Historians have noted that the family of Muirhead was one of the ancient families of the shire (i.e. county), of Lanark.¹

  It was in the valley of the Clyde River, on the southern border of the highlands of Scotland, to the west of Edinburgh, and midway between it and Glasgow, in the Clydesdale county of Lanarkshire, in the Parish of Bothwell, that the lands of Lauchope and Lauchope House were located. And it was Lauchope that was first associated with the name of Muirhead.

  In order to deduce a history of this Family of the Muirheads of Lachop", we should begin by identifying a starting point when the family first became known in Scotland.

  According to R.R. Stodart in his book, Scottish Arms, published in 1881², one of the 16th Century heraldic rolls of arms, known as Forman’s Roll of ca 1562, included the arms of a man by the name of Mureheide of Lauchope. But the family’s origins may be found to have existed earlier than that. Alexander Nisbet in his book, A System Of Heraldry, published in 1742³, wrote that:

  But even Nisbet took the line farther back in time when he noted that⁴:

  Alexander Nisbet had no factual evidence to substantiate his assumption that the Muirhead family should be dated to the early part of the 12th Century. He simply stated that the custom of taking territorial surnames began about that time.

  The earliest public record of any person by the name of Muirhead was, according to Nisbet⁵, a deed of land granted by "Archibaldus Comes de Douglas, Dominus Galovidiæ & Bothwel, dicto ƒcutifero ƒuo Willielmo de Muirhead" dated 1393. That date corresponds to a tradition that dates from the reign of King Robert II {1371-1390}. Again, quoting Alexander Nisbet⁶:

  According to Margaret Stuart in her book, Scottish Family History, A Guide to Works of Reference on the History and Genealogy of Scottish Families, there are only a few published sources of Muirhead history. They include: A System Of Heraldry, by Nisbet (1742), Volume II: Appendix, pages 258-268; An Account Of The Muirheads Of Lachop, by Walter Grosett of Logie; and Burke's Landed Gentry, (1846). Of course, Mrs. Stuart compiled her list of books that had been published in Scotland. To that list should be added three volumes published by American Muirhead family members: The Morehead Family Of North Carolina And Virginia, by John Motley Morehead (1921); The Henry Muirheid/Muirhead Family Of Virginia & Mississippi, by Ray Jerome Muirhead (1989), and Tree Top Baby: A Family Tree Of Moorhead And Strong, by Susan Moorhead / Nunes, Volume I (1984).

  There are certain public documents, such as deeds, charters and the like, which provide some clues to the history of the Muirhead family, but they are few due to the tragic history of Scotland's public archives. Many of the earliest records were removed from Scotland by the English during the various conflicts between the two nations during the 11th through the 16th Centuries. As part of the Treaty of Edinburgh in 1328, and England’s recognition of Scotland’s independence, her public records were supposed to be returned from London, where they had been deposited. But they were not returned until much later; in 1948 some two hundred documents made their way back to Scotland. During the Second English Civil War, when Oliver Cromwell's Parliamentary Army invaded Scotland to counter the Scots’ support of Charles II, the nation’s archives of public documents were stored in Edinburgh Castle. Following the defeat of Charles II and the Scottish army at Worcester on 03 September, 1650, the archives were removed to the greater safety of Stirling Castle. Stirling Castle was taken in August of 1651, and at that time the bulk of the public documents were removed to London, while some were pilfered by the castle’s own garrison. Only some were rescued by state officials. Legal registers were intended to be returned in 1657 in order that the country’s routine affairs could be continued as before. But as they were being returned, one of the two ships that were transporting them northward went down in a storm off the Northumbrian coast. As would be expected, all the documents on that ship were lost. As new public documents were generated over the years, they were maintained in Laigh Hall of the Parliament House. The storage conditions were by no means what we would consider adequate, and over the years many of the documents simply rotted or were eaten by rats. Following the Jacobite Rising of 1745, funds culled from the forfeited estates of the clans that had participated in the Rising were used to build a repository for the public archives, which was called the General Register House.

  A comprehensive history of the family of the Muirheads, thusly, must be deduced partly from fact and partly from legend.

  We might begin by taking a look at the surname itself. For purposes of this volume, the basic form of the surname is presented as Muirhead. But throughout history and among the various families who claim descent from the ancient root, the name has variously appeared as: Moirheid, Moorehead, Moorhead, Mored, Morehead, Morheid, Mourheid, Muirhed, Muirheid, Muirheyd, Murehed, Murehede, Mureheide, Murhed, Murhede, Murheed, Murheid, Muyrheid, Mwirheid, Mwreheid, Mwrhed, Mwrheid, Mwrheyd and Mwrhied.

  The etymology and history of the surname, regardless of its form is, at once, simple and difficult. Unlike a surname such as Smith, the origin of which can readily be discovered to have been derived from the occupation of the smith, the surname Muirhead is not so easy.

  It is generally agreed that the family took its appellation from the land, there being a number of places named Muirhead⁷. There is the hamlet of Muirhead in the parish of Kettle, district of Cupar, in the county or shire of Fife. There is also a hamlet of Muirhead in the parish of Liff, Benvie and Invergowrie in the county or shire of Forfar. There is also a village of Muirhead in the parish of Cadder in the northern tip of the county or shire of Lanark. It is in the vicinity of the latter village that this family is believed to have originated.

  According to George F. Black, in his awesome work, The Surnames Of Scotland - Their Origin, Meaning, And History⁸: "the use of fixed surnames or descriptive names appears to have commenced in France about the year 1000, and such names were introduced into Scotland through the Normans a little over one hundred years later..." Black noted that "The first people in Scotland to acquire fixed surnames were the nobles and great landowners, who called themselves, or were called by others, after the lands they possessed." Such ‘territorial’ surnames might be acquired by more than one root family not necessarily related by bloodline. Black also warned the researcher to be aware that the use of the preposition de, when used in conjunction with the territorial surname did not always imply that the individual possessed the lands from which he acquired the surname. It might imply the concept of ‘in’ rather than of ‘of’. Therefore, going simply by the name, the Willielmo de Muirhead named in the 1393 deed cited above, might either have been the possessor of the lands of Muirhead, or simply an inhabitant ‘in’ those lands. Black did concede, though, that in most cases the former situation was the one that should be considered. And we shall see that that indeed was the case here.

  But the question that must next be asked is, where did the place name come from? Most of the historians of the family of Muirhead cite the similarities of the word muir with the word that means a ‘heath’: moor. The word moor is derived from the root mer referring to ‘dead’; and therefore refers to dead or barren ground. They then appendage the word head, which refers to the ‘highest point’, to the first, to arrive at muir-head or rather "head of the moor", or "the highest point on the heath."⁹ Apparently, this reference to the meaning of the name was first introduced by John M. Morehead in his book, The Morehead Family Of North Carolina And Virginia, published in 1921. In that book, Mr. Morehead noted¹⁰:

  This seems, at first glance, to be a fairly good assumption of the origin of the name Muirhead, but one must take into consideration the influences of the gaelic language on the naming of places in early Scotland, and also the fact that the Normans brought with them their own language, which merged with the native tongues.

  In regard to the assumption that the gaelic language might have played a part in the creation of the place name of Muirhead, reference is made to the book Scotland In The Middle Ages, by Innes, in which it is stated that¹¹:

  What this tells us is that we should proceed cautiously when attempting to determine the cultural and ethnic origin of a place name, such as Muirhead. A purely Gaelic place name would very well have been retained by the later inhabitants, regardless of their own native language and/or naming conventions.

  The word muir exists in the gaelic language as a dual masculine/feminine noun. It refers to the ‘sea’ and not to a heath or moor, as has been suggested solely because of its similarity in sound. One needs only take a quick glance at a map of Scotland, and it will be seen that the sea and its many inroads into the valleys of Scotland might have influenced the use of the word muir in the place name. The Irish word for sea (no doubt derived from the gaelic) is muir; the Welsh word for sea is mor. The Breton and also the Gaulish words for sea are also spelled mor. The only problem with assuming that muir, the gaelic word for ‘sea’ provided the origin of the first half of the name is that the second half is not gaelic. There exists no correlating gaelic word for that which reads and sounds as the English word: head. If the intention had been to invent a place name from the gaelic words for ‘head of the sea’, it would not have resulted in muirhead, but rather muirceann.

  It is interesting to note that there was, in the 18th Century (and possibly prior to that time), a conjoined word, moors-head, which was a term borrowed from chemistry, that referred to a cap, or head, set atop a still, and having a pipe or nose attached to allow the raised spirits to run down into a receiver.¹² In view of the history of whisky production in Scotland, perhaps the place name from which the family took its name may have had some relation to this definition.This example is included primarily for the humor in it, rather than as a serious attempt to explain the origin of the name; but it points out the fact that the name could have been derived from any number of things.

  There is a gaelic name that might be a candidate for the root of the placename of Muirhead. Mhuir Mheadhain is the gaelic name for the Mediterranean Sea. There is the possibility that the Normans brought their name for the Mediterranean Sea with them. Perhaps it became merged with the gaelic to form the gaelic name M(h)uir (M)head(hain), the pronounciation of which became shortenned over time to Muir-head.

  There is a gaelic word that is spelled very similar to the spelling of muirhead; it is the name for a fishing spear: muirgheadh. Given that the people of the Isles are, and have always been, very cognizant of their dependence on the sea that surrounds them and the many rivers that crisscross the land, it would not be too unusual to use words culled from the sea or seafaring for placenames. Bishop Andrew Muirhead affixed a representation of his heraldic arms to the northside of the Nave of the Cathedral of Glasgow (which he adorned during his tenure as Bishop) which consisted primarily of the accepted heraldic devices of the Murihead family: three acorns on a bend; but it also included the image of salmon fishing. If it is accepted that the placename of Muirhead was derived from the gaelic name for a fishing spear, then it seems only natural that the image of salmon fishing (which was performed with a spear, as compared to a line and hook) would be perfect symbolism to represent the surname of Muirhead. Alexander Nisbet noted that at the time his book, A System Of Heraldry, was published in 1742, the arms of Bishop Muirhead were still extant in the Nave of the Cathedral, and that the imagery was¹³:

  What this means is that the image of salmon fishing was the allegorical symbol of the Glasgow Episcopal See. For the very reason that an early Christian symbol was that of fish and fishing, this might be the most promising of the various conjectures about the name. It is possible that the image was chosen by Bishop Muirhead for the pun that it represented: a symbol of both his own surname and of the See that he represented as bishop.

  In the Medieval Ages, and on into the Renaissance, artists, primarily engaged by the Church, utilized symbolism (i.e. allegory) extensively so that the viewer would not need to read much into the imagery. The masses of people were illiterate, and the allegorical images provided an easy method for the communication of ideas and concepts. Today, artists are taught the symbolism of the art elements. If an artist wants to show movement, he/she simply uses a diagonal line. By using a diagonal line in an artwork, the viewer will not need to actually ‘read’ the artwork, but will instinctively ‘know’ what the artist’s intention is - to imply movement. The allegorical images of the Medieval and Renaissance periods functioned much in the same way. It is very possible that Bishop Andrew ‘knew’ that anyone who looked at his arms, seeing them above the symbol of salmon fishing, the fishing spear (or muirgheadh) would immediately know that the arms represented the surname Muirhead. The viewer would instinctively know that the Gaelic word for 'fishing spear' sounded like his acquired surname, and make the connection.

  It should be noted also, that the word muirgheadh is the one word that would have changed the least from its original form to become muirhead. The question of why gaelic, Norman or English words were joined together becomes an insignificant point. The ideas of mixing words derived from Gaelic and English and Gaelic and Norman French and so forth are plausible, but in this case there is no mixing of languages. The meaning is evident, and the use of the word as a visual pun to refer to both Bishop Andrew's profession and his family name is something that does not require any thought.

  One additional thing in regard to the word muirgheadh needs to be noted: If we assume that this was the case - that the village of Muirhead in Lanarkshire derived its name from the Gaelic word for ‘fishing spear’, it is not in conflict with any of the other places named similarly. Salmon is the one type of fish that is easily caught by spearing them - rather than hooking them with a line, and there are many rivers in Scotland that would support salmon. Perhaps the various places named Muirhead or any variation of spelling, might have been named that way so that travellers knew that salmon fishing was the prevalent form of game at that place. If the name for fishing or ‘things of the sea’ was more suitable, than the word Muir was simply used.

  The fact of the matter is that there exists no definitive answer to the question of how the name Muirhead came to be used to identify a number of villages and later a family. In the end, it simply must be accepted that the surname is a territorial name derived from the lands called Muirhead. The name itself does not necessarily hold any special distinction or meaning to the family other than that its pre-16th Century progenitor(s) was/were known as "of Muirhead".

  So now we might return to the general history of the family. At some time between the reign of King David I, at the beginning of the 12th Century, and the reign of King Alexander II, at the beginning of the 13th Century, a family came to reside in the valley of the Clyde River, in the vicinity of a village known by the name of Muirhead. The village of Muirhead was located in the Barony of Bothwell, which was under the rule of the Norman, David de Oliphard (variously Oliphant) during the mid-12th Century.

  Whether the family of the 12th to 13th Centuries was descended from Norman ancestors is not known. It is quite possible that that was the case in view of the fact that historical references to any of its members do not appear until after the Norman Conquest of the Isles, and also because of the fact that they adopted the Norman convention of taking territorial-based surnames. They were perhaps fairly well-to-do, as evidenced by the fact that the family came to own a substantial amount of land in that region, prompting Alexander Nisbet to state that¹⁴:

  By the term, set, one might think of Nisbet's reference to the family as 'a group of persons of the same kind or having a common characteristic', which is how the word is defined by Merriam-Webster. The context in which Nisbet used the above statement was in commenting on the fact that the Muirhead armigers (i.e. those to whom grants of arms had been made) had not utilized elements from the various armigerous families who, in the span of recorded history, had held sway over the ancestral lands of the Muirheads. The custom of a family, if they were not landowners, was to take the arms of their superiors. To do so would exhibit a certain type of fealty or allegiance in the part of the armiger toward the "overlord", and is one form of the structure of the clan system of Scotland. Not all members of a clan must be blood relations. The members, whether related or not, of a community might constitute a clan, and that is why, as Nisbet noted, it was common practice for an armiger to assume, in whole or in part, the arms of the community’s, or the clan’s, leading family. In this case, the Muirheads did not take the arms of the Oliphards (who bore crescents on their arms). Neither did they take the three stars of the arms of the Murrays. Sir Walter Murray succeeded to the lordship of the barony of Bothwell by his marriage to the heir-female of the Oliphant clan. By the time of the reign of King Robert II (1371 to 1390), the Earls of Douglass succeeded to the barony of Bothwell. The Muirheads did not take any of the armorial bearings from the arms of the Douglas clan either. Instead, they claimed their own arms, distinct from all others.

  The reign of King Robert II ended with his death in 1390. He was succeeded by his son, John, who changed his name to Robert III. The reign of King Robert III lasted until 1406. During that reign, in 1393, the surname of Muirhead appeared in a public record for the first time¹⁵. Archibaldus Comes de Douglas, earl of Galloway and Bothwell deeded to Willielmo de Muirhead "his Lands of Muirhead, in Baronia de Bothwel".

  In 1401 the name of William de Murehede was written by the man who witnessed a charter involving lands of the Cranshaws.¹⁶ The charter between the Earl of Douglas and Sir John de Syntoun was recorded on 20 October, 1401 at Dunbar. Another charter witnessed by a Sir William Muirhead was recorded in 1407.¹⁷

  In Rymer’s Fœdera Angliæ of 1402 there is an entry naming Dom. Willielmus de Muirhead, miles.¹⁸ The latin term for Lord or Master was Dominus. The latin term for soldier, or knight, was miles. It should also be mentioned that the latin term, dominus ejusdem might be compared to the common Scot phrase "of that ilk". In turn, the phrase, "of that ilk", when placed in conjunction with a man’s name meant that his surname was the same as the estate he owned. Therefore, this entry in the Foedera Angliae would have referred to William Muirhead as Lord William of Muirhead, knight and owner of the estate of Muirhead.

   In the year 1404 Willielmo de Muirhead was commissioned, along with Sir David Fleming, whom King Richard III called his ‘blood relation’, to act as emissaries to King Henry IV of England (or his commissioners). Their commission was to obtain the freedom of the Earls of Fife and of Douglas, who had been taken prisoner during the Battle of Homilden, in Northumberland, in 1402. Willielmo de Muirhead and David Fleming were also empowered to conclude a treaty of peace.¹⁹ The two groups of commissioners met on 06 July, 1404 at Pontfract. They agreed to a truce, which was commenced on 20 July and which would continue until Easter of the next year. It was also agreed that during the period of the truce, a congress should be held at Handerstank for the purpose of completing a more complete treaty.

  Despite the commissioners’ efforts, the congress never took place. During this time, the Scottish King was ailing and the queen had died. King Robert’s brother, the Duke of Albany attempted to seize the throne. By 1406 only the ailing king and his son stood in Albany’s way. Prince James was seized as he was being smuggled toward safety in France and was taken and imprisoned by the English King Henry IV. The news filled the king with grief and he refused to eat, dying a few days after receiving the news.²⁰

  One basic rule in genealogical research is that no family is exempt from contradictory and/or confusing genealogical information. The family of the surname Muirhead is certainly no exception to this rule. There exist records of persons by the name of Muirhead who simply do not fit into any known lineages. Since most early lineages were based on family tradition, they might have excluded individuals or whole lines because those individuals or lines did not ‘measure up’ to the values of the family. The so-called ‘black sheep’ of the family were often simply not included in the formal lineages because they were seen as an embarrassment to the family.

  In this group would be placed the Muirheads of Windyhills. On 15 October, 1490 a charter was recorded at Edinburgh which transferred lands in the sheriffdom of Roxburgh from Robert Murehed of Le Wyndehillis to his son, George ‘servant’ of the King. Witnesses to this charter included Bishop Robert Murehede of Glasgow and Dean Richard Murehede of Glasgow, Clerk of the Rollo and Register of the Council. A George de Murhede had also been recorded as a witness to another charter four years prior, on 14 February, 1486.

  In previous books on the history of the Muirheads, it has been generally assumed that the Muirheads of Windyhills were not directly related to the Muirheads of Lauchope, Bredisholm and so forth. But a situation exists which makes the argument that the two families were not related difficult to accept. From time to time the two families interacted and became linked on public records. Windyhills is a village located in the district of Closeburn in Dumfriesshire (which contains the two county jurisdictions of Galloway and Dumfries). Likewise, Wigtown, shown on early documents as Wigtoun, is a village located in Galloway. Various individuals who are known to have been members of the family of the Muirheads of Lauchope, over the years, purchased and owned lands not only in Lanarkshire, but also in Dumfriesshire. John Muirhead of Lauchope and Bullis is known to have acquired lands throughout Galloway, including lands at Wigtown. On 29 March, 1502 John Murehede of Bulleis received a charter for lands at Wigtoun. For researchers to separate the two regions and the families that resided in those regions simply because the Muirheads who resided in Dumfriesshire do not fit neatly into the traditional lineages is foolish.

  There is the additional point that should be taken into consideration, that there is no village named Muirhead in Galloway. The Muirheads of Windyhills, if they had taken their name from a place name in that region, would surely have used the place name of Windyhills rather than Muirhead of Windyhills.

  There exists no evidence that anyone from any of the other villages named Muirhead located throughout Scotland took their surname from the place name. In other words, the family of Willielmo de Muirhead, which resided in Lanarkshire, was the only one known to have taken the place name and made it into a surname by the addition of ‘de’. And there is no reason to assume that everyone in every village took the name of the place as their own surname. It generally was only a socially influential, wealthy or politically important family who had to be noted as ‘so-and-so’ of ‘wherever’.

  There are a number of individuals who simply do not fit into the traditional lineage of the Muirhead of Lauchope family. Although the name George does not appear in the lineage of the family of the Muirheads of Lauchope until the late 1500s and early 1600s, it does appear earlier in references as witnesses to certain public documents, as noted above. In addition to the two documents mentioned above, a George Murehede served as a witness to a charter dated 14 May, 1491 for Alexander Cunninghame of Polmais, into whose family James Muirhead of Lauchope is known to have married.

 The Stephen de Murehede, who served as a witness, along with William de Murehede, to a charter for Gawin de Hamiltoun on 23 August, 1468, is not found on genealogical records of the Willielmo de Muirhead family. In view of the fact that the record for the Muirheads of Lauchope begins with Willielmo, perhaps Stephen was his brother, or an uncle, or cousin.

  A canon of Glasgow, Thomas Muyrheid, witnessed a charter for Archbishop Robert Murehede on 20 January, 1507. A Thomas Murehede, rector of Stobo, named as one of the prebendaries and canons of Glasgow, was an executor for a Jonet Murehed. As will be noted in the section on Dominus Andreas de Durisder, or rather, Bishop Andrew Muirhead, it is has been suggested by at least one researcher that he descended from a family other than the Muirheads of Lauchope. No men by the names of Robert or Thomas appear in the late 1400s and early 1500s in the family of Willielmo de Muirhead.

  On 08 July, 1520 Sir Robert Murehede, a chaplain at Glasgow, was listed as a witness to a transaction. Alexander Murehede, in 1531, was named Burgess of Kirendbright. John Mureheid was recorded in 1535 as a rector of Steneker. And in 1543 a man by the name of John Mureheid of Culreoch had a charter of land confirmed. In September, 1570/1 a man by the name of Alexander Muirhead younger of Lachop was charged to enter ward within the castle of Blackness within 15 days under pain of 1,000 merks.

  In the same way that the statement can be made that there is no way to prove that the various families by the name of Muirhead were related, there is likewise no way to prove that they were not. I would venture to suggest that they were indeed related, that the family might have originated at only one location with the placename of Muirhead, and that the line which came to reside at Windyhills, or elsewhere, might simply have not been regarded as worthy relatives, and therefore excluded from the ‘official’ genealogical records.

  Before closing this chapter on the origins of the family and name of Muirhead, the entry for the name Muirhead in Black’s The Surnames Of Scotland, should be noted:²¹ Black’s reference work is a highly respected source of public documents, being purely a compendium of references found in public sources rather than family traditions.