Alexander (MacLean) MacLean of Coll (1753 - 1835)

Ancestors

Descendants

Died 10 Apr 1835 at about age 82 in Quinish, Isle of Mull, Scotland

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Biography

Alexander (MacLean) MacLean of Coll is a member of Clan MacLean.

Alexander was born in about 1754, the son of Hugh MacLean and Janet MacLeod.

He married Catherine, eldest daughter of captain Allan Cameron of Glendessary, by whom he had a son, Hugh, and seven daughters who were brought up on Coll. ^[1]

Their marriage details are given in some trees as 27 March 1780 in Edinburgh but no source has been located to support this.

According to the book The Clan Gillean:
"He studied law for some time, with the intention of following it as a profession. On the sad death of his brother Donald in 1774 he abandoned his legal studies. He was for some time a captain in the Argyle Fencible regiment, which was embodied in Glasgow in April, 1778. He was served heir to his father in May, 1790, and is described as Captain Alexander Maclean of Coll. He was appointed lieutenant-colonel in the Breadalbane Fencibles in 1794 or thereabouts. He seems to have gone to Ireland with the third battalion in 1795."^[2]

The Clan Gillean also states his father Hugh passed away in May 1786. The May 1790 accession as Maclean of Coll noted above may therefore be in error.

Alexander resigned his commission in the Breadalbane Fencibles in November 1797.^[3]

He was manly, obliging, and benevolent, and treated his tenants with thorough kindness. He was a chieftain of great popularity. He was, in 1818, laird of Coll, Quinish, Rum, and Muck. He handed over his estates to Hugh, his eldest son, in 1828. He left Coll then and went to live in Quinish. He died on April 10th, 1835.^[4]

Alexander is buried on Isle of Coll with his wife and a family friend.^[5]

Sources

1. ↑ History of the Clan MacLean from its first settlement at Duard Castle, in the Isle of Mull, to the present period, Page 291 [1]
2. ↑ Alexander Maclean Sinclair, The Clan Gillean. 1899, Haszard and Moore., Pages 380-381 [2]
3. ↑ A Military History of Perthshire, Volume 1, Page 151
4. ↑ Alexander Maclean Sinclair, The Clan Gillean. 1899, Haszard and Moore., Pages 382-2 [3]
5. ↑ http://portal.historicenvironment.scot/designation/LB4710

• Nicholas MacLean-Bristol, From Clan to Regiment (Six hundred years in the Hebrides 1400-2000). 2007 Pen and Sword Books, Ltd., p. 682