I have been gathering family historical data from many sources -- letters, photographs, books such as family bibles and published genealogical references, oral history, anecdotes, census records, birth and death certificates, etc. -- since about 1955. My intention in making this family tree available online is to provide the means for anyone with internet access to connect our history into that of their own related families, and to make available to anyone who has use for it, a record of our family's ties to prior generations.
The project is a slow-moving target -- a work in progress. I will be modifying and adding to the database as often as I come upon new information and have an opportunity to enter, verify or caveat its authenticity, and then update the web site. Unavoidably, there will be errors and omissions in the database although I have tried to be as careful with my data entry and as accurate as the sources would support. Omissions will be filled in and errors corrected as soon as new information comes to me. Individuals still living at the time of this update will show "private" for some dates such as birth date and date of marriage. Please use my email address included below to send corrections or additions. At an unknown future date this file, or one like it, will become a hotlink within a dedicated MacQuinn website that my cousin Nicole Reynolds and I will make available -- hopefully before the end of 2011. It is our hope that the new website will contain both recent and antique photographs of family members, events, scanned documents, census records, maps, and letters. We may even try to include a means for family members to convey their own individual stories in order to make this project come alive with the addition of personal anecdotes of family events, memories, and individuals.
One of my goals when I started this project was to discover the identity of my immigrant ancestors on both my mother's (MacQueen, McQueen, MacQuinn, McQuinn, McQuin) and my father's (Allen) side. Having succeeded at that task relatively more easily for my father's paternal ancestors than for my mother's, I have recently focused on her family and have finally been successful in connecting her paternal ancestors to the MacQueen clan who hailed originally from the Isle of Skye in the 1500's and who emigrated to the New World from North Uist, Taransay, and the Isle of Harris in the Outer Hebrides.
My immigrant Allen ancestor was Walter Allen who arrived from England at Newbury, Massachusetts in about 1640. Even with the resources of the National Archives in Washington, DC and with internet access to a great deal of research performed by others, I have not been able to learn exactly where in England he and his first wife (Rebecca) were from. This is a continuing challenge for the future and interested or aspiring genealogists are encouraged to help research an answer to this question. Meanwhile, this genealogy traces the Walter Allen line only from 1640 in Newbury, Massachusetts to the present.
My immigrant McQuinn ancestor was Ewen "Hugh" MacQueen who immigrated to Cape Breton Island, Nova Scotia in the first part of the 1840's from Seilibost, Isle of Harris (Outer Hebrides), Scotland. Ewen's older brother, Alexander "Poet" MacQueen, had previously left the Hebrides in the 1830's arriving in the Birch Plain, North Shore area of Cape Breton nearly ten years before Ewen arrived with his wife Ann and the first two of their children -- Alexander and Euphemia (Effie). The immigrant MacQueen brothers each had several children and both lines of descendants are represented in the accompanying database.
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The Pliny Allen/Tillie McQuinn family history