!BIOGRAPHY: Rev. Dr. Donald MacKinnon and Alick Morrison, THE
MACLEODS--THE GENEALOGY OF A CLAN, Section II, Edinburgh, The Clan
MacLeod Society, 1968, pp. 10-11, 17.
Donald MacLeod, as a young man, took up the ''profession of arms'', and
was commissioned Lieutenant, on 20th August 1794, in the 71st
Highland Regiment. He became Major, on 24th September 1808, in the
3rd Regiment of Inverness-shire Local Militia, receiving his commission
from Sir James Grant of Grant, Baronet, Lord Lieutenant of
Inverness-shire. Major MacLeod, in 1820, sold the remainder of his lease
of Talisker, and left for Van Diemen''s Land (now Tasmania) on the ship
SKELTON, which sailed from Skye in June or July 1820. On arrival in Van
Diemen''s Land, on 30th November 1820, he received a grant of 2,000
acres of land, and was allotted seven servants. He named his property
''Talisker'', in memory of the home he had left in Skye, which his family
had occupied for two hudnred years. Later, in 1837, he crossed over to
Sydney, New South Wales, where some of his sons had settled, and there
he died on 11th April 1838. Major Donald MacLeod married, on 25th April
1806, Catherine, daughter of Alexander (alasdair Ruadh) MacLean, 14th
of the MacLeans of Coll, with issue.
As already stated, Major Donald MacLeod died, on 11th April 1838, in
Sydney. His widow, at an advanced age, paid a visit to the ''old country'',
where she remained for a few years, and then returned to Australia,
where she died, on 22nd February 1863, in Victoria. Major MacLeod was
succeeded in the representation of the MacLeods of Talisker by his
eldest son.