Clan Macpherson Museum

The "Invereshie" Book

The Invereshie Book is indeed a unique Clan Treasure and is much sought after by both clan members and the good folks of Badenoch who want to research their family history. Hand written and leather bound, the book is popular because it gives details of individual branches of the Macpherson family and includes accounts of clan battles.

As it became more popular Shelagh Macpherson Noble (CMAa3 Chairman 2009-2012) was concerned that, with regular usage, the condition of the book would deteriorate and a valuable asset of the Clan Macpherson Association would be lost. The worries were that the spine would be damaged and the pages would become torn, so in 2008, and with the permission of some of the Clan Macpherson Museum Trustees, the book went home with her to Haddington, and the mammoth task of transcribing the 404 pages to an electronic format began. This was so that it would be available for all Clan members to use and the book itself would be preserved.

The aim was to reproduce the book in its original format: the pages being ¾ width of text with comments/corrections/additions written at a later date in the left margin.

Although the hand written work is beautifully done, the writing is quite difficult to decipher in places, so the reader will find ‘XXX’ in places where a particular word was impossble to read. As Shelagh is not a Gaelic speaker, there will be mistakes in the Gaelic text; any corrections will be welcome.

‘Invereshie’ is also quite controversial, and it should be noted that a few clan historians dispute the accuracy of some of the text and this should be borne in mind by the reader.

The two members of the Invereshie family who created this book did a wonderful job and although the donor (Tom Macpherson) states in the introduction, dated 1949, that it was transcribed “about fifty years ago”, references have been found by the writer of the time giving the date as early as the 1840s.

This was a labour of love over two years, and it is hoped readers will enjoy this unique view of Macpherson family history.

The book can be viewed and downloaded here. It is in Adobe Acrobat (.PDF) format and is just over 2 MBytes in size