Moses McCarter - Chasing Moses - One Man's Legacy

18/04/2026

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16 April 1746
Today I honor the dead of Culloden.

The men who stood.
The men who fell.

The women who came after, into the silence, to search for the wounded and the lost.

This is not distant history to me.
My own MacArthur family from Kincardine by Doune belonged to the Scotland that bore the weight of that age.

Culloden was a battlefield.
But it was also a wound carried home by the living.

Today, I remember the fallen, the broken, and the ones who had to go on. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

Were your kin at Culloden?

Can you name them?
Do you know their clan, their story, or what became of them after 16 April 1746?

Drop their names below and let us remember them. 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿

20/03/2026

Oban Scotland

16/03/2026

Some clans were feared.
Some clans were powerful.

One clan was truly hated.

CLAN CAMPBELL

From the Lords of Lochawe to the mighty Dukes of Argyll, Clan Campbell rose from a single Highland lordship to become one of the most powerful families in Scotland.

Their castles dominated the west.
Their alliances shaped kings.
Their branches spread across the Highlands and beyond.

Argyll • Breadalbane • Cawdor • Loudoun • Glenorchy
Auchinbreck • Ardkinglas • Inverneill • Lochawe

Power brings influence.
Power also brings enemies.

Love them or argue with them…
no clan left a bigger mark on Highland history.

⚔️ Campbells — this is your roll call.

Which branch do you descend from?

Claim your banner in the comments.

⸻

The Lennox Chronicles – Clan Spotlight
© 2026 Tiffany McCarter Evans

12/03/2026

THE HIDDEN POWER NETWORK OF THE EARLS OF LENNOX

When people imagine medieval Scotland, they picture a powerful earl ruling his lands like a king.

But the truth around Loch Lomond was far more complicated.

The Earls of Lennox did not rule alone.

Their power depended on a web of families surrounding the loch — families who controlled castles, ferries, farmland, and mountain passes. Some were blood relatives. Some were sworn allies. Some were rivals waiting for their moment.

Together they formed what historians might call the Lennox power web.

Around Loch Lomond, several families repeatedly appear in charters, bonds, and land grants.

The Colquhouns held lands along the western shore and became some of the most powerful lairds in the region.

The Galbraiths controlled territory to the east and frequently appear in Lennox records as influential landholders.

The MacFarlanes dominated the northern reaches near Arrochar, guarding the mountain routes through the Highlands.

The Buchanans held lands further east along the loch and were deeply tied into Lennox politics.

And then there were smaller but strategically important families like the lords of Ardencaple, who controlled coastal routes along the Clyde and the western edge of the Lennox sphere.

These families were not merely tenants.

They were the pillars that held the Lennox together.

When the earls needed loyalty, they issued charters.

When they needed protection, they formed alliances.

When tensions rose, they forged bonds of manrent — medieval loyalty agreements that bound one family to another in exchange for protection and favor.

One such moment occurred in 1406, when Arthur of Ardencaple pledged loyalty to Duncan, Earl of Lennox on the island of Inchmurrin in Loch Lomond.

That agreement was more than a simple oath.

It was another strand added to the growing web of relationships that held the Lennox together.

Because in medieval Scotland, power did not flow in a straight line from lord to subject.

It moved through networks.

Through marriages.
Through land grants.
Through alliances forged on parchment and sealed in wax.

The Lennox was not ruled by one man alone.

It was sustained by an entire ecosystem of families whose loyalties, rivalries, and ambitions shaped the history of Loch Lomond for centuries.

And once you start looking closely at those connections, the story of the Lennox becomes far more fascinating than the simple legends ever suggested.

12/03/2026

We’ve already asked what clans everyone belongs to.

Now I want the good stuff.

Tell us something about your clan that most people don’t know.

A strange story, an old charter, a feud, a location, a DNA discovery.

Let’s see what hidden clan knowledge is out there.

12/03/2026

12/03/2026

I got over 150 reactions on my posts last week! Thanks everyone for your support! 🎉

17/02/2026

All right. This is where history stops being quiet… and starts talking.

In 1406, on Inchmurrin Island in Loch Lomond, a charter is drawn up between Duncan, 8th Earl of Lennox and a man named Arthur of Ardenagappil (Ardencaple).

Arthur is not a random tenant. He is styled clearly as:

Arthur, son of Maurice, son of Robert, son of Maurice.

Throughout multiple charters

Let that sink in.

This isn’t just a land arrangement. This is lineage hiding in plain sight.

Arthur receives his lands under the Earl — holding them in feu, with the usual obligations. He does not have his own seal.

Instead, the charter is sealed with the seal of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 6th Chief of Colquhoun and 7th of Luss.

You don’t borrow a chief’s seal unless there is blood, bond, or both. In this case it’s both.

Now here’s where it gets powerful.

If the reconstruction is correct, and it is listed in multiple charters that Arthur’s line descends from:

Maurice (the elder, likely the Maurice of Ardenagappil in the 1296 Ragman Roll)

→ Robert
→ Maurice
→ Arthur (1406)

And that elder Maurice is very possibly a younger son of Robert 2nd of Colquhoun, son and heir of Umfridus de Kilpatrick, 2nd Chief of Colquhoun.

That would make this:

• One line — the chiefly line through Ingram, 3rd of Colquhoun

• One line — a cadet branch through younger son Maurice of Ardenagappil

Both descending from the same root.

Chief and cadet.
Luss and Ardencaple.
Same blood. Different paths.

Arthur stands in 1406 as a Lennox tenant — but a Colquhoun by blood.

And if his sons later take the patronymic form — Mac Artair — that is not a break from Colquhoun.

That is Gaelic identity layered over Colquhoun descent.

Colquhoun by blood.
MacArtair by surname.
MacArtair’s of Colquhoun

The charter doesn’t shout it. It simply records it.

But when you read it with context, DNA, land continuity, and witness networks — the pattern emerges.

This is not fantasy genealogy. This is documentary reconstruction.

A chief’s seal.

A tenant grant.

A cadet branch rooted in Ardencaple.

A surname that survives in Gargunnock in 1625.

Sometimes the answer isn’t missing.

It’s been sitting in a 1406 charter on Inchmurrin Island… waiting for someone stubborn enough to connect the dots.

We are going to crack open this cold case!

Source:

William Fraser, The Chiefs of Colquhoun and Their Country, Vol. I

Page:
p. 23 (with continuation onto p. 24)

Bond of Manrent dated Inchnioryne (Inchmurrin), 5 April 1406.

13/02/2026

🚨 BIG ANNOUNCEMENT IN THE COLD CASE: CHASING MOSES 🚨

The Answer Was Sitting There the Whole Time

Extraction mode is officially underway.

Last night I found him.

Not in some obscure archive in a locked vault.
Not in a hidden monastery.
Not in a dusty footnote buried in Latin marginalia.

He was sitting in plain sight.

In Chiefs of Colquhoun, Volume I by William Fraser.

Arthur of Ardenagappil / Ardencaple.

The charter is dated 5 April 1406, written in Old Scots, and it records an agreement between Duncan, 8th Earl of Lennox and Arthur.

Arthur identifies himself as:

“Arthur, son and heir of Maurice of Ardenagappil”

That phrase alone changes everything.

Son and heir.

The charter was executed at Inchmurrin Island in Loch Lomond — the political heart of Lennox power. Arthur did not have his own seal. Instead, he used the seal of Humphrey Colquhoun, 6th of Luss — son of Isabail, the Fair Maid of Luss, and Robert, 5th of Colquhoun.

Now pause there.

No chief just hands his seal to a stranger.

Arthur and Humphrey would have been roughly 3rd–4th cousins if my working reconstruction is correct.

That is not random.
That is blood.

And then it gets deeper.

Through further charter trails, we move backward:

Arthur
son of Maurice (the younger)
son of Robert
son of Maurice (the elder) of Ardenagappil

And that elder Maurice appears in the Ragman Rolls of 1296.

The same political world.
The same Lennox orbit.
The same lands.

My working theory — and yes, I am labeling this clearly as theory, though a strong one supported by Y-DNA and charter patterns — is that this elder Maurice was a younger son of Robert, 2nd of Colquhoun, himself the son and heir of Umfridus de Kilpatrick.

That places this line squarely in the Colquhoun bloodline.

E-FT32107 → E-BY5775.

Colquhoun by blood.

But not by surname.

Here is where it turns Gaelic.

Arthur of Ardenagappil was styled by his holding — not by “Colquhoun.” That was common in the 13th–14th centuries. Territorial identity mattered. Clan naming conventions were fluid.

If Arthur’s unnamed sons adopted a patronymic in the Gaelic form — Mac Artair — meaning “son of Arthur,” that gives us the transition.

MacArtair.
MacArthur.
McCarter.

Pronounced McCarter.

Colquhoun by blood.
MacArtair by surname.

And suddenly our documented ancestor Donald MacArtair/McArthur, born October 1625 in Gargunnock — still in Lennox territory — is not floating in space anymore.

He’s anchored.

From Inchmurrin Island.
To Ardencaple near Luss and Helensburgh.
To Gargunnock.
To Moses McCarter, baptized May 16, 1716 at Kincardine — two miles from Doune Castle.

Doune Castle.
Built by Robert Stewart, 1st Duke of Albany.

Whose daughter Elizabeth Stewart flows through the Leckie lairds. She married Malcolm Fleming of Biggar and their daughter Elizabeth married the Laird of Leckie.

Whose blood flows into Donald’s wife Agnes McKinlay

The strands are tightening.

The charter was written in Old Scots — not classical Latin. That matters. It roots Arthur in the living Gaelic-Scots world of Lennox, not some imported feudal abstraction. This was local power. Local language. Local kinship.

The answer was there the whole time.

In a book I’ve owned.
In a volume I’ve cited.
In a line I simply hadn’t recognized for what it was.

Arthur wasn’t hidden.

I just didn’t know I was looking at him.

Now the work shifts.

I have to extract and trace Arthur’s sons.

Find which branch leads to Donald.

Prove which one becomes our line.
Build the chain from 1406 to 1625

This isn’t fantasy.
It’s charter work.
It’s land.
It’s seals.
It’s Y-DNA.
It’s Gaelic naming patterns.
It’s geography.

It’s pattern recognition across 700 years.

I never thought I would get this far.

Deep down, I didn’t think I would ever know the names.

But now I do.

And I’m not stopping.

Chasing Moses just stepped into the 1400s, and I not stopping….