Donald Roy Archibald was born in Oconto, Wisconsin in 1889, but his parents were from Restigouche County in New Brunswick, Canada. Roy’s parents were both descendants of several families that migrated to Canada from Scotland between 1829 and 1832. The objective of this project is to discover as much as possible about these families and the circumstances of their sudden migration.
The two generations of families who relocated to Canada during the period in question were: Archibald, Black, McMillan, McCormack, Wood, Black, Shaw, and Kerr. These émigrés all hailed from the same area of Scotland, on or near the west coast of the mainland, most of them from the small island of Arran.
Research quickly revealed that these families were re-located from their homeland during the second phase of what is known as “the Highland Clearances” under the direction of the tenth Duke of Hamilton, the principal landowner of the area at the time.
The scope of this project is to document the relevant members of these families, to one or two generations prior to their immigration to Canada, and to produce a detailed written report and a family chart outlining their history.
Michael L. Butler 