Clan Galloway

Clan Story

The Galloway Legacy

Galloway is properly the name of the historic Celtic province of southwest Scotland rather than a single continuous Highland-style clan. In the medieval period the region was ruled by its own lords, notably Fergus, Lord of Galloway in the twelfth century, and Alan of Galloway, who served as Constable of Scotland in the thirteenth century; the area's mixed Gaelic, Norse, and Briton population gave it a distinct identity within Scotland. Families bearing "Galloway" as a surname are generally understood to take their name from this district rather than from a single bloodline, and some settled as far afield as Dunbartonshire by the sixteenth century. The Galloway tartans sold today are twentieth-century district tartans created in the 1930s rather than an ancient clan sett, and no Lord Lyon-recognized clan chief for "Galloway" could be confirmed.

Galloway was an effectively independent lordship in south-west Scotland from the mid-12th century under Fergus of Galloway (d. 1161) and his descendants, including his great-grandson Alan, Lord of Galloway. Alan's death without a male heir in 1234 triggered the Galloway revolt of 1234-35 and the partition of the territory among his daughters' Anglo-Norman husbands, ending Galloway's independent status; the eastern portion later became the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright under Archibald 'the Grim' Douglas in 1369. The later Stewart Earls of Galloway, created in 1623 and now considered the senior branch of Clan Stewart, are a separate, much later title with no direct male-line connection to the medieval Lords of Galloway.