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This is the story of the journey by my MacIain (Mckain) ancestors in time and distance, spanning 700 years from the 13th to the 20th century and 346 miles (as the crow flies) from Ardnamurchan, Scotland (the most westerly point of the British mainland) to Slaidburn Street, Chelsea, London, England, via Elgin in Morayshire and Suffolk in England. A story of lives lived through Royal dynasties, the Reformation, the Jacobite rebellion and the Highland Clearances, the Industrial Revolution, the Napoleonic wars, the reign of Queen Victoria and the establishment of the British Empire).
From my paternal Great Grandmother, Ellen Louise Mckain, I've traced my McKAIN ancestry back to my 6 x Great Grandfather, Archibald McKain, who was born in 1717 in Moray, Scotland.
Archibald was a Tannery owner and Burgess of Elgin, where his family, the Mckeans as they were then known, according to tradition had been settled for many generations as merchant burgesses and came originally from Ardnamurchan in Argyllshire.
The Reverend William James Mckain (Archibald's 2 x Great Grandson and my 2nd cousin 4 times removed) was granted Private Arms (see below) in 1905 by the Court of the Lord Lyon and in 1913 the Society of Clan Donald recognised William James as Chief of Clan Iain of Ardnamurchan.
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Around 1776 Archibald's eldest son James Mckain, my 5 x Great Grandfather, left Scotland and the story of my McKain family moved to England with subsequent generations in Suffolk, Kent and London. James took over the running of an established school in Bungay, Suffolk. James and his wife Ann had 8 children including my 4 x Great Grandfather Archibald William Mckain.
Following in his father's footsteps, my 4 x Great Grandfather, Archibald William, was a Schoolmaster at Heveningham, Beccles and Stradbroke in Suffolk from 1819 to 1861. He married Phoebe Mills in 1816 and they had 11 children, including my 3 x Great Grandfather, James Henry Mckain.
The drift of people from the countryside had probably begun in the late 1700's and by 1851 over 50,000 people born in Suffolk were already living elsewhere in England and Wales, more than half of them in London, including James Henry Mckain, and 2 of his siblings in Battersea and Chelsea, then the outskirts of London.
James Henry married Ann Davies in Battersea in 1839 and they had 2 sons, the youngest being my 2 x Great Grandfather Frederick William Mckain.
Frederick William married Mary Ann Eperage and they had 10 children, including my Great Grandmother, Ellen Louise Mckain.
Frederick, a floor/oil cloth worker and his family lived in Slaidburn Street, Chelsea for upwards of 40 years and were at no. 21 in 1899, when it was surveyed as part of Charles Booth's "Inquiry into Life and Labour in London". The notebook entry makes grim reading: Next, to Slaidburn St. : 3 st : a cul-de-sac, asphalt paved. One of the worst streets in Chelsea and I should say one of the worst in London. Not so very poor, mostly people earning regular wages but drunken, rowdy, continual trouble to police: many broken patched windows, open doors, drink sodden women at windows.
Ellen Louise, my Great Grandmother, was 16 years old when this description of the street she lived in was penned (she continued living there until at least 1911) and I must say I found it difficult to reconcile this with my dim recollections of the prim, respectable lady in her 70/80s I visited in my younger days. The wise words of Thomas Hardy from "The Mayor of Casterbridge", in describing the morally vile Mixen Lane in the poorer part of town (Casterbridge/Dorchester), put things into perspective. "Yet amid so much that was bad, needy respectability also found a home. Under some of the roofs abide pure and virtuous souls whose presence there was due to the iron hand of necessity and to that alone."
Note:- The origin of the Clan Maclain dates back to the 13th century and Iain Sprangach, the Clan's progenitor, who was descended from the famous Somerled, Lord of the Isles. The lands of Ardnamurchan and Sunart were a reward to Iain's brother Angus Og from Robert the Bruce in 1309 for his support against the English. These lands were then bestowed by Angus on his brother Iain and the Ardnamurchan peninsula remained in the hands of the MacIain family until the first quarter of the 17th century, when it was lost through the machinations of the Earls of Argyll.
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