Glengarry County, Ontario Genealogy

Glengarry is located on the southeastern boundary of the province of Ontario. It stretches for twenty miles along the north shore of the St. Lawrence River. Its original two (now four) townships reach twenty-two miles inland, taking in fertile lowlands, gentle hills, and the stone-covered fields seemingly beloved by Highland farmers everywhere.

Highland inheritance has marked the inhabitants of Glengarry from the first years of settlement. County historians Royce MacGillivray and Ewan Ross argue forcefully that Glengarry was a nation "with its own intense sense of cohesion and of separation from the outside world, its own customs and values, its own awareness of having its own heroic past separate from that of the country of which it has been a part, and for a time, even its own language."

The county was originally made up of Scottish emigrants from the Highlands of Scotland. These emigrants created the new Highland community. Between 1773 and 1853, close to 3,500 people emigrated to Glengarry County from a few districts in the Scottish Highlands. The emigrants came from the districts in Scotland of Lochiel, Glengarry, Knoydart and Glenelg. This was a mountainous area of mainland Inverness-shire. Many of these clansmen had been supporters of the Jacobite cause in 1745. They had suffered from military suppression and modernization of agricultural organization. The ordinary clansmen could not amass the capital needed to finance these activities.

The Highlanders emigrated from Scotland to North America. The Glengarry settlement originated in a desire to take advantage of the new opportunities available in Canada. Most emigrated from 1785 to 1802.

The first clansmen to reach Glengarry County came from the new