A Highland Family Saga
A Highland Family Saga Introduction I recently published a blog about my great grand uncle – Dugald McFarlane and how he was, by necessity, forced to emigrate to Victoria in Southern Australia on an assisted passage .It is often assumed that the terrible potato famine which hit Ireland in the late 1840s was a comparatively localised happening . Not so – the blight that hit the potato crop extended throughout much of Northern Europe. Scotland – and the Highlands in particular , had been subject to a string of disasters affecting many of its inhabitants ever since the cessation of the Jacobite Uprising ( or the ’45 as it was generally known ). The virtual genocide instigated by Cumberland was both savage , merciless and a vicious over reaction against a Clan system which was an integral part of everyday life . This was followed by the Clearances - when sheep became more relevant than their two legged fel