Malcolm MacIsaac on Lot 368 (Eigg Mountain Settlement History)  (Map Location)

 

This site is the land northeast of the corner of the Main Road and the Trunk Road.  Malcolm MacIsaac, the third of three brothers to arrive at the Mountain, settled here probably in the early 1830s.  The surveyor of an adjacent property indicates him at this site in 1834.  Kenton Teasdale says that Malcolm found the soil rocky and thin so moved back to Big Marsh.  (Rankin says he moved to the “Glebe Road.”[1])  Malcolm probably left in the 1840s, and were certainly gone by 1859.

 

The land grant record indicates this lot as being “sold” in 1859 “for 11 pounds to Angus Gillis by order of Governor and Council.” It seems that the Crown was selling the land, even though that seems odd, particularly for such a high price.  However this interpretation is consistent with Kenton Teasdale’s claim that Malcolm was a squatter on the land – in other words it was not he who was selling it to Gillis.

 

There is a house foundation on the lot which may have been built by Malcolm or else by Angus Gillis.  Kenton places Malcolm and Big Lauchie on two lots – Malcolm on the southern one and Lauchie to the north.  The surveyor’s plan which I have followed reverses their positions.  So “Malcolm’s Clearing” should be north of where it is currently indicated.  Kenton says that after Malcolm left the land was no longer farmed.  There is some doubt now as to whether this means the northern or the southern site.  There is evidence of land clearing at the northern site which may have been the work of Angus Gillis after 1859 – long after the MacIsaacs left.

 

 

[1] Rev. Duncan Joseph Rankin, A History of the County of Antigonish, Nova Scotia (Toronto: Macmillan Co. of Canada, 1929), 299.