download the entire archive below, we have a number of photographs from the family albums which are a mystery to us, and are looking for help from the public to try and identify people and places in them.  Please see Unknown Photos (public version) if you are interested in helping us.

 

Particular individuals having enough documents to warrant their own sub-directory

Duncan Macfarlane1746-1774Merchant of Edinburgh
C P Macfarlane1770-1810Majority owner & captain of merchant ship 'Warren Hastings'
Major James Macfarlane1774-1849Served in Honorable East India Co
Rev J D Macfarlane1815-1886Rector of Staveley, Derbyshire
Rev W C Macfarlane1817-1885Vicar of Dorchester-on-Thames, Oxfordshire
Emily Mary Close (née McF) & family1856-1948Expert on Plainsong, musician, photographer, artist
Brig Gen D A Macfarlane CB DSO1857-1941Colonel KOSB, distinguished soldier & public figure in the Inverness area
C E Macfarlane1865-1932Seaforth Highlander, family historian

 

A Sample Of The Photos

Rev J D Macfarlane HRH Prince Of Wales & Brig Gen D A Macfarlane Inspecting British Legion Veterans Edythe Lavinia Bingham Emily, Duncan, & Marjorie Close (Florence Chant, The Studio, Parkstone) Rev W C Macfarlane, D A Macfarlane, & Rev Ibbotson 1867 Dunain Park House, Inverness Brussels, Hôtel De Ville 189503 Donhead House, Wiltshire Puerto Rico, San Juan, Statue Of Ponce De León Staveley Rectory (now Staveley Hall) Postcard - Old Inverness Curling, Highland Club, Kingsmills, Inverness 19131206 Forth Rail Bridge Under Construction, South Cantilever 18880623 (618) Barbados Harbour 191103 Bermuda, Hamilton Sound Bruges, Hôtel De Ville & Chapelle Du St Sang 189503 (G.H. photo) Dairymaid With Cart Pulled By Dog Gibralter, North End Of Rock Khartoum Venice, Basilica Cattedrale Patriacarle Di San Marco 1891

 

Archive Downloads & Statistics

It should be noted that the Main Archive contains only of the final results of the scanning & re-photographing, while the Full Archive additionally contains all the intermediate preprocessing results, stored in the '_all' subdirectory.  Please note that the size of the download files may cause some seconds delay between your clicking them and your browser responding with a dialog box to save them:

 File Name
(click to download)
Number ofSizes & Disk Space To Download & Unzip (GB)
FilesFoldersUnzippedZippedDisk Space
Current Public Archive - Main (excluding preprocessing results)MacfarlaneFH-MainPublic.zip4,461872.52.46
Current Public Archive - Full (including preprocessing results)MacfarlaneFH-FullPublic.zip23,22346818.318.238

 

Copyright Requirements

If you wish to reproduce any of our family history documents from here, partly or wholly, then we require that you attribute us as source by including the download URL …
     www.macfh.co.uk/Macfarlane/FamilyHistory/FamilyHistory.shtml
… for example …
     <a href="https://www.macfh.co.uk/Macfarlane/FamilyHistory/FamilyHistory.shtml">Macfarlane Family History</a>