Welcome to Clan MacFarlane Worldwide!
If you're like the rest of us you have no doubt found yourself pondering your heritage. Maybe your interest was nurtured as a child or maybe it was just discovered. Either way, we're glad your interest has led you here and we invite you to become part of our worldwide, yet tight, community. Our goals are to educate, share, and take pride in our heritage.
We are MacFarlanes of all spelling variations, McGaws, Spruells, Robbs, Millers, Websters, Weavers, Blacks and many others. Together we form a organization that's kept by the strongest of bonds... family. We answer to the call Loch Sloy, we carry the arms of our forefathers, we preserve the heritage that is so uniquely yours and ours.
It is with your support that the heritage of Clan MacFarlane will continue to thrive for another 800 years. Please join today.
Diaspora - 22 June 2020 - Digital Gathering
Did You Miss it?
Clan MacFarlane Worldwide did a "Thing" yesterday. We gathered friends and put together a Digital Gathering, and launched it so that anyone could participate. We had music, haggis making, information on what to wear to a Highland Game, where to travel in Scotland, participating in athletic events, and just a general get together for anyone interested in all things Scottish.
Several of us worked on this over the past two months so that our friends and families would not feel left out of all the Highland Games that have been cancelled this year. (My personal attempt to apologize for a lack of a more recent Diaspora posting...) We hope we did it justice. But now, we have made it available for viewing on our website for anyone who missed it.
Want to see it? Be sure to have a good drink on hand and a snack. We feel very honored to have the Lord Lyon not only officially open the Gathering, but to spend time in an interview discussing the modern day Lord Lyon Court. Watch our friend, Elliot MacFarlane, courtesy of the St. Andrew's Society of Detroit, tell you how haggis is made. Highland Reign, one of our favorite Celtic Rock Bands, provides 2 great songs for us to enjoy WITH music video. Gretchen Sell-Finley will try to convince you to participate in the athletic competitions. Janet Robertson of Thistle Dubh Enterprises shares the "must see" places in Scotland when you finally travel, and Dr. Bruce Durie shares up-to-date information on what to wear and what not to wear to a highland game. And yours truly has a few things absolutely WRONG!
We hope you will take time to view the Digital Gathering. To see it, you can find it here: Digital Gathering!
Enjoy!
The Digital Gathering 2020

Welcome to the Digital Gathering 2020!
Texas McFarlands: A Record of the first MacFarlane settlers in the Republic of Texas
TEXAS MCFARLANDS
Mary Helen Haines ©2017
Texas was part of the Spanish Empire in the 1500s, but sparsely populated by Spaniards even as late as the 1800s. Virginia native Moses Austin proposed a scheme to the Spanish colonial government to recruit and settle families from the United States. Events in Europe provoked the colonials of New Spain to revolt and declare their independence in 1821; Texas was now part of Mexico.
Moses Austin passed away, but his son Stephen won approval to carry out his father’s plan and settled 300 families by 1824. These settlers were given land grants in two amounts: a sitio, 4428 acres for stock-raising, and a labor, 177 acres for farming. Among the “Old Three Hundred,” as they came to be known, were two McFarlans: Aechilles McFarlan (1 sitio in Brazoria County, and 1 and ½ labor in Waller County), and John McFarlan (1 ¼ sitio and 1 labor in Waller County), both on the Brazos River. There were also several Rabb families in Wharton, Ft. Bend, Fayette and Matagordo counties, as well as many Williams families. This land was rich bottomland along the lower Colorado and Brazos rivers, near modern-day Houston.
TWIGS TO TREES #39, JUNE 2020
Twigs to Trees
June, 2020
Mary Helen Haines
Please extend a welcome to Peter E. McFarland, our newest addition to the Genealogy team. I have known Peter since the beginning of CMW when we were working on his lineage, extending his Wilson County, Tennessee roots back to North Carolina. Since that time his DNA cousins have grown by leaps and bounds. When you read the June issue of Loch Sloy! look for the articles posted by Susan Kromer Hunt, whose husband Bill is a part of Peter’s line, as is Billy Eason McFarland, one of our current Directors. Ryan McFarland, another Director, is one of his DNA cousins. Please read his introduction on our genealogy page at https://www.clanmacfarlane.org/public_html/genealogy/getting-started.html
It is hard to know where to start….I was so looking forward to gathering in San Antonio, and then in Scotland this summer; however, we are all staying safe at home. When I was thinking about this quarterly column and what to write; it came to me in the middle of the night…does that happen to you also? I started thinking about the MacGregors and the MacFarlanes; two rival clans, like the Capulets and Montagues, and the Hatfields and McCoys.
Although they were rivals, they also collaborated, and sometimes intermarried. One of the places CMW visited in our 2014 trip to Scotland was the final resting place for one such couple: Duncan MacFarlane and his wife Katherine MacGregor on the Isle of Inchcailloch in Loch Lomond.
If all goes well, CMW will be visiting this site again in 2021. For those on the 2014 CMW trip, this can be a trip down memory lane. For those who will be traveling at some time in the future, this can be a preview of just one of the great MacFarlane sites to visit.
At the southern end of Loch Lomond is the Balmaha boatyard, currently owned by MacFarlanes who are descended from Duncan and Katherine. It is just a short boat ride to Inchcailloch and then to Inchfad, where Duncan and Katherine made their home.
This area is all a part of Buchanan Parish in Stirlingshire, where their records can be found. Just across the Loch is the town of Luss in Dumbartonshire.
Duncan MacFarlane was born about 1735 in Stirlingshire, and married Katherine MacGregor in 1756. Duncan and Katherine are in our database here: https://www.clanmacfarlanegenealogy.info/genealogy/TNGWebsite/getperson.php?personID=I9140&tree=CC
May - June Issue of the Scottish Banner
The latest issue of the Scottish Banner is now available for our paying members to enjoy.
Please Select the attachment link below to read. (for our paying members only.)