Alexander MacDonald

From "Sketch of the Military Services of Lieutenant-General Skinner and his sons, by Allan Maclean Skinner":

According to this account Captain Ronald MacDonald of the 12th Regiment, born at Glencoe on 7 July 1783, the last of his generation, was a grandson of the baby saved from the massacre at Glencoe. This comment on the massacre of Glencoe follows in the book:

"It is also said that the faithful nurse who carried from the burning ruins of Glencoe to the protection of his maternal relations, the MacDonalds of Moidart, the infant Alexander, as she passed from the flames. prayed that each succeeding Campbell of Glenlyon should marry, that no Campbell of Glenlyon should live to see his son and heir come of age, but, before that event, die a violent death; and that her imprecation has prevailed to this time .......... for no father in the line of descent from him, who treacherously destroyed Glencoe, has lived to see his eldest son come to manhood. But the progress of time threatens what the cruelty of the oppressor failed to accomplish; there is, at this day, left but one representative of the baby who escaped from the massacre of Glencoe, Major Alexander James John MacDonald (of Balla Cosnahan, Isle of Man,) Fort-Major of Edinburgh Castle, where, so turns the wheel of fortune, in 1746, in the custody of his official predecessor, the then Fort-Major, was confined for some years, a State Prisoner, the Chief of Glencoe, taken, red-handed from the fight, after the battle of Culloden. But he, whose life had been in 1693 protected, from the virulence of the Government, in the conflagration of his father's house [? the massacre was in early 1692?], was at length allowed to depart (the only one of all his comrades, captured in that fierce struggle, who escaped the scaffold), untried, unquestioned, and his land unconfiscated (as I am told) as if those in authority felt constrained to sympathise with the man who came forth, as the avenger of his father's murder, at the head of his clan; or as if the government shrunk from shedding more blood of that persecuted family, even while if disgraced its triumph by sending Hessian troops to carry fire and sword among the defenceless women and children of the glens".

The book also notes that: "on 28 July 1864 at Portobello, Edinburgh, died Captain Ronald MacDonald, formerly of 12th Regiment, son of Donald MacDonald of Glencoe and married at Kilmalie, 1 April 1775 to Florance, daughter of Donald Maclean of Kilmalouairg in Tyree and his wife Isobel, sister of Donald Campbell of Dunstaffnage Castle, He was buried August 2nd in Warriston Cemetary, between the graves of his sisters Isabella and Charlotte". [This marriage date must be incorrect, if he was born in 1783!]

And also, on page vi of the Introduction: "........ of your own generation but one remains to congratulate you on your 90th birthday, your affectionate cousin and friend Captain Ronald MacDonald of Glencoe, grandson of the baby who by the fidelity of his nurse was - alone of his race - rescued from the burning house of his slaughtered family on the occasion known as the massacre of Glencoe......"

[See also notes to Ronald MacDonald]