28 THE ROYAL SOCIETY OF CANADA 
Materials for a biography of Alexander McNutt, apart from official 
documents and correspondence, are not very abundant.! What we 
have at hand, however, will prove of very considerable interest. 
The McNutts were of Scotch ancestry though, strange to say, there 
is no such name in Scotland to-day as McNutt, and, what is even more 
surprising there never has been.? 
All investigations go to show that the name McNutt was formerly 
MacNaught, and that the McNaughts were originally of the same stock 
as the MacNaughtons of Argyleshire. The McNaughtons, it may be 
noted, in passing, were Thanes of Lochtay and chiefs of a powerful 
fighting clan. They figure in history as strong adherents of the House 
of Stuart. 
For more than two centuries the MacNaughts lived in the south of 
Scotland, at Kilquhantie in Galloway, where they possessed landed 
estates prior to 1448. Others of the name subsequently lived in Edin- 
burgh and one of these, a John McNaught, succeeded to the family 
estate at Kilquhantie in 1641. By his wife, Florence Gordon, he had 
a son John, who succeeded to Kilquhantie and its diminishing revenues 
about 1675. The records show the gradual impoverishment of the 
family, and at the close of the century John McNaught left Kilquhantie 
with his four sons, Alexander, William, John and Samuel and crossed 
over to the north of Ireland. 
In her “ Genealogies and Reminiscences,’ Mrs. McCormick observes: 
—“The tradition, handed down in widely divergent branches of the 
family, is everywhere the same in asserting that John MacNaught, 
last of his name in Scotland, crossed to Londonderry, Ireland, with his 
four sons, and that the names of the four sons were Alexander, William, 
John and Samuel. The name of MacNutt is then found for the first 
1 Much of the information that follows has been gleaned from Mrs. Henrietta 
Hamilton McCormick’s “Genealogies and Reminiscences” (G. K. Hazlitt & Co. 
Chicago, 1897). Mrs. McCormick, on her mother’s side, was descended from a 
brother of Colonel Alexander McNutt. 
2 This statement is made on the authority of Mr. Francis A. McNutt, a gentle- 
man well informed on the subject, to whom the author is much indebted for timely 
assistance in the preparation of this sketch. Mr. McNutt says that when Mrs. 
McCormick was engaged in the preparation of her genealogies of the family she 
employed agents to search the directories of the principal cities in America and 
the United Kingdom and it was a matter of surprise how rarely the name McNutt 
was found in places like London, New York and Chicago. In Belfast, Ireland, one 
or two families of McNutts were found, but in Scotland none. On this side of the 
Atlantic all of the name are believed to be descended from the family of which 
Colonel Alexander McNutt was:a member. 
