Lineage
Trace the line back through the parish registers of Angus and the ports of emigration. Members receive help with research, and access to a shared body of work on Ogilvy descent and its many spellings.
Ogilvy
A · Fin
“To the End”
Eight centuries of the name, from a barony in the braes of Angus to every corner of the world. We are gathering the kin again — and you are invited to stand among the founding members.
The Name
A high plain in Angus,
and a word that means endure.
Ogilvy is a place before it is a person. The name is drawn from the old barony of Ogilvie in the parish of Glamis, in the Angus lowlands beneath the Grampian foothills — a name generally read from early Brittonic roots meaning something close to high plain.
From that ground the family took its style, and from that ground it never entirely left. For over eight hundred years the Ogilvys have been an Angus family: sheriffs and treasurers, soldiers and exiles, builders of castles in the glens and keepers of a single stubborn word — A Fin. To the end.
- MottoA Fin — To the End
- CrestA demi-lady holding a portcullis
- ChiefThe Earl of Airlie, Chief of the Name and Arms of Ogilvy
- SeatCortachy Castle, Angus, Scotland
- LandsAngus — Glen Clova, Glen Prosen, Glen Isla, Lintrathen, Airlie
- Plant BadgeWhitethorn (hawthorn)
Why We Are Gathering
A clan is not a museum.
It is a living roll of names.
Clan Ogilvy US is being formed now, and its founding members are being written into its first roll. That is a rare thing to be offered — and a rarer thing to be able to pass on.
Fellowship
Gatherings, Highland games, Burns suppers and the annual clan dinner. A society is only as good as the people who show up to it — and the Ogilvys have always shown up.
Founding
Founding members shape what this becomes: the charter, the calendar, the causes it supports in Scotland and at home. Your name stands at the head of the roll, permanently.
Eight Centuries
Moments that made the name
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c. 1163
The grant of the barony
Gilbert, a son of Gillebride, Earl of Angus, receives the lands of Ogilvie from King William the Lion, and takes his name from them. Every Ogilvy since traces back through that charter.
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1432
Airlie Castle rises
Sir Walter Ogilvy of Lintrathen, Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, builds a stronghold on the tongue of rock where the Melgam meets the Isla — the house the ballads would later mourn.
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1491
Lord Ogilvy of Airlie
Sir James Ogilvy is raised to the peerage of Scotland. The Earldom of Airlie follows in 1639, granted by Charles I to a family that would pay dearly for its loyalty.
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1640
The Bonnie House o’ Airlie
The Earl of Argyll puts Airlie to the torch during the Civil Wars. The burning passes into one of the great Scots ballads, and the clan rebuilds — as it does again, and again.
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1746
Culloden and exile
David, Lord Ogilvy raises a regiment of Angus men for Prince Charles Edward Stuart and commands it on the moor. He escapes to France, is attainted, and is not pardoned until 1778.
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Today
The clan abroad
Cortachy remains the chief’s seat in Angus, while the name has scattered across the United States, Canada, Australia and beyond. This society is how those lines find each other again.
“It fell on a day, a bonnie summer day,
when the corn grew green and yellow…” The Bonnie House o’ Airlie — traditional Scots ballad
The Invitation
Stand among the founding members.
Clan Ogilvy US is inviting direct descendants of the name to found its society. Membership is open to Ogilvys and Ogilvies by any spelling, to the recognised septs, and to those descended through the female line — kinship has never run only one way in a Scottish clan.
860Years of the name
1639Earldom of Airlie
30+Septs & spellings
∞A Fin — to the end