Clan Grant

The society offers three explanations and does not choose between them. One is a Norse descent from Haakon Grandt, a Norwegian said to have settled in Scotland around 960, which it presents as tradition. Another is descent from Kenneth MacAlpin, the ninth-century king of Scots, which it calls a legend and ties to the Siol Alpin bond with the MacGregors and other clans. The third is arrival from the south in the thirteenth century with Anglo-Norman barons, settling near Inverness. Wikipedia gives only that third account, deriving the name from le Grand.

The first Grants on record are in Stratherrick, perhaps as early as the thirteenth century according to the society, with Sir Laurence le Grant as Sheriff of Inverness in 1263. John le Grant took part of Inverallan in 1316, the first Grant land in Strathspey, and in the fifteenth century Sir Duncan le Grant inherited lands in the barony of Freuchie.

The society says the line of Lairds of Freuchie and chiefs of Clan Grant that began with Duncan lasted almost five centuries. Sir James Grant, in the eighteenth century, is credited by the society with importing food for tenants in a famine and with developing Grantown-on-Spey from 1765. The earls of Seafield were chiefs from 1811 until the 11th earl was killed in the First World War, after which the Lords Strathspey held the chiefship.

On the wars, the society says the Grants supported the government in 1725 and 1745, with the chief withdrawing his troops before Inverurie, while the Grants of Glenmoriston fought for the Jacobites and Grants stood on both sides at Culloden. Wikipedia adds earlier dated events, including Glenlivet in 1594, but from a single source.

No Grant tartan is held as a record on this site because the register threadcounts could not be read from an open primary source. The society says the Grant Tartan was designated in the late eighteenth century as a version of the military Black Watch sett with over-stripes, that William Wilson and Son's pattern book of 1819 documents both the Grant Tartan and the Grant Kilt, and that a version in James Grant's 1886 book was later made the authorised tartan by the 6th Lord Strathspey. It says the tartan of the 1725 companies was almost certainly a forerunner of the Black Watch and that the 1793 Strathspey Fencibles almost certainly wore the Grant sett; both are society inferences. The Black Watch tartan page on this site records the Cockburn Collection specimen labelled Grant.

The society's pages read do not give a sept list. The one named sept is Siol Cudbright, the descendants of Cuthbert Grant, declared members by the chief in 2012 according to the society, so it is a recent declaration and not a historical sept. The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there is no central register of septs and that each chief decides.

The Standing Council of Scottish Chiefs says there are no strict rules on who may wear a tartan and that wearing a clan tartan signals allegiance to the chief. The Clan Grant Society says its aim is kinship among Grants and anyone with a Grant bloodline or an interest in the name, which is an invitation to join and not a rule about tartan.

No Grant surname page is published on this site yet; it would need an independently sourced account of the name's origin, spellings and distribution. Siol Cudbright is the only sept recorded here, and a person named Grant is not shown by these sources to descend from the chiefly line.