I am researching the early history of the McLean family (and variants of the surname) in Kintyre, using all documentation sources which are available. At the moment I'm restricting the scope of the study to pre-1800 to keep it manageable but would like to extend it in the future to the 1850s, by which time of course statutory BMD registers and national census records become available. My principal sources are OPR records of births and marriages but supplemented with other relevant sources such as graveyard inscriptions, the 1792 Duke of Argyle census and other published research such as that by Angus Martin of Campbeltown who has been particularly helpful in this work. The approach I'm taking is use these various sources to identify as many McLeans/MacLeans/McLanes living in any of the parishes of Kintyre in the period up to 1800 together with any family connections available and then locate them within the geography of Kintyre by reference to the names of villages, farms etc and both current and old maps of the area. My plan is to publish the results via The Kintyre Magazine (if approved) and possibly ancestry.co.uk to guide future researchers who have McLeans etc from Kintyre in their ancestry.
My intention in posting this as a topic in The Kintyre Forum is partly to raise awareness of this piece of work but also to invite anyone who is able to make a contribution to contact me. I think I've got the obvious public sources well covered but if your own family researches have identified McLeans etc from this period then you may well have information which would supplement what I've managed to gather. If you're able to help please either post a reply within this thread, PM me or, if more appropriate, email me direct to duncan@mcleans.org.uk Thank you very much.