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Clan Gayre or Clan Gair purports to be a Highland Scottish clan.
Origins of the Clan
Robert Gayre of Gayre and Nigg (original name Robert Gair), the father of the present chief, created the clan after World War II. He is the chief source for most of the information in the Clan's Wikipedia article, which can be found nowhere else; Robert Gayre invented the Clan and its history.
Gayre claimed to be the Chief of "Clan Gayre" and "Clan Gayre and Nigg". In 1947, he wrote a book titled Gayre's Booke: Being a History of the Family of Gayre[1] in which he presented an ancestry that supposedly established his claim to be the chieftain of the Clan of Gayre; however no clan or sept by that name is mentioned in any record prior to Gayre's use of it in the second quarter of the 20th century.[2]
World Orders of Knighthood and Merit by Guy Stair Sainty (published by Burke's Peerage) refers to "the late Robert Gayre (first Chief of the newly formed Clan Gayre)".[3]
The Glasgow Herald newspaper, on 14 June 1975, wrote, "Robert Gayre, of Gayre and Nigg, is singular among genealogists, dynasts and the like, if only for the reason that, alone among them, he has been able to create a Scottish clan from scratch, providing it with traditions, rituals, precedences and privileges...".[2]
In 2017 the genealogist Anthony J. Camp showed that Gayre did not himself have a male-line descent from earlier families of that surname.[4]
Clan Chief
The current self-styled chief of the Clan Gayre is Reinold Gayre of Gayre and Nigg.[citation needed]
References
- ^ Robert Gayre of Gayre and Nigg; Richard Leslie Gair (1947). Gayre's booke : being a history of the family of Gayre. Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd. OCLC 229108326 – via worldcat.org.
- ^ a b Alastair Phillips (14 June 1975). "The Gatherings of Clan Gayre". The Glasgow Herald.
- ^ Guy Stair Sainty (2006). World Orders of Knighthood and Merit. London: Burke's Peerage. p. 1866. ISBN 0971196672.
- ^ Anthony Camp, 'George Gair (or Sutherland) alias Robert Gayre or Gayre and Nigg' in Genealogists' Magazine, vol. 32, Number 8 (December 2017) 324-328.
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