Goals of this project
These are the two biggest goals I had in mind for setting up my online family history, the MacLea FamilyWiki:
- Allow my relatives to learn more about their family history without:
a. requiring me to send out hard-copies
b. requiring me to visit them and show them my computer records, or,
c. requiring them to visit me!
- Have the online family history wiki act as something of a benevolent "honeypot" for attracting other MacLea or McLea researchers and to advertise myself as an American genealogist and go-to person for those interested in seeing how the various MacLeas/McLeas in America relate!
Distinct MacLea families
You see, so far in my researches, I have uncovered several distinct McLea families in America.
My own family--a Scottish-American family descended from James Brown MacLea and his descendants, who came from Glasgow to Paterson, New Jersey, and then later to Massachusetts. The family has spread from there but still has its biggest footprint in Massachusetts. The family originates in Scotland in Glasgow, and is probably from the Isle of Bute before that.
The Baltimore MacLeas. This is the family of the famous lumber merchants of Baltimore, who have their origins in Scotland as well, but they are instead from the burgh of Greenock, which is across the Firth of Clyde from the Isle of Bute. This may imply a common stock, but since the records of Jim MacLea (from Texas, and the genealogist of that family) and my own do not coincide within the time of genealogical record-keeping, we have not yet been able to establish a relationship. Y-chromosomal testing may allow us to establish this relationship even without records, but at this point we are unsure. One side note is that the Baltimore MacLeas pronounce their name as "Mack-LAY" in contrast to our own "Mack-LEE." This family lived in Baltimore for many years, but has spread out from there, including the aforementioned Texas MacLeas!
Irish McLeas. Before my own family's arrival about 1880, there were several McLeas already living in New Jersey and Philadelphia, all of whom seem to be of Irish extraction, at least directly.
Other McLeas. Some other McLeas show up in old American records, going back to the Revolution and colonial times, as well as later in the Civil War.
Uses
As you can see, attracting other American MacLeas or McLeas to these pages will be useful to:
Find out whether they are of immediate Irish or Scottish extraction.
Find out what they know of their own derivation, in case it helps us all understand our origins!
See if I can plug them into the files I already have!
Explain what happened to all the missing McLeas of the Isle of Bute and elsewhere in Scotland. Some changed their names to Livingston(e), some to other names, and many, many left their homeland for better prospects elsewhere. Certainly, some of them must be out there somewhere!
Results: The New York MacLeas
Indeed, I did manage to find one long-lost relative in my web searches. The family of Rod MacLea, descends from John McLea, the brother of James Brown MacLea, and came to the US independent of him. Through some other searches on John's family, as well as the World War I draft card of his son, Robert John Yuile MacLea, I was able to connect him definitively to Rod, who I was thankfully able to email just before he left one job to take another. As a result, I was able to gain a lot more knowledge about a whole huge family that no one knew about before! These are the MacLeas of New York, originally living upstate, but later spreading to other parts of the state, as well as into Connecticut. They, like James Brown MacLea's descendants, pronounce the name "Mack-LEE", a further verification of our close relatedness!
So, why are you writing about this now?
As it happens, in the course of my regular web-searches for other MacLeas out there, I found a library record for another MacLea: Florence MacLea. In this record, she is writing, in a book published by the New England Historic Genealogical Society, about a family of Billings from Concord, Massachusetts. She also has a couple of other specific genealogy tomes you can find if you poke around a bit. They were all published in and around 1927 and are all in the genealogy vein. No idea if these disparate families Florence is writing about happen to tie in with her own MacLea family, or if she was researching these families on contract or for academic reasons, but it was certainly tantalizing that she might have some clues as to her own MacLea family within them. I have not pursued this lead, but it is possible that Florence may be a relative. (Though it should be noted that I have no Florences in my files, to my knowledge.) This was a long time ago, though, so I would need a relative of Florence's to contact me to really know for sure. (Or a visit to a library in New England, which I may do one day when I live closer.) Anyway, hence the "MacLea honeypot." If someone out working on their own MacLea family wants to contact me (whether or not they count Florence in their family!) we can work together to try to put our families together.
This is the fun part of genealogy! I hope this site is highly successful in that regard!
Kyle=