Project MAOL family history archives.

Introduction to Project MAOL.

The Gaelic word Maol is the stem of the name MacMhaolain. It's the intention of M'millan Ancestry On Line to collect all the known genealogy of the clan and to compile it on computer in such a way that clanspeople will be able to use it to trace deceased ancestors in Scotland, and contact living cousins around the world. The scale of the project will become apparent if you stop and think about the numbers involved. The MacMillans are one of the oldest clans in Scotland, with namefather Gilchrist "Maolan/Gillemaol" living in the early 12th century and having had, so far as we can calculate, some 27 generations of descendants. Start with Gilchrist himself; credit him with, say, 3 surviving and breeding sons; then give each of them their 3 (bear in mind that pre-contraceptive era families were generally very large, even if not too many survived to breed successfully, and you'll realise this is probably a gross under-estimate). Go on and do the arithmetic along the same lines for all 20+ succeeding generations. Then add in the breeders' wives, the daughters and their husbands, and the sons who didn't breed, all of whom we want for completeness sake. You'll need a computer to add them all up, let alone record all of their details! In fact of course hardly any of the first dozen or so generations of the clan are recorded at all (the names of those who are, and the sources in which they appear, can be found in lists accessed through the Genealogy page of this website).

Even so, there are still a vast number of individuals to be dealt with in the ten or twelve generations since 1700; consequently the amount of information made available on-line for each one must be limited - even though in many cases the Clan Centre may hold considerably more detail - and given our limited resources it'll be many years before all the information we already have in the form of books and paper family trees can be entered, collated, and put on the website. If therefore you don't find your ancestors in it at the moment, it doesn't necessarily mean we don't have any information about them.

The key online elements are the search indexes which list all the people bearing a clan surname about whom we have information in Project MAOL, along with sufficient details to help distinguish between individuals bearing the same forenames (and because it was the practice in Scottish families for forenames to be handed down from generation to generation, there were hundreds of individuals at any one time in the clan bearing the same "given-names"). In some cases, especially for the larger and more important families in the clan, the index entries will reference detailed genealogies that can also be found on-line (the number of full family trees on-line is always increasing, with the intention one day of having all that include five or more generations available in this way).

Please bear in mind that the online search indexes only list clanspeople born bearing one of the clan surnames, but individuals bearing other surnames (i.e. descendants of female "M'millans", and ancestors of wives) often appear in the full on-line family trees and in the genealogies held at the Clan Centre. We do aim to help all descendants of M'millans - all of whom are welcomed into the clan as members if they wish to join, whatever surname they bear - but the numbers involved mean it's impossible to enter more than those bearing the clan surnames into the search indexes. Similarly, while our Project MAOL submission guidelines concentrate on minimum details of ancestors bearing the clan surnames, we welcome as much additional information as possible about all clan ancestors and their descendants, of whatever name - and we will make it all available to searching cousins by one means or another.

Spellings and septs.

There are two Gaelic versions of the main clan surname (the other being MacGhillemhaoil); three standard English forms of it in use in modern Britain (Macmillan, MacMillan and McMillan); and over 250 different spellings recorded over the centuries. In order to avoid confusion and duplication Project MAOL will use the neutral form M'millan for all ancestors of that name - whilst recognising and using the preferred spelling of all present-day clanspeople in correspondence etc. In addition to M'millan, the surnames of the clan's various septs will be included in Project MAOL in due course, with each name having a separate set of files. Where individuals or families are recorded with more than one of these names - as happened for instance with many Bells/MacGilveils in Argyllshire - the relevant information will be entered into both sets of files.

How to access archives from Project MAOL.

Find your ancestor in the MAOL search indexes which contain the names and basic biographical info for thousands of clanspeople. See a guide describing how to use Project MAOL Search Indexes. If your ancestor's parents are named in the index you can trace your line back by looking for the father's details in the index - and so on. Use the Family Number on your ancestor's entry to access a detailed online family tree, if available (mainly for the larger families so far). Look for hitherto undiscovered living cousins in the online family trees and ask the Clan Centre to put you in touch with them.

How to submit your family to Project MAOL.

See a page from which you may submit the details of your own family to Project MAOL so others descended from your ancestors can discover them - and you. Sept indexes will be added to the site in due course.