The Scottish Connection

Grandfather D.F. MacHardy, spoke often of his Scottish heritage, but I regret never having asked him for any details. When he died in 1941, about all my family knew was that his father, David, came from Scotland and that Aberdeen had some family connection.

This “heritage” was obviously a factor in my choosing the University of Edinburgh for graduate studies in 1963-64. As a side issue, I was looking forward to the possibility of re-establishing a connection with Scottish relatives, if any existed. A search that might have been extremely difficult became much easier when a niece of my grandfather sent me an old obituary notice of a MacHardy who had died in Scotland in 1902. She had found the obituary notice in the MacHardy family home in New Brunswick, and had assumed that the deceased must have been a relative. The address on the obituary notice was Ordachoy, Corgarff, in Aberdeenshire, Scotland.

After arriving in Edinburgh, my wife Phyl and I drove North one weekend, and after driving by many abandoned and ruined farmsteads, particularly in Glen Gairn, we were surprised to find that Ordachoy still existed, and delighted to find that the occupants were a Major... MacHardy, his wife...and their two children. Upon showing him the obituary notice, Major MacHardy said that he was a grandson of the deceased. Subsequent examination of birth records stored in Old Registry House, Edinburgh, showed that his great-grandfather and mine were brothers, both born at Ordachoy, and the sons of James MacHardy and Ann of Ordachoy. Hence, [Major MacHardy] and I were third cousins. We have since kept in close touch in trying to piece together family history. The account here relates to the family tree of my particular branch of the family of James and Ann of Ordachoy. It seems to arise naturally that his account should start here.

Ordachoy and Auchallater

Ordachoy is a house and steading on about 100 acres of land on the estate of Edinglassie located along the upper reaches of the Don river at Corgarff, in Aberdeenshire. The estate is presently owned by Lord Cowdry. There are many large estates in the Highland areas of Scotland. There, estates usually consist of an estate house and home farm managed directly by the estate, a number of tenanted farms (or smaller properties) and in some cases, areas of common grazing. Tenure is quite secure in the case of agricultural land in Britain, hence rented property such as Ordachoy is often retained in one family for several generations. Corgarff parish records show Ordachoy continually farmed by the MacHardy family from 1787 until Major MacHardy relinquished tenure in 1987.

The Registry House in Edinburgh maintains parish records dating back, depending upon parish, to the 17 th century and beyond. These records of marriages, births, and deaths, are extremely useful in establishing family genealogies. Corgarff records are very complete for Ordachoy from 1804, when the first child Alexander, was born to James McHardy and his wife Ann. However, the parish records dating back from this date to about 1745 are very spotty. As a result, there is no record of James’s birth, which was probably about 1775, so the names of his father and mother are not known to me at this time.

The only Ordachoy McHardy birth notices recorded prior to 1804 were in 1786 and 1787 when children were born to both an Alister McHardy and a John McHardy. It seems that either Alister or John might have been the father of James. In any case, it is unlikely that the McHardy tenure at Ordachoy extended back much beyond their generation, as parish records indicate that in 1746, another family occupied the property.

What is known is that James of Ordachoy had a brother William who was a priest at Braemar. This was told to me in 1963 at The Bungalow at Corgarff by David MacHardy, a great grandson of James, and is confirmed by Roman Catholic Church records. Quoting directly:

Corgarff’s pre-Reformation church was at Corryhaul, but this has long since fallen into disuse, and the 18 th century mass center was elsewhere: “Beside the corn yard at Ordachoy is the site of some old buildings said to have been a chapel.” Ordachoy was the family home of William McHardy…who was priest at Braemar… In 1788 he left what must have been a thoroughly Catholic household to study at Valladolid. He was fully ten years in Spain before being ordained, and must have had his course interrupted by the tuberculosis which was to kill him in 1809. During McHardy’s five-year connection with Braemar, Ordachoy changed hands. Lachlan McIntosh {the priest responsible for the parish of Corgarff (FVM)} made a tantalisingly brief reference to his former mass center: “In Corgarff the house is sold to the apostate brother, and we are set adrift.” It seems that the place where the Catholics met with the priest had come under the control of a McHardy who had changed his allegiance.

The “apostate brother” would have been James MacHardy, a Protestant, whose marriage in Braemar, in 1803, is recorded as “James MacHardy of Ordachoy and Ann McHardy, daughter of Alex McHardy of Auchallater, parish of Braemar.”

If, as indicated earlier, the parentage of my great-great-grandfather James is subject to conjecture, my great-great-grandmother Ann’s parentage is confirmed by Braemar parish records. She was the daughter of Alex McHardy of Auchallater, a farm property near Braemar on the river Dee, and his wife Jean McGregor. Alex and Jean raised five sons and four daughters between 1784 (Ann) and 1806 (John). The McHardys of Auchallater are mentioned in a number of old articles. Various family members are mentioned as:

…was Keeper to the Earl of Fife at Mar Lodge
…was a very successful competitor in Highland Games
…shown in full Highland dress to call upon Queen Victoria at Balmoral
…three of the sons (of Alex and Jean) went to Jamaica thirty years ago and died
   there.

James MacHardy (dates of birth and death unknown)
and Ann (1784-1862) of Ordachoy

A couple of asides before turning to the lives of James and Ann: it might appear that James and Ann were close relatives because of both having the same surname, but it should be mentioned that in the 18 th and 19 th centuries, MacHardy was a very common name in the Braemar and Corgarff areas. Although there probably was a common ancestor, the relationships existing between many MacHardy families would have been nearly impossible to establish by the 19 th century.

The source of the name MacHardy has been a subject of conjecture. One story that has appeared in print relates that:

The name of MacHardy is said to be derived from a French nobleman named Harde to whom King David II conveyed a grant of the lands of Corgarff in Strathdon about the middle of the fourteenth century: the Frenchman having been in attendance on King John of France when he and King David of Scotland were both prisoners under King Edward of England.

James MacHardy of Ordachoy, dates of birth and death unknown, but likely about 1775 and 1840, and Ann McHardy of Auchallater, 1784-1862, were married in Braemar in 1803 and lived out their lives at Ordachoy. Children were born to them as follows:

Alex       September 6, 1804
Charles   February 2, 1806
William   October 14, 1807
John       May 3, 1809
Norman  April 24, 1811
James    April 16, 1813
Jean       May 17, 1815
George   December 15, 1816
Findlay   April 18, 1819
David      December 26, 1820

David is my great-grandfather, and it is his descendants, in particular, that I include in this family tree.

The histories of some of the other nine children of James and Ann have been recorded by Major...MacHardy... . He is the great-grandson of Charles, the second son of James and Ann.

Direct questions on this branch of the family to Carolyn MacHardy at