The Crowner’s eldest son, James, succeeded as chief, and he it was who, with his family and the greater portion of his clan, removed into Sutherland. The principal dwelling-house of the chiefs was, thereafter, Killernan, in the parish of Kildonan, until the house was accidentally destroyed by fire about 1690. From this chief, the patronymic of Mac-Sheumais, or MacKeamish, (that is, the son of James,) which then became the Gaelic sept-name of the chiefs, is derived. From one of the sons of the Crowner, named William, are descended the Wilsons of Caithness, (as from a subsequent chief of the same name, the Williamsons,) and from another, Henry, the Hendersons. Another son, Robert, who was killed with his father, was the progenitor of the Gun Robsons; and another son, John, also slain by the Keiths, of the Gun MacEans, or MacIans, that is Johnsons, of Caithness. The Gallies are also of this clan, a party of whom settling in Ross-shire being designated as coming from Gall’-aobh, the stranger’s side.
William Gunn, the eighth MacKeamish, an officer in the army, was killed in battle in India, without leaving issue, when the chiefship devolved on Hector, great-grandson of George, second son of Alexander, the fifth MacKeamish, to whom he was served nearest male heir, on the 31st May 1803, and George Gunn, Esq. of Rhives, county of Sutherland, his only son, became, on his death, chief of the clan Gunn, and the tenth MacKeamish.
Maclaurin.
Maclaurin, more commonly spelled Maclaren, is the name of a small clan belonging to Perthshire, and called in Gaelic the clann Labhrin. The name is said to have been derived from the district of Lorn, in Argyleshire, the Gaelic orthography of which is Lubhrin. The Maclaurins bear the word Dalriada, as a motto above their coat of arms.
MACLAURIN OR MACLAREN.
Badge—Laurel.
From Argyleshire the tribe of Laurin moved into Perthshire, having, it is said, acquired from Kenneth Macalpin, after his conquest of the Picts in the 9th century, the districts of Balquhidder and Strathearn, and three brothers are mentioned as having got assigned to them in that territory the lands of Bruach, Auchleskin, and Stank. In the churchyard of Balquhidder, celebrated as containing the grave of Rob Roy, the burial places of their different families are marked off separately, so as to correspond with the situation which these estates bear to each other, a circumstance which so far favours the tradition regarding them.
When the earldom of Strathearn became vested in the crown in 1370, the Maclaurins were reduced from the condition of proprietors to that of “kyndly” or perpetual tenants, which they continued to be till 1508, when it was deemed expedient that this Celtic holding should be changed, and the lands set in feu, “for increase of policie and augmentation of the king’s rental.”