My first recorded MacLeòid, MacAodha, MacDhòmhnaill and MacCoinnich ancestors are listed as tenants, at Badralloch and Scoraig respectively, in the early years of the 19th century on an estate on the Scoraig peninsula in Wester Ross, land to which the MacCoinnich Lairds of Dundonnell held title.
The MacLeòids descend, as part of Siol Torquil, from Óláfr Guðrøðarson (Olaf the Black), a Gal-Gael king of Man (like Helgi Kyettilson Bjolan). The MacDhòmhnaill are also Gal-Gael clan, descended from Ranald Mac Somerled (Lord of the Isles) and a daughter of Óláfr Guðrøðarson, through a younger grandson of Ranald, Iain Mor Mac Ranald[xiii].
The MacAodha originate through a linkage of Cenél Loarn and Cenél Conail (the Kindred of St. Columba) and is an offshoot of Clan Duff which settled in Strathnaver in the 13th century CE.
Scoraig is a deforested peninsula lying between Loch Broom and Little Loch Broom in Wester Ross.
Scoraig had been in the hands of one or other sept of the Clann Choinnich[xiv] since about 1550 and the whole of the Scoraig peninsula had passed to the MacCoinnich Lairds of Dundonnell by 1775.
Although the catholic MacCoinnich lairds were Jacobite and were among the rebels in 1715, the laird did not support the rebellion of 1745[xv].
Fifteen years later, Coinneach MacCoinnich III began clearing tenants from the strath around Dundonnell House but it was his son, patriotically named George, who began to introduce lots where displaced cottars could live. George’s lairdship lasted from 1789 to 1816.
According to James Hogg, George MacCoinnich was a ‘popular’ landlord who was ‘reluctant to clear the people completely off of his land to make way for sheep’[xvi].
Between them, however, George and his father cleared around 70 families from the Strath near Dundonnell to townships, sited on poorer and previously uncultivated land along the coast such as Badralloch and Scoraig. These clearances ‘enabled’ land, previously managed on a runrig basis[xvii], to be ‘improved’ and for large scale sheep ranching to be introduced to exploit the opportunities of the Napoleonic wartime economy.
It is likely that my MacAodha ancestors had already been cleared from Strathnaver in Sutherland.