Clan Ewing: Resources

This page has links to useful articles and other resources relevant to clan history.

Clan Ewen: some records of its history

In 2016, John Thor Ewing, Commander of Clan Ewing, published an annotated edition of Clan Ewen: some records of its history, by Robert Sutherland Taylor MacEwen. MacEwen’s book was originally published in 1904, and popularised the mistaken belief that all MacEwens are descended from Clan Ewen of Otter. The new edition has copious notes which explain in detail why MacEwen’s original thesis was so wrong.

Clan Ewen: some records of its history

The new annotated edition is available here on Amazon UK

And here on Amazon US

Clan Ewen of Otter

Two recent research articles on the medieval Clan Ewen of Otter from the journal West Highland Notes & Queries:

Abstracts of Ewing sasines, charters etc.

This page is a work in progress, and brings together most of the records (not including testaments) so far discovered for the Ewing family in Scotland before 1700.

Ewing testaments

The testaments available here were transcribed by genealogist Diane Baptie, whose work was funded by the Ewing Family Association.

Testaments relating to Ewings in Scotland in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries:

These eight are drawn from a longer list of 71 Ewing testaments dating to before 1700, looking mainly at those relating to Dumbartonshire.  They have begun to reveal something of the pattern of relationships between Ewings (and with other families). Many of the testaments contain brief fragments of family trees, and it might sometimes be possible to connect some of these.
An unexpected bonus was the mention of what is clearly tartan cloth in the 1610 testament of Johnne Ewing Elder, which became the inspiration for the official Clan Ewing tartan, and which shows that seventeenth-century Ewings still thought of themselves as Highlanders.
Further research might expand this short collection of testaments to include some of the more obvious omissions (such as Johnne Ewing in Heiddykis of Kirkmichael, dated 1614, which is obviously closely related to the testament of 1610 above), and might also include more Stirlingshire testaments.

Ewing Entries in the Sasines

A sasine is a document noting when land changed ownership. All landholding in Scotland was feudal from medieval times until the beginning of the current century. Records of sasines start in 1617.

Preliminary research on Ewing sasines was conducted on behalf of the Ewing Family Association in 2012 by Diane Baptie.