Clan MacNab

Origin of the MacNab Name

Mac an Aba — Son of the Abbot — is one of the most historically specific of all Scottish clan names. It does not derive from a personal name, a physical characteristic, or a place, but from an office: the abbacy of the Monastery of Saint Fillan in Glen Dochart. In the medieval Columban church of Scotland and Ireland, abbatial offices often became hereditary — the role of abbot passed from father to son rather than being filled by election or ecclesiastical appointment. The MacNab family were the hereditary abbots of St Fillan's, and their surname encoded that ecclesiastical inheritance.

Saint Fillan (or Faoláin) was an eighth-century Irish monk whose relics and cult became particularly significant in Scotland. His crosier and arm-bone relic were carried at the Battle of Bannockburn in 1314 and credited with contributing to the Scottish victory. His monastery in Glen Dochart was one of the significant religious centres of Perthshire, and the hereditary abbots who maintained it — the ancestors of the MacNab family — held a position of both spiritual and temporal authority in the glen.

When the Columban church was reformed and absorbed into the broader Western Catholic church in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the hereditary abbatial families lost their formal ecclesiastical status — but they retained their lands, their local influence, and their name. Mac an Aba — "son of the abbot" — became the hereditary surname of the family that had once provided the abbots, and it has remained so ever since.

Territory — Glen Dochart and Loch Tay

The MacNab territory was centred on Glen Dochart in western Perthshire — the valley through which the River Dochart flows from the mountains east of Crianlarich to Loch Tay at Killin. The glen is one of the primary routes into the southern Highlands from the east, and its strategic importance gave the family who held it a significant position in the political geography of Perthshire. The MacNabs also held land on the south shore of Loch Tay, one of the largest and most productive freshwater lochs in Scotland.

Kinnell, the MacNab seat, stood near the foot of Loch Tay at Killin. The town of Killin itself — now a small tourist village at the western end of Loch Tay — was effectively the capital of the MacNab territory. The remarkable Falls of Dochart, where the River Dochart cascades through a series of rocky channels just before entering Loch Tay, are the most dramatic natural feature of the area, and the island of Inchbuie in the river just above the falls is the traditional burial ground of the MacNab chiefs.

The MacNabs' neighbours included the MacGregors (to the south and west), the Campbells of Breadalbane (to the north), and the Menzies family (to the east along Loch Tay). All of these were larger, more powerful clans, and the MacNab history is substantially defined by the challenge of maintaining an independent territorial position between such forceful neighbours.

Clan MacNab Through Scottish History

The medieval period and the Columban connection

The MacNab family's medieval history is intertwined with the cult of Saint Fillan and the religious landscape of western Perthshire. The Monastery of Saint Fillan — whose relics were carried at Bannockburn — was one of the significant religious sites of the region, and the MacNabs' association with it gave them spiritual prestige alongside their territorial authority. Bruce's victory at Bannockburn in 1314, associated with Fillan's relics, gave the MacNabs' patron a national significance that reinforced their local importance.

The MacNabs supported Robert the Bruce in the Wars of Independence — a loyalty that was rewarded with the confirmation of their Glen Dochart territory. However, like many smaller clans, they faced constant pressure from their more powerful neighbours. The Campbells of Breadalbane in particular extended their influence steadily into western Perthshire throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and the MacNab position became increasingly constrained.

The Battle of Glen Dochart and survival

The MacNabs engaged in numerous local conflicts with their neighbours, the most dramatic being the clan battles of the seventeenth century in which they defended their Glen Dochart territory against the MacGregors. The MacNabs' survival as an independent clan through this period — maintaining their territorial identity against more numerous adversaries — was a testament to both military capacity and legal resourcefulness.

The MacNab — Raeburn's Portrait

The most famous image associated with Clan MacNab is Henry Raeburn's portrait of Francis MacNab (1734–1816), 12th Chief of MacNab, painted around 1803 and exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1813. Raeburn — Scotland's greatest portrait painter — depicted the MacNab as a figure of extraordinary physical presence: a large man wrapped in tartan and fur, standing in a Highland landscape with an air of complete authority and slightly theatrical magnificence. The portrait has been described as one of the most commanding images of a Highland chief ever painted.

The MacNab — as Francis was known, using the traditional Highland style of referring to the chief simply as "the" MacNab — was a figure of considerable complexity. He was undoubtedly impressive in person; contemporaries described his physical presence and his domineering personality. He was also financially ruinous: he accumulated enormous debts, was repeatedly pursued by creditors, and eventually fled Scotland for Canada to escape the consequences of his borrowing. Raeburn captured the magnificence of the man without the catastrophic financial mismanagement that forced his departure.

Francis MacNab in Canada

Francis MacNab, fleeing his creditors, arrived in Upper Canada (now Ontario) around 1823. He was nearly ninety years old — his remarkable physical constitution had given him an extraordinary lifespan — but he retained the energy and imperious temperament that Raeburn had captured two decades earlier. He was granted a large tract of land in Lanark County, Upper Canada, on the Mississippi River, and he established a settlement that eventually became the town of Arnprior.

The MacNab settlement in Ontario attracted Scots emigrants — many of them from Perthshire, seeking a fresh start in the new world. Francis governed his Canadian settlement with the same autocratic assumptions he had applied in Scotland, and his relationship with his tenants in Canada was as troubled as his relationship with his creditors at home. He was eventually removed from his Canadian holdings after complaints about his conduct, and died in France in 1860 at the reported age of 126 — a figure that, if accurate, would make him one of the oldest people in recorded history, though the arithmetic of his birth year is disputed.

The MacNab community in Ontario around Arnprior remains one of the most documented Scottish-Canadian clan settlements, and the Clan MacNab Society maintains strong connections with the Canadian branch of the family.

Researching MacNab Ancestry

Perthshire — and specifically the parishes around Killin, Glen Dochart, and the south shore of Loch Tay — is the primary research territory for MacNab ancestry.

Key sources

ScotlandsPeople (scotlandspeople.gov.uk) — Old Parish Registers for Perthshire, particularly Killin and Kenmore parishes, which cover the MacNab heartland. Civil registration from 1855 and census records provide the post-1855 base.

Clan MacNab Society — maintains genealogical resources, connections to the Arnprior community in Ontario, and records relevant to MacNab families in Scotland and Canada. The Society is a valuable first contact for researchers.

Archives of Ontario (Canada) — holds records relevant to the MacNab settlement in Lanark County, Ontario, including the original land grants, township records, and correspondence relating to the Francis MacNab settlement. Essential for Canadian MacNab research.

Perth and Kinross Council Archive — local estate papers, court records, and historical documents for the Perthshire area, with specific relevance to the MacNab lands in Glen Dochart and around Loch Tay.