Clan MacIvor in the Highland Clearances

Roderick MacIver, Isles of Lewis and Harris

"By mid-summer of 1802 the Highlands were still seething with talk of emigration, with a number of ventures actively recruiting for departure in late 1802 and 1803 .... Four distinct parties of recruiters can be identified as active in the region in the second half of 1802. One group was led by the Earl of Selkirk. Another was headed by Major Simon Fraser, called `Nova Scotia' in the Highlands for his activities on behalf of that province. A third was led by the Stornoway merchant, Roderick MacIver, and a fourth by two young sons of tacksmen, Archibald MacLean and Roderick MacLellan ....

As for Roderick MacIver, he was nothing if not frank about his venture, telling Robert Brown that he expected opposition from the lairds `by any legal means' and declaring:

I am far from thinking that many of them [the tenants] better their Situation by going across the Atlantick and it would therefore be the last action in my life to hold out any encouragement or inducement to them to leave their native homes, but if they are determined to go, it is but fair that I should have as good a chance of benefitting from their passage as any other.

MacIver, in short, was nothing other than a freighter of emigrant passengers with absolutely no long-term concern for their welfare. He was to send at least two vessels from Stornoway (on Lewis) to Pictou in 1803 ....

Roderick MacIver was busy recruiting on Lewis and Harris."

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