period, and a later group of Highlanders arrived in 1831 with the larger 
     
     English and Irish immigrations of 1820-1850. 
     
    

    
     In 1772, Captain John MacDonald, Laird of Glenaladale and 
     
     Glenfinnan and proprietor of Lot 36 (now Tracadie) sent out 210 
     
     Catholic Highlanders from South Uist, Moidart, and Arisaig to his 
     
     property. He was one of few lords who felt it an obligation on his 
     
     honour to take his people out of Scotland. Stubbornly Catholic and 
     
     Jacobite by conviction, he resented the greedy, rack-renting chiefs and 
     
     grieved for the passing of the old order. “I saw,” said MacDonald, 
     
     “many of my friends whom I loved, like to fall into [the present 
     
     situation], and which the children could not avoid unless some other path 
     
     was struck out for them.”‘° 
     
    

    
     His settlers were the largest group sent to the Island by a single 
     
     proprietor until the Selkirk emigration of 1803. Many of them were relat- 
     
     ed to Glenaladale by blood or marriage. Most were Macdonalds, though 
     
     there were, as well, Mackinnons, Macphees, Macraes, Maceacherns, 
     
     Gillises, Mackenzies and others — names that have remained common 
     
     on the Island; people whose ancestors constitute most of the province’s 
     
     present Catholic Scottish population. According to the Honourable 
     
     Senator Macdonald — author of a series of articles entitled “Scottish 
     
     Associations in Prince Edward Island” — these people were represen- 
     
     tatives of the best blood in the Scottish Highlands as they formed “an 
     
    
   
   
    
     ideal colony for the settlement of a new province.”” 
     
     Glenaladale was the moving spirit of this 1772 expedition. He did 
     
    
   
   
    
     not accompany the settlers on their voyage to Prince Edward Island but 
     
     did join them the following year. Two of his relatives —— Reverend James 
     
     MacDonald, a missionary priest, and Roderick MacDonald, a medical 
     
     doctor —~— did travel with the Highlanders and provided them with their 
     
     services once the group arrived in the colony. 
     
    

    
     Donald MacDonald, a brother of Captain John and his agent on 
     
     the Island, met the chartered vessel —— the Alexander — as it anchored in 
     
     Charlottetown Harbour. He guided its captain along the route up the 
     
     Hillsborough River to Tracadie Bay. On the way, the Highlanders passed 
     
     a place named Frenchfort and decided, patriotically, on the appellation 
     
     Scotchfort for their new settlement. The group survived the hardships of 
     
     the next few years, their numbers increasing as other Highland emigrants 
     
     were sent out to the area by Glenaladale. ' ' 
     
    

    
     The next large group was organized in 1773 by Sir James Mont- 
     
     gomery, the Lord Advocate of Scotland and proprietor of Lot 34 
     
     (Covehead-Stanhope area), and by Lieutenant Colonel Robert Stewart, 
     
    
   
   
    
     5