Despite how CSI portrays it, any good detective will tell you that solving a case is 90% meticulous, mundane research and 10% adrenaline pumping procedures. Today we begin the Case of the missing MacDonalds and it will not involve zip lining through the Glens of Inverness or scaling the heights of Ben Urquhart but rather a visit to the Highlands Archive Centre and more than 2 hours of maps, books and microfiche!
This case does not suffer from the dearth of suitable suspects as our last case did (The Case of the Lost Lawries) but from the opposite. Everyone seemed to be a Donald, MacDonald, McDonald, Ranald, MacDonell, or married to them and often both! Muddling this surplus of prime suspects was the fact that they also shared a limited number of Christian names—John, Alexander, Donald, William, Catherine, Margaret, or Elisabeth. The archivist assigned to our case cringed when she heard we were MacDonalds and made a cross with two fingers to ward us off. Only Betty and Jim took the hint and peeled off to investigate the nearby Botanical Gardens.
After intense digging, Dusty, Allen, Laurel and the archivist had eliminated more leads than they had generated. We weren't sure where to go next but we were pretty sure where not to go. Cheryl, meanwhile, had located some useful references to take back to her dad, for finding out more about their Scottish family background (Campbell and other).
At this point, our group split with Cheryl and July opting to explore the environs of Inverness's High Street and the rest of us venturing out to Culloden and to find Old Petty Church. Culloden is the site of the last Jacobite battle where 1500 Scottish supporters of James VIII were slaughtered by the British forces led by Cumberland. The area is as it was back then, pasture and moor and bog and the cloudy skies added to the bleakness of its history. After touring an extensive interpretation centre we walked the paths that followed the front lines of the British and then the Jacobites to find the marker for the Clan Donald mass grave. Although walking the battlefield was free, exiting through the gift shop was not.
Finding Old Petty Church was an adventure with high profile landmarks like Stuart Castle to guide us. However, after driving the single laneways frontwards and backwards and making a u-turn in a farmer's yard we asked a local for directions and finally found the Kirk and cemetery right beside the castle. Allen found a stone that matched the name and dates for the surname of one ancestor (Falconer), but again since many people shared this name we could not be sure. It would require more research to determine if this was, indeed, a distant relative.
Back at the Manor, Dusty fired up the BBQ in our Swedish Cook Lodge in the backyard and grilled us some delicious pork chops to end the day in style.
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