The Lennox Ark & OneTree database DNA Project

08/29/2026

08/17/2026

Anne Colquhoun of Luss
The Hinge Between Two Houses
Two Houses. One Extraordinary Marriage.

There are moments in genealogy when a family line appears, at first glance, to end.

The last male heir dies. A Y-chromosome disappears from the direct succession. A daughter stands where generations of sons had stood before her.

Older histories have often treated such women as bridges between important men: daughter of one chief, wife of another, mother of the next.

Anne Colquhoun of Luss deserves better than that.

She was the bridge, certainly—but she was also the hinge upon which the future of two great Scottish houses turned.

William Fraser places her unmistakably in the succession:

Anne Colquhoun, Heiress of Luss, 21st of Colquhoun and 23rd of Luss, 1718–1724.

Anne was not where the House of Colquhoun ended.

She was where it turned.

Born an Heiress

Anne was born 11 August 1685, the daughter of Sir Humphrey Colquhoun, 20th of Colquhoun and 22nd of Luss, 5th Baronet of Nova Scotia, and his wife Margaret Houstoun. Fraser's pedigree identifies Margaret as the eldest daughter of Sir Patrick Houstoun of that Ilk and records Anne's birth, marriage, and position as heiress.

Anne therefore entered the world surrounded by inheritance, land, kinship and obligation.

On her father's side stood the ancient House of Colquhoun.

On her mother's stood Houstoun of that Ilk. Sir Patrick Houstoun was a significant figure in his own right: a Scottish politician, knight, and Baronet of Nova Scotia who represented Renfrewshire and Dunbartonshire in the Parliament and Convention of Estates. Margaret's mother was Anne Hamilton, daughter of John Hamilton, 1st Lord Bargany.

Anne's maternal ancestry therefore connected her not only with the Houstouns but with the wider Hamilton aristocratic network.

But it was her father's inheritance that would determine the extraordinary course of her life.

Sir Humphrey had a problem.

He had an ancient house to preserve.

And his heir was his daughter.

Sir Humphrey Plans for the Future

Sir Humphrey did something critically important for understanding everything that followed.

He planned ahead.

Anne married James Grant of Pluscardine on 29 January 1702. James belonged to the powerful Grant family and was a younger son of Ludovick Grant of Grant.

At the time, James was not expected to become head of the Grants.

But Sir Humphrey recognized that possibility.

What would happen if the husband of his only daughter eventually inherited Grant?

Would Luss simply be swallowed into the Grant inheritance?

Would two great houses become one?

Sir Humphrey was determined that they would not.

The legal arrangements surrounding Anne and her descendants were deliberately constructed to preserve the separate inheritance of Luss. Fraser's history of the Grants records the entail and the later consequences of precisely this arrangement.

This is essential to Anne's story.

The later separation between Grant and Colquhoun was not an accidental family division.

It had been anticipated.

The House of Colquhoun was being prepared to survive through Anne.

Anne Becomes Colquhoun of Luss

Sir Humphrey died in 1718.

Anne now occupied the position Fraser assigns her in the Colquhoun succession:

Anne Colquhoun

21st of Colquhoun
23rd of Luss
Heiress of Luss

Her husband entered the story because of her inheritance.

Under the regrant of the baronetcy, James became Sir James Colquhoun of Luss, 6th Baronet. Fraser's Grant history explicitly says that following Sir Humphrey's death, the title descended to his son-in-law under the terms of the regrant.

But James's use of the Colquhoun name would be brief.

History was about to prove Sir Humphrey's foresight remarkably justified.

Grant Comes Calling

In 1719, James's elder brother, Brigadier-General Alexander Grant, died without surviving children.

Suddenly Anne's husband inherited Grant.

He relinquished the Colquhoun name and arms and resumed his paternal surname.

He was once again Sir James Grant.

Fraser is unusually clear about what happened: James held Luss for only about a year; after succeeding to Grant he dropped the Colquhoun name and arms and resumed the surname Grant in accordance with the succession arrangements.

The two houses had collided.

Now they had to separate.

And the mechanism for doing so would be Anne's children.

Fourteen Children — and Two Very Different Destinies

Anne and James had a large family.

Their eldest son, Humphrey, stood closest to the Grant succession but died unmarried in 1732.

Their second son was Ludovick, born 13 January 1707.

Under the arrangements governing Luss, Ludovick initially succeeded to his mother's Colquhoun inheritance and became:

22nd of Colquhoun and 24th of Luss.

But Humphrey's death changed everything.

Ludovick was now positioned to inherit Grant. Sources describing the Grant succession specifically identify him as James and Anne's second son and record his succession under Sir Humphrey's entail.

When his father died in 1747, Ludovick succeeded to the Grant estates.

The Grant inheritance had found its heir.

But what about Luss?

That question brought another of Anne's sons to center stage.

His name was James Colquhoun.

The Son Who Fought for His Mother's House

James was Anne's younger son.

And he believed the Colquhoun inheritance belonged with him once Ludovick became the Grant heir.

It wasn't settled around a dinner table.

It went to court.

James challenged his brother Ludovick and his niece Anne over the right to the Luss inheritance.

The dispute reached the Court of Session.

And James won.

The inheritance of Luss and the Colquhoun chiefship passed to him.

He became:

Sir James Colquhoun

23rd of Colquhoun
25th of Luss
8th Baronet of Nova Scotia

He was subsequently created 1st Baronet of Great Britain in 1786. Fraser's succession distinguishes clearly between Ludovick, 22nd of Colquhoun and 24th of Luss, and James, 23rd of Colquhoun and 25th of Luss.

And with that, the dynastic plan reached its extraordinary conclusion.

One of Anne's sons carried Grant forward.

Another carried Colquhoun forward.

They were brothers.

They had the same mother.

They shared the same paternal ancestry.

But they represented two different houses.

The House of Anne Colquhoun of Luss

This is where I believe Anne's story needs to be understood differently.

The later Chiefs of Colquhoun should not simply be described as though the old house vanished and was replaced by “Grants.”

That misses what inheritance actually did.

Anne was the hereditary connection.

The Colquhoun bloodline continued through her.

The chiefship continued through her.

The inheritance of Luss continued through her.

And the later Colquhoun chiefs descend from her.

For the purposes of The OneTree Ark, this transition can therefore be understood as two great chapters:

The Medieval House of Colquhoun

followed by

The House of Anne Colquhoun of Luss

The second does not erase the first.

Anne joins them.

The DNA Reveals the Hinge

Modern genetic genealogy allows us to see this transition in a way Sir Humphrey could never have imagined.

Anne herself had no Y-DNA.

Women do not inherit a Y chromosome, so Anne could neither receive her father's Y chromosome nor transmit it to her sons.

Within The OneTree Ark research, Y-DNA testing of relevant surviving paternal descendants is being used to reconstruct the older Colquhoun paternal lineage.

That reconstruction places the ancient paternal line associated with Anne's father within:

E-M35 → E-V13 → E-BY5775

Sir Humphrey represents the end of that paternal Y-line within the chiefly succession.

But that does not mean his bloodline ended.

His daughter survived him.

Anne carried his ancestry forward.

Her sons simply received their Y chromosome from their father, Sir James Grant.

That paternal lineage is represented in the project as:

R-M269 → L23 → Z17274

And here is the distinction that matters:

Anne did not transmit R-Z17274. James did.

Likewise, Anne did not transmit her father's E-BY5775 Y chromosome.

What Anne transmitted was something much larger than one chromosome:

herself.

Her ancestry.

Her Colquhoun descent.

Her hereditary claim.

And ultimately the genealogical continuity connecting the medieval Colquhouns to their later descendants.

Y-DNA records one paternal path through a pedigree.

It does not define the entirety of a dynasty.

Two Different Kinds of Continuity

That distinction becomes especially powerful when surviving collateral paternal branches are considered.

A male-line descendant carrying the older E-BY5775 lineage may preserve a genetic paternal connection to the Medieval House of Colquhoun without belonging to the later chiefly succession.

Meanwhile, the later Chiefs of Colquhoun descend genealogically from Anne while carrying the paternal Y-DNA inherited from her husband.

Those facts are not contradictory.

They are exactly what we should expect genetically.

One preserves paternal-line continuity.

The other preserves hereditary and genealogical continuity through Anne.

Together, they tell a much richer story than either genealogy or DNA could tell alone.

She Was More Than Someone's Wife

James Grant lived an important life.

He became head of the House of Grant and served in politics. He deserves his place in the history of his own house.

But in Anne's story, James is not the center.

Anne is.

Her significance did not come from marrying him.

If anything, the opposite happened.

James briefly became Colquhoun because he married the Colquhoun heiress.

When Grant later fell to him, he returned to Grant.

Anne remained the hereditary center from which the Colquhoun succession continued.

That is the distinction generations of abbreviated pedigrees can easily obscure.

Anne Colquhoun of Luss

Anne died on 25 June 1724. Fraser's pedigree records her death at Castle Grant while continuing to identify her by the name that mattered:

Anne Colquhoun of Luss.

And at Rossdhu, her name remains part of the physical landscape of her family.

There is something profoundly fitting about that.

Titles changed.

Surnames changed.

A Y-chromosome changed.

Estates passed between brothers.

Lawyers argued over inheritances.

Two great houses went their separate ways.

But Anne's name remained.

Anne Colquhoun of Luss.

The Hinge Between Two Houses

Anne lived only thirty-eight years.

Yet consider what stands on either side of her.

Behind her stretches the medieval chiefly House of Colquhoun and the paternal lineage of her father.

Beside her stands the House of Grant.

Beyond her stand descendants who carried both houses forward.

The Grant descendants did not become Colquhouns merely because Anne was their ancestor.

The Colquhoun descendants did not become Grants merely because their paternal Y chromosome came through James.

Each house retained its own history, identity and succession.

But both histories pass through the same marriage.

And the Colquhoun chiefly succession passes through her.

That is why Anne should not be remembered as the woman standing between the last male-line medieval Colquhoun chief and the men who followed her.

She was the succession.

She was the daughter who inherited.

The woman through whom an ancient house crossed a genetic divide.

The mother whose sons carried two great Scottish inheritances into the future.

And the hinge connecting two chapters of Colquhoun history:

The Medieval House of Colquhoun

and

The House of Anne Colquhoun of Luss.

Anne was not where Colquhoun ended.
She was where Colquhoun turned.

Research compilation, genetic genealogy and genealogical recording by Tiffany McCarter Evans
The OneTree Ark Project | MacArtair of Colquhoun Publishing
© The Lennox Ark 2026

Source:
Fraser, Sir William. The Chiefs of Colquhoun and Their Country. Vol. I. Edinburgh, 1869, p. 328.

Historical Scotland The Lennox Ark & OneTree database DNA Project

07/10/2026

The Doorway of Rossdhu

John M’Arthor, the McCarter Line, and the Ancestors Who Refused to Be Forgotten

By Tiffany McCarter Evans — The Lennox Chronicles / The Lennox Ark

In 2024, I walked through the old doorway of Rossdhu Castle with my 12-year-old niece.

I did not know then what I know now.

I knew Rossdhu mattered. I knew the Colquhouns of Luss belonged to that land. I knew my McCarter Y-DNA had been pulling me back toward the old Colquhoun and Kilpatrick bloodline. But I did not yet know that one of my own ancestors had already left his name there.

At the time, I only knew what I felt.

Some places do that to you. They catch you before the records do. You stand there thinking you are looking at a ruin, a wall, a doorway, a pretty bit of old Scotland. Then something in your chest says, no, this is more than that.

That was Rossdhu for me.

The later manor house was beautiful. Grand. Polished. The kind of place people stop to photograph because it looks important.

But that was not where I felt it.

I felt it at the old castle.

At the broken stone wall.
At the ivy.
At the little arched doorway still standing after centuries of weather, inheritance, loss, and forgetting.

That doorway stayed with me.

Now I know why.

In Fraser’s Chiefs of Colquhoun, on 10 June 1676, at Rossdoe, a man named John M’Arthor appears as servitor and witness to Dame Margaret Baillie, Lady Luss. He signs as J. M°Arthoure, witness.

That man was not random.

That man was my John.

John McArthur / MacArtair / M’Arthor was born in 1654 in Gargunnock, son of Donald McKertur / MacArtair and Agnes McKinlay. He was the grandfather of Moses McCarter Sr., my 5th-great-grandfather.

That makes John my 7th-great-grandfather.

And there he is, about 21 years old, old enough to stand as a legal adult male, appearing in the Rossdhu household world of the Colquhouns of Luss.

Not in a vague tradition.
Not in a family story repeated with no paper behind it.
In a record.

At Rossdhu.

The old castle world.

That part matters to me. Fraser makes clear that the later house was not the original heart of Rossdhu. The old castle came first. Those surviving stones are not just decoration beside a newer estate house. They are the remains of the world my ancestor would have known.

So when I say I felt connected to the old castle and not the manor house, that is not me being dramatic.

That was my bloodline pointing at the right stones before my research caught up.

I had walked through that doorway with my niece before I knew John was there.

That still stops me.

Because genealogy is not just names and dates. Not when you do it long enough. Not when you have held wills in your hands, followed land records across counties, matched DNA branches, tracked surname changes, and sat with the dead long enough that they stop feeling dead.

Records are not dead paper.

They are proof that someone lived.

John M’Arthor lived.

He stood in that world. He served in that household orbit. He witnessed. He signed. His name survived.

And that one record tells me something important: the Gargunnock MacArtair/McCarter line was not disconnected from the Colquhouns of Luss in the 1600s.

They still knew.

Maybe not as chiefs. Maybe not as lairds. But they were not nobodies drifting around Scotland with no connection to the old family network.

John was close enough to be trusted.

Close enough to witness.

Close enough to be named.

That is the smoking gun for me.

My Y-DNA had already pointed toward the older Colquhoun/Kilpatrick paternal field. My McCarter branch sits downstream in the E-BY5776 line, part of the MacArtair/McCarter branch I have been rebuilding through records, DNA, land, naming patterns, and witness lists.

DNA pointed the way.

But John M’Arthor at Rossdhu gave the DNA a place to stand.

A man.
A name.
A date.
A place.
A doorway.

This is my life’s work.

Not because I need a grand story. Not because I am trying to borrow someone else’s history. Not because I want a pretty pedigree to hang on the wall.

Because these people lived.

They had names before history forgot them. They had mothers and fathers. They had children. They stood in rooms. They walked through doors. They signed papers. They served households. They crossed oceans. They buried their dead. They changed names. They survived long enough for me to find them.

And we only die if we are forgotten.

So I am saying their names again.

Donald McKertur / MacArtair, my 8th-great-grandfather.
John McArthur / MacArtair / M’Arthor, my 7th-great-grandfather.
Thomas McArthur / McCarter, my 6th-great-grandfather.
Moses McCarter Sr., my 5th-great-grandfather.
James Leander McCarter.
Robert Alexander Bates McCarter.

And all the sons, daughters, wives, widows, orphans, cousins, and descendants who carried the line forward.

The deeper medieval bridge is still being rebuilt. Darleith. Ardencaple. Arthur Beag. The old Colquhoun cadet world. I will not claim what the records have not yet proven.

But I will not shrink what this record does prove.

My ancestor was there.

At Rossdhu.

In 1676.

And in 2024, before I knew any of this, I walked through that old doorway with my niece.

I thought I was showing her a castle.

Now I know I was walking her through the doorway of our own family’s recovered story.

That is why I do this.

That is why I dig through charters, wills, land records, DNA results, forgotten witness lists, parish entries, old books, and courthouse papers no one else thought to look for.

Somebody has to remember them.

Somebody has to bring them back into the light.

And apparently, that somebody is me.

The past is not silent.

We just have to listen.

And I am listening.