Fletcher

The name of Fletcher comes from the Gaelic ‘Mac an fheisdeir’, ‘son of the arrowmaker’, becoming anglicised towards the end of the eighteenth century when anglicised versions of surnames began to be used in the Highlands. The Clan an fheisdeir moved to Glenorchie in Argyll during the eleventh century to ‘first raise smoke to boil water in Orchie’. The Mac an fheisdeirs were associated with the Clan Gregor, but continued to reside in Glenorchy after the Macgregors were expelled from the area in 1442. The Fletchers claim descent from the ninth century king, Kenneth Macalpine, and have the royal pine tree as their badge. Small groups of Mac-an-leisters settled in glens belonging to other clans, for whom they presumably made arrows. The earliest recorded chief was Angus Mac-an-leister, who was born around 1450. Duncan Campbell of Glenorchy coveted the Mac-an-leister lands, and as he was high in the favour of James VI, he had royal authority to maintain a large band of armed retainers which he employed in a campaign of violence and intimidation. He deliberately provoked a dispute with the chief of the Mac-an-leisters, and trumped up a charge of murder against him. Mac-an-leister was compelled to sign a deed ceding his family lands to the Campbells and thereafter they were only tenants in Glenorchy. Archibald, the ninth chief, led the Mac-an-leisters in the first Jacobite rising in 1715. His younger brother, John, called them out again in the Forty-five, although his brother, the chief, provided some men for the Hanoverian forces under his Campbell landlords, thereby avoiding forfeiture. The Fletchers were cleared from Glenorchy by the Campbell Marquesses of Breadalbane to make way for sheep, and many emigrated to the United States and Canada. The chiefly line appears to have died out with the death of the fourteenth chief in New York in 1911, since when the clan has been leaderless.