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American History
Neil McLennan |
MCLENNAN, NEIL (1777-1867). Neil McLennan,
early settler, was born on the Isle of Skye in 1777. He immigrated in 1801
to North Carolina with numerous family members and friends; in 1816 they
moved to Florida. In December 1834 Neil and a large group of family and
friends, including Laughlin and John, Neil's brothers, set sail from
Pensacola, Florida, in a three-masted schooner, the Caledonia, which they
navigated themselves. They arrived at the mouth of the Brazos River around
March 1, 1835, and sailed up the river as far as Columbia (then named
Montezuma, later Columbus). After a resting period they continued their
journey, stopping at Pond Creek, in Robertson's colony. McLennan received
a league of land on July 28, 1835, and in the early fall he and the men
set about building shelters and improving the land. He built on the bluff
overlooking the rolling prairie with a small lake nearby. During the
following winter Indians killed Laughlin McLennan, his wife, and his
mother and captured his three children; the other families moved back to
the Robertson settlement of Nashville-on-the-Brazos. John McLennan was
killed by Indians in 1838. In 1839 Neil McLennan joined George B. Erathqv
on a scouting and surveying trip to a site on the Bosque River near that
of present Waco. McLennan exchanged his Pond Creek land for claims on the
Bosque, and in 1845 he moved his family there, where he died in 1867 at
his family home. |
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