I also found a videotape made in 1988 of my father, Alexander Furman McKean, making reference to the LDS records of the McKean family. His recollection would place the original LDS records within a generation of Hugh McKean. The Mormons had wintered over, so the story went, in Illinois, and the McKean, having become a convert, joined the trek led by Brigham Young. I have no sources of reference other than the Book of Morman, "first published to the world in 1830", which dates Joseph Smith's enlightment to Sept. 21, 1823. Were they on the move at the same time as the gold rush to California, or perhaps already established at Salt Lake? If it was pre-Civil War, then it was no more than first or second generation family knowledge of father's and grandfather's brothers and sisters, in a family that placed the highest importance on kinship. The relevant LDS records, this being the case should be evaluated as having a very high degree of probability, unless and until they have been disproven. See Ian Crichton Smith's book, consider the Lilies, for a very vivid depiction of the disenchantment of those displaced at the time of the clearances, with their kirk.

I had supposed the family record of the McKeans was common knowledge, within the family; why is there so much mystery? Why don't other existing records show the names of all Hugh's brothers and sisters? Especially considering the wealth of information about other relationships. I know there were events Dad spoke of tracing back to the flight of some family mambers to Antrim, years before the Massacre ...; stories evidently passed from father to son, that I have never seen written down. Persecution by fire and sword leaves very deep scars, I guess; as if my Dad could speak now, I hear him say, "I'll help you wonder ... " The LDS also suffered from this; as a young girl I read accounts of life in the early days in Utah, in back issues (1910-1920) of The Ladies' Home Journal, preserved in my grandmother's attic, and they could not live openly, either..

John Buchan wrote about the Massacre at Glencoe, based on oral history he learned as a young lad, when his father was minister there. I first came across it in the early '60s, in the public library at Brandon, Manitoba. I gave the information concerning publication and dates to my sister, it has been reprinted, due to the current interest in Scottish independence, but neither of us could find a Canadian source' bibliographies don't mention it. I found it more evocative of the Times Prebble's account, which I have. It makes clear the dilemma of the Chief, who was under oath to a distant leader, who did not release him in time to take the obligatory oath to the powers that destroyed his people.

Shirley McKean Laking, 1927,
Great-great-great granddaughter
of Hugh the Immigrant, 1753.