How to read this Clan Fraser family tree
Read the Clan Fraser family tree from the top down, one generation to a row. The Strichen line on the left joins the older chiefs only through a son of the fourth Lord, so no line links it to the Old Fox.
A portrait is a picture
Six people have one.
A silhouette has none
No free likeness is known for ten.
A line from one parent
The other parent is named in the notes.
A double frame is the centre
Simon, the Old Fox, is the centre.
The Clan Fraser family tree as a PDF
The Clan Fraser family tree PDF is drawn by this site from the sources below. One tall page holds nine generations with the years and title of each man, the portrait credits and the sources. Print it on A3 or tabloid paper, or open the chart in the editor and add your own Fraser ancestors.
Thomas Fraser of Beaufort and the crisis of 1696
The Lordship of Lovat began with Hugh Fraser, made a lord by James III in 1458.8 Eight Lords later, in 1696, Hugh, ninth Lord Lovat, died, and so did his infant son. His great-uncle Thomas Fraser of Beaufort, born in 1631 to the seventh Lord, took the title as tenth Lord Lovat.10 Lord John Murray, later Lord Tullibardine, disputed the succession.11
Thomas had fourteen children with Sybilla MacLeod, a daughter of the chief of Clan MacLeod, and nine died young. He died at Dunvegan Castle on Skye in 1699.1011
Simon Fraser, eleventh Lord Lovat, the Old Fox
Thomas’s second son, Simon, was born about 1667. In October 1697 he married the ninth Lord’s widow, Amelia Murray, by force at Castle Dounie. They parted that December. He became Lord Lovat when his father died in May 1699.11 He married Margaret Grant in 1717, and her death is given as 1729 in his article’s text and 1726 in its summary box. About 1733 he married Primrose Campbell of Mamore.11
In 1715 Lovat helped the government take Inverness. In 1745 he sent his eldest son and the clan to Charles Edward Stuart and stayed at Castle Dounie.113 He was found near Loch Morar on 7 June 1746, tried by his peers in Westminster Hall and beheaded on Tower Hill on 9 April 1747. His titles were forfeit.118
General Simon Fraser and Archibald Campbell Fraser
Margaret Grant’s son Simon, born in 1726, led the clan out in December 1745 and was pardoned in 1750. He raised the 78th Fraser Highlanders, who fought at Louisbourg in 1758 and on the Plains of Abraham in 1759.124 The estates came back to him in 1774, the title did not. Wikipedia’s clan article gives 1771 in one passage.129 He died childless in 1782.12
His half-brother Archibald Campbell Fraser, born in 1736, was consul at Tripoli and Algiers and chief from 1782. His five sons died before him, so the line of the Old Fox ended with his death in 1815.13
The Frasers of Strichen and the restored title
The chiefship passed to the Frasers of Strichen, descended from a younger son of the fourth Lord.8 Their heir, Thomas Alexander Fraser, was born in 1802, the son of Alexander Fraser, ninth of Strichen.14 He was made Baron Lovat in 1837, and when the attainder of 1747 was reversed he became Lord Lovat in the peerage of Scotland. His article dates that to 1854, while Wikipedia’s clan article says the titles were restored by 1857.149
Beaufort Castle and the Lovat Scouts
His son Simon, Lord Lovat from 1875, saw Beaufort Castle rise in the late 1870s beside Castle Dounie, the old seat.159 The next Lord, Simon Joseph, raised the Lovat Scouts in 1899 for the war in South Africa and chaired the Forestry Commission from 1919 to 1927.162 He married Laura Lister in 1910, whom John Singer Sargent had painted as a child.167
Shimi Lovat and the present chief
Simon Fraser, called Shimi, born in 1911, led No. 4 Commando at Dieppe in 1942 and landed on Sword Beach on 6 June 1944 with his piper, Bill Millin. His eldest son, Simon, Master of Lovat, died in March 1994, a year before him.17 Wikipedia credits the 1994 sale of Beaufort Castle to Shimi in one article and to his son in another.917
The present chief, Simon Christopher Joseph Fraser, born in 1977, succeeded his grandfather in 1995.18 He is living, so this Clan Fraser family tree gives only his name, year of birth and title.
Why the Lords Lovat carry two numbers
Outlander, Jamie Fraser and the real Lord Lovat
Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander novels place their invented hero, Jamie Fraser, in this clan. In Dragonfly in Amber of 1992 the real Lord Lovat is Jamie’s grandfather.11 Gabaldon says she changed nothing in Lovat’s life “save for grafting an illegitimate and totally fictional branch onto his family tree by making him Jamie Fraser’s grandfather.”6 She took the surname from a line in Eric Linklater’s The Prince in the Heather about a Fraser of the Master of Lovat’s regiment who survived.5 Jamie and his kin are fiction, so they stay off this chart and have their own Outlander Fraser family tree.
Questions about the Clan Fraser family tree
Who is the chief of Clan Fraser of Lovat today
Simon Fraser, born in 1977, sixteenth Lord Lovat by the peerage and eighteenth by the clan’s count, has been chief since 1995.181
Whether Jamie Fraser of Outlander was a real person
Jamie Fraser is fictional. Diana Gabaldon made the real Lord Lovat his grandfather through an invented illegitimate son.6
People and sources
A page of its own lists all 16 people on the chart, each with a short note and the sources for it, and the 18 numbered sources this article cites. It also gives the credits of the portraits and this page as a reference in the APA, MLA, Chicago and Harvard styles, ready to copy.