The Lee MacLellan Family Story
Early MacLellans
Primogeniture​
Primogeniture in Latin means first born. Its purpose in days gone by was to keep an estate or fiefdom in the hands of the first male son, who inherited it all so that the estate would not be split among his siblings. Splitting the land would reduce the size of the castle, fiefdom, or kingdom; or among the lower class, the farm.
It is significant to us because a local adaptation of primogeniture was the concept of the stem family, which was prevalent in rural Ireland. In a stem family the first born son received all of his father’s estate, and the other sons would be expected to move away upon marriage.
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Scotland was a likely destination for the second and other sons for two reasons. One, the geological proximity of the two countries; and two, the strong cultural ties between Scotland and Ulster, Ireland. Ulster was the province that provided the most migrants to Scotland, especially in textiles.
The Unknown MacLellan
Although we can’t determine precisely what happened, it seems likely that it was the second son of a MacLellan, probably born in Ireland, who settled in Scotland and became the first MacLellan of our clan.
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It must have been a lonely experience for him to be basically turned out of his family home and told to make a new life elsewhere. Who knows what he was allowed to take in terms of money, implements of this trade, or whatever his family could spare him, knowing that they may never see him again.
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This is important to us because all we know of this unknown man (and wife) is that they had a son, Donald McLellan, born in 1725 in Scotland. This Donald, and there will be more Donalds, is at the top of our MacLellan family tree. So we have been able to trace our MacLellan family back to roughly the late 1600s - early 1700s.
