June 2020 Loch Sloy! 

 The LochSloy! now available for paying members!

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To read the latest Loch Sloy!, just select the link for Publications from the tool bar at the top of our website, then select Loch Sloy!, scroll down to find this same issue, and select the link to the attached document and enjoy!

Did You Miss it?

Clan MacFarlane Worldwide did a "Thing" yesterday.  We gathered friends and put together a Digital Gathering, and launched it so that anyone could participate.  We had music, haggis making, information on what to wear to a Highland Game, where to travel in Scotland, participating in athletic events, and just a general get together for anyone interested in all things Scottish.

Several of us worked on this over the past two months so that our friends and families would not feel left out of all the Highland Games that have been cancelled this year. (My personal attempt to apologize for a lack of a more recent Diaspora posting...)  We hope we did it justice.  But now, we have made it available for viewing on our website for anyone who missed it.  

Want to see it?  Be sure to have a good drink on hand and a snack.  We feel very honored to have the Lord Lyon not only officially open the Gathering, but to spend time in an interview discussing the modern day Lord Lyon Court.  Watch our friend, Elliot MacFarlane, courtesy of the St. Andrew's Society of Detroit, tell you how haggis is made.  Highland Reign, one of our favorite Celtic Rock Bands, provides 2 great songs for us to enjoy WITH music video.  Gretchen Sell-Finley will try to convince you to participate in the athletic competitions.  Janet Robertson of Thistle Dubh Enterprises shares the "must see" places in Scotland when you finally travel, and Dr. Bruce Durie shares up-to-date information on what to wear and what not to wear to a highland game.  And yours truly has a few things absolutely WRONG!  

We hope you will take time to view the Digital Gathering.  To see it, you can find it here:  Digital Gathering!

Enjoy! 

Welcome to the Digital Gathering 2020!

TEXAS MCFARLANDS

Mary Helen Haines ©2017

Texas was part of the Spanish Empire in the 1500s, but sparsely populated by Spaniards even as late as the 1800s.  Virginia native Moses Austin proposed a scheme to the Spanish colonial government to recruit and settle families from the United States. Events in Europe provoked the colonials of New Spain to revolt and declare their independence in 1821; Texas was now part of Mexico.

Moses Austin passed away, but his son Stephen won approval to carry out his father’s plan and settled 300 families by 1824. These settlers were given land grants in two amounts: a sitio, 4428 acres for stock-raising, and a labor, 177 acres for farming. Among the “Old Three Hundred,” as they came to be known, were two McFarlans: Aechilles McFarlan (1 sitio in Brazoria County, and 1 and ½ labor in Waller County), and John McFarlan (1 ¼ sitio and 1 labor in Waller County), both on the Brazos River. There were also several Rabb families in Wharton, Ft. Bend, Fayette and Matagordo counties, as well as many Williams families. This land was rich bottomland along the lower Colorado and Brazos rivers, near modern-day Houston.