This site is about “Macaskilling” and MacAskill family
trees in Bracadale,Duirinish,Harris,Glenelg,Small Isles, rest of Scotland,Canada,USA,Africa,Down Under, and rest of world. It is also about every family in Glenelg, Eigg, and Bracadale,Skye, in the mid 1800s. The latest update is of May 28,2009 What began as a search for my own MacAskill roots on Eigg in the 18th
century,- the John McCaskill = Marion Cumming family- has blossomed.
The research extended first into Glenelg, Bracadale, Duirinish,Harris, and the rest of the UK, and has now gone overseas into Canada, USA, Australia and New Zealand, and South Africa. As a result the site has a collection of Macaskill trees world wide in scope. Most of course trace back to Scottish roots and occasionally extend these Scottish roots back in time.
The site is directed at:
1. Scots MacAskills engaging in tracing family roots,
2. International MacAskills who may trace back to Scotland,
3. Descendants of a John McCaskill = Marion Cumming of Minginish,Bracadale, Skye who went to Eigg in 1756
4. Anyone who is interested in Macaskilling
5. Descendants of all families who lived on Eigg,Glenelg, and Bracadale,Skye in the 1841-61 period
The
genealogy information is in "local" categories, that feed into an overall category - Macaskills". The locals are as follows:- 1) Bracadale, a parish in
Skye, includes the ancestral home of the MacAskills at
Runan Dunain, in Minginish. 2) Duirinish parish is adjacent to Bracadale and became home to a branch of the Runan Dunain MacAskills from the late
17th century. 3) Harris is home to almost as large a group of MacAskills as those in
Skye, with MacAskill records going back to the 17th century. 4) Glenelg is on the mainland of Scotland just opposite Skye, and this proximity probably explains the presence of MacAskills. 5) EIGG (with Rum,Muck, and Canna) forms the Small Isles parish. Almost
certainly it was planted with MacAskills by the Rev Malcolm MacAskill
in 1756. 6) Restof Britain is a large
group - reflecting the fact that the exodus from the
Highlands was already well advanced by the late 1800s. 7) Canada - in progress 8) USA - in progress only Macaskills 9) Africa. Only Macaskills a) Australia and New Zealand - in progress. Only Macaskills o) Other
The simplest approach to check out a Macaskill ancestor is to begin with the Macaskills category of the Genealogy area, and its current file "All" It contains an index sheet 1, descendancy charts sheet 2 , and originating families on sheet 3
The index is alphabetic, ranking persons of the same name by birth date[DOB]. For each person there is a separate record for
each marriage – each record begins with 3 codes- one for sex, another for the local file, and then one for the extent of our genealogical knowledge of the person- ranging from 1 = no knowledge, to 9 = has issue. Each record also contains some, if not all, of these
details: name, birth date and place, marriage date and place, death
date and place, and spouse. In addition there is a unique IDENT
number, and family tree [FT] numbers:
FT1 -the personal marriage number FT2 -the parental marriage number FTN -the ancestral marriage number FTM - Spousal Mcaskill heritage marriage number. These family tree numbers are followed by 3 more pieces of information. An * to denote assistance of others, a reference # to find the individual in the appropriate local file, and a name field to capture variation from a generic spelling- Mcaskill.
When you find a match between your information and that in the index, you should note the # in Column P - ie the number of the originating ancestral Macaskill, and switch to Sheet 2 , running down column P until you reach that number, and see a descendancy chart for that originating family.
[To illustrate, simply go to "Genealogies" and "Macaskills" and the "ALL" file looking in sheet 1 for a John b 1848 who married a Mary Macdonald. He has 1 in col A to denote male,5 in col B to denote he can also be found in the "Eigg" area, and 9 in col C to denote that he had children. His FT sequence - beginning col P is 207,205,204, blank. These numbers are all different so that means that his ancestor is at least his grandfather or of an earlier generation. the blank means his wife, Mary Macdonald, has no known Macaskill heritage. To find the descendancy chart beginning with his ancestor FTN = 207, simply go to sheet 2 and run down col P to find 207 which begins with an unknown Macaskill who married a Mary Cameron of Minginish,Skye, who was born in 1688.] Currently there are some 750 separate originating families and these are displayed on sheet 3, listed by number, name, time and size. The local area files have slightly different formats but the same basic pattern, and will be modified to the "Macaskills" patternshortly. All these spreadsheets are supported by PAF files which may contain additional information eg details of the spouses, or children died young.
If you want to follow up any individual call me at citing the IDENT number, and register in the guestbook.
FAMILY TREES
This section is under review. It currently holds one family tree in chart form
BRACADALE, EIGG and GLENELG
These 3 areas have
all family information.
Glenelg file has 4 sheets of information:- sheet
1 deals with all the families on the 1841- 61 censuses, as well as some
others from earlier sources such as Old Parish Records [OPR], together with BMD, and family sources. To move from the index on sheet 1, use column P- the family tree number for your choice- and go to sheet 3 and scroll down column P to find the family tree. Sheet 2 is only Macaskills- all the macaskills from sheet 1 are rearranged into descendancy charts. Then 4 pieces of analysis follow- a list of family trees by number, by name, by time, and by size. Sheet 4 is a list of all family trees by number,name,time and size.
The Eigg file has 3 sheets Sheet
1 covers all individuals found on the 1764/5 Eigg Roll, and the
census returns for 1841/81. Sheet 2 gives their family trees in tree number order. Sheet 3 lists the ancestors in three ways- section 1 is family trees by number, 2 is family trees by name and 3 is family
trees by time.
Into this base I have added Civil Registrations -
Births, Marriages, and Deaths from 1855- 1900 [BMD]- almost all the
Deaths, many Marriages and some Births. These records as well as
research from many people have made this emerging picture more informed
and more informing.
MacAskill Sept Society http://www.macaskillseptsociety.org
The MacAskill Society in the UK has a site at www.macAskillsociety.org
A short
introduction to Skye and the MacAskills can be found in JOHN MACCASKILL
below. For print materials, I can recommend Laurance Reed’s chapter on
the MacAskills of Runan Dunan in his “Soay”. For another model on this
type of small island genealogy I recommend Anne White’s
www.islemuck.com website. For genealogy assistance I can recommend
Marjory MacInnes ‘s www.skye-kin.co.uk
I can also recommend Bill Lawson, author and
consultant genealogist to Co Leis Thu in Harris. His website is
www.billlawson.com
PUZZLES
contains
some mysteries that have stumped our research – are you stumped or do
you have a puzzle of your own to submit – Macaskill of course.
GUESTBOOK
I will be just as pleased when visitors can add information to the file, as when I can add to theirs. Please log onto the GUESTBOOK or make contact by email at
RESOURCES
The
most widely used sources are the Scottish OPR, Census 1841-61, and Civil
registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths to 1901.These files are increasingly the work of interested Macaskills adding information
However
few of these sources have been fully used, so the resulting family
trees do not claim to be “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but
the truth.” Rather they are a work in progress. I plan to update
the files as more information becomes available, expecting to make
changes as often as makes sense..
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
lists
many people who have helped this project in so many ways, provided
encouragement, supplied information, research, and in some cases
collaboration. In the genealogies section each entry has a
field. "*" that acknowledges the help of others in generating
this entry.
At
the present time, I am round outing the locals (1-6 above) with more OPR,census, BMD, and family
information. I have some records for each of
the other areas but the move from the one national file to the definitive
international file is a very ambitious project. That said , I am open
to other views on how the site could develop, and to fresh ideas.