10/21/2026
My roots in Prince Edward Island date back to the MacEacherns who came across on the Brig Alexander. My family tree also includes MacRaes and Gillises.
In 1772 a shipload of Highland and island families stepped ashore on Prince Edward Island, and the first thing waiting for them was work. Trees had to come down, ground had to be broken and roofs had to go up before an Atlantic winter arrived.
Their road to that red shore began on South Uist. Colin MacDonald of Boisdale had told his Catholic tenants to give up their faith for the Church of Scotland or leave his estate. Scotland's Catholic bishops came to see emigration as the only answer, and John MacDonald of Glenaladale, a young Catholic laird from the mainland, became its organiser. He bought Lot 36 on what was then called St John's Island.
In May 1772 the brig Alexander sailed with about 210 people aboard. Glenaladale himself put it at 214. His brother Donald led the party, and a priest, Father James MacDonald, went with them. They came from South Uist, Eigg, Arisaig, Moidart and the country around. No original passenger list survives, but the family names remembered include Beaton, Campbell, Gillis, MacDonald, MacEachern, MacIntosh, MacKenzie, MacKinnon, MacPhee and MacRae.
The following month they landed on Lot 36, at the place later called Scotchfort. They were not the first people to know that ground. A French and Acadian chapel had stood there from 1729, until the Acadians were expelled in 1758.
The beginning was hard. The settlement's early harvest was poor, and reports of distress travelled back across the ocean. Alarmed, Glenaladale sailed out himself in 1773, saw the land with his own eyes, and judged that the settlement could still be made to prosper. He stayed, and so did they.
Picture the scale of it. Gaelic speakers who had farmed machair and hill ground now faced dense forest and that famous red soil, building homes, a community and a church life almost from nothing, with every season a test.
Their descendants spread across the Island and far beyond. Today many Island families can trace a line back to that summer of 1772, often without knowing that a quarrel over faith on South Uist was where it all began.
Do any of those surnames sit in your own family tree, and do you know which ship first brought your people across?
