Alexander McCandless

Not the same as Alexander McCandless

Source for death place and date: M.Jo Goodwin descended through Wm. and Mary E. Pugh.

His will mentions his wife, Sarah and children Martha, James, Alexander, William, Margret. Sarah, Jean plus Thomas Carmical.

He seemed to use the McCandless spelling of name, but the widow signed the will "Sarah McCandles" His children variously used both spellings on the same documents. Document.2 MSTAT M 12

Source for the above: Timothy on McCandless Rootsweb board : waldrip@ amexol.net Cororborated by Dennis Ardinger: dba@,nauticom.net

Birthplace presumed, as he was said to have emigrated to the US from Scotland, or at least to have been born in Scotland and emigrated from Northern Ireland as a Scottish Exile.

His son, Alexander met and married his wife in Ireland, and all of their children were born there, so he must never had emigrated with the family to US.

The Cuindlis Families: The History of the Name

The name is well-attested in Scotland and Ireland as a family name at least as early as the 1200s. The name dates to at least as early as the 6th Century in Ireland (as a given name), and the Mac (or Uí) Cuindlis may have been one of the original Dalriadic families, clans or tribes of Irish Scoti who invaded Pictland (now named Scotland after these settlers) in the Dark Ages, beginning not long before the reign of King Arthur (ca. 500s A.D.)

Cuindlis is an Old Irish (Gaelic) name meaning, (as far as can be determined) "head of the enclosure". This could mean, more loosely, anything from "master of the cattle pen" (i.e. rancher or dairy farmer), to perhaps even "master of the fort", depending on just what sort of enclosure was meant.

The original form of the name came in several variants, including at least these three: Cuindlis, Cuindilis, and Cuindleas. Today, after the anglicization and later modifications of Gaelic names, there are many family names descended from Cuindlis. The two most-frequent variants are McCandless and McCandlish, with many sub-variants like Chandlish, McCandliss, McAndless, and McCanles. Quinlisk (or O'Quinlisk) represents a less common (and probably more widely-separated) branch, with its own sub-variants like Quinlish and Quinlos. Most of the other variations appear to be directly descended from M[a]cCandlish and M[a]cCandless. K-spelled variants like MacKanles, etc., have also occurred, but appear to be largely if not entirely extinct.

The -ish spelling may be older, but is less numerous than -ess. The -ish version is mostly Scottish, -ess mostly Irish, though with a great deal of overlap in both directions. Quinlish, which appears to be exclusively Irish, is actually closer to the original pronunciation of the Cuindlis spelling, and may be the oldest. The Cuind[i]lis spellings ended with a "sh" sound, probably giving rise to both the Quinlish and McCandlish and similar versions, while Cuindleas ended with a "s" sound, probably giving rise to McCandless and its sub-variants. Notably, however, the spellings have been widely regarded as synonymous many times, with genealogies showing a McAndlish who's son goes by McCandless and who's daughter in turn is a McCandlish, for example. This "bleed-over" does not appear to occur between the [O']Quinlisk/[O']Quinlish versions and the [M[a]c]Candless/[M[a]c]Candlish variants.

It is unknown at present whether or not all of the Cuindlis/Cuindleas-derived names are in fact directly related. It is entirely possible that more than one person bearing this name as his given name gave rise to patronymic family names (either different ones, e.g. McCandlish and McCandless coming from a different ancestory, or even multiple instances of the exact same spelling.)

   Some of the more common name variants:

[M[a]c]An[d]lish
[M[a]c]An[d]les[s]
[M[a]c]An[d]lis[s]
[M[a]c]Can[d]lish
[M[a]c]Can[d]les[s]
[M[a]c]Can[d]lis[s]
[M[a]c]Can[d]las[s]
[M[a]c]Can[d]los
[M[a]c]Can[d]leis
Chan[d]lish
Chan[d]less
[O']Quinlisk
[O']Quinlish
There are over 50 variants of the name.
Clan Connections

Cuindlis with its derivatives is a family rather than clan name, as there is no (extant, anyway) McCandless/McCandlish/etc. clan. There is as yet no evidence that it ever was a clan (at least in the Highland sense). There is no chief or other recognized family head.

At this point, there is not even a family association/organization. If you would be interested, please get in touch with me. The family (or, rather, a particular but nebulous and hard to pinpoint Scottish branch of it) is regarded by some as an unofficial sept of Clan MacGregor, and has ties with the MacGregors, Buchanans and possibly the MacArthur Campbells (who trace their lineage, legendarily, to King Arthur himself), ca. late 1600s - early 1700s (the time of Rob Roy), possibly earlier. A MacGregor family historian contacted recently was unable to find any records of such links, other than some marriages (e.g. a McCandlish who married a MacGregor was the Clan Gregor Society treasurer for several decades).

Other family branches report an association with the Gordon clan, but documentation is again lacking, as of this writing.

Despite lack of a clan, there is a McCandlish/McCandless tartan. Like most family and clan tartans it dates to recent times, though more recent than most.

Several McCandlishes, M'Caunlesses, Mac Candlesses, etc., were armigerous (i.e. had royally-granted coats of arms) - at least 5 crests are known.

Please note that these are not "family" crests or coats of arms. Such honors, despite what heraldic product mongers in the US will tell you, belong to specific individuals, and are inherited; they do not belong to entire families, though it is permissible under Scottish heraldry law to devise clan or family "badges" (sometimes incorrectly called "crests") based on (but "differenced", with a surrounding belt and buckle, from) an individual's crest. This is usually if not exclusively done with the crest of the clan chief, and the present author does not know if it is permissible to do this with any crest known to have been held by a member of the family, in the absence of a recognized chief.

Migration & Concentration

Ian McCandless of Ireland estimates that there are between 10,000 and 20,000 Cuindlis-descended people in the world - making the variants of this old Celtic name fairly rare. The Cuindlis families are most numerous in Galloway (Scotland), Galway (Ireland), and Ulster (N. Ireland), as well as the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand in modern times. The migration pattern appears to be:

• Central Ireland -> Scotland; later from cen. Ireland to US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, England
• Scotland -> US, Canada, Australia, NZ, England, and N. Ireland
• N. Ireland -> US, Canada, Australia, NZ, England, and back to Scotland again
• Scotland -> US, Canada Australia, NZ, England
• plus many instances of migration between the colonies (e.g. Canada -> NZ, Aus. -> US).

There was a lot of jumping back and forth across the Irish Sea. The family must be regarded, one supposes, as thoroughly Scots-Irish, rather than either one or the other.

Famous and Notorious Cuindlis Family Members

[At some point, I will place info here about the more noteworthy family members. Right now all I have ready is a list of fictional Cuindlises.]

Besides the real thing, several fictional McCandlesses and similar have made appearances in novels, on tv, and on the big screen. They are listed here.

The Cuindlis Genealogy Mailing List

An e-mail list has been set up for Cuindlis genealogists. To join this list, send to majordomo,@eff. org a message body (not Subject line) of: subscribe cuindlis your@email.address (where "your@email.address" is your real address, of course.) Source: http://www.eff.org/~mech/Cuindlis/

Fictional McCandlish/McCandless/Quinlisk/etc. Persons

McCandless and related name pop up here and there in movies, books and tv shows. Here are the "sightings" to date (most provided by Rosemary Van Linde McCandless, htvind@ cybergate.net, though I saw Freejack myself, and found the John Wayne reference via a Net search.)

The McCanles, McCanless or McCandless outlaw gang, invented by "Wild Bill" Hickok. The alleged leader, David Colbert McCanles, was a real person (whom Hickok murdered), but there does not appear to have been any such gang. The McC. Gang has made various appearances in fictional and pseudo-historical accounts, ranging from Harper's Magazine of the period, to later western films, to poorly researched old west "history" books.

"Big Jake" McCanles, played by John Wayne, in the western movie Big Jake

Sen. McCandless, played by Lionel Barrymore, in the 1940s movie Duel in the Sun. There actually have been state senators named McCandless, so this could have been a historical character. Bears some further research.

Mr. ("Mac") McCandless, an evil tycoon, played by Anthony Hopkins, in the 1990s sci-fi movie Freejack, also starring Mick Jagger, Emilio Estevez and David "Buster Poindexter" Johansson.

The McCandless family of Washington, DC, main characters of the 1970s soap opera.

Wanda(?) McCandless a character appearing once, in an episode of the 1970s-80s tv series M*A*S*H (named for Douglas Montrose McCandless, acquainted with the daughter of one of the writers of the episode, who apparently needed an interesting name to use)

Capt. McCandless, hero of the steamy 1991 romance novel "Promise Me Forever", by Jannelle Taylor

Col. Hector McCandless of the British East India Company's merchant marines serving in India in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries; he plays a recurring and altogether heroic role in Bernard Cornwell's "Richard Sharpe" series of historical novels. (Thanks to the entirely nonfictional Bruce McCandless III for the tip.) Source: http://www.eff.org/~mech/Cuindlis/fictional.html

Source for McCandless information:

• The Cuindlis (McCandlish/McCandless/Quinlisk) GenWeb/GenDex Database. An Online Database on the Genealogy and History of the Cuindlis Families http://www.eff.org/~mech/Cuindlis/GenWeb/genweb.html