!SOURCE: Rev. Dr. Donald MacKinnon, THE MACLEODS: THE GENEALOGY OF A
CLAN, Section III, "Cadet Families", Edinburgh, The Clan MacLeod Society,
1970, pp. 97, 98, 99.
Roderick was born in 1728, and, on 6th February 1757, joined the Scots
Brigade in Holland as ensign in Captain Dundas'' Company of Gordon''s
Regiment, and, on 3rd January 1763, he was promoted to the rank of
lieutenant. On 9th March 1774, he became a captain, and in February
1783 his name appears in the Dutch War Office Records with the rank of
Major. [THE BRAVE SONS OF SKYE, p. 112.] He retired from the Scots
Brigade in 1787, and returned to Skye to become tacksman of
Balmeanach in the following year. He was home in Skye on leave in
1773, and when on a jaunt on the mainland he met Dr. Johnson and James
Boswell on Mam Rattachan on their way to Glenelg and Skye. Under 1st
September, Boswell writes: ''On the top of it (Mam Rattachan) we met
Captain MacLEod of Balmeanach (a Dutch officer come from Skye) riding
with his sword slung about him''. [Boswell: JOURNAL OF A TOUR (Pottle''s
and Bennett''s edit.), p. 109.] Captain MacLeod, as he then was, returned
to Skye before the distinguished visitors left the Island. Boswell
mentions [Ibid. p. 239.] that he was one of the company that foregathered
at Armadale on 1st October 1773 to bid farewell to Dr. Johnson and
himself. It would appear that Major Roderick MacLeod was married
twice, and that he had a large family by both wives, but death claimed
most of his children in infancy, and their names are not known. By his
first wife, whose name has not come down to us, he had two daughters,
who survived, married and left descendants.
Major Roderick MacLeod''s second wife is said to have been a Miss
Campbell of Ardnamurchan, whom he married about 1780, and by her he
had at least two sons and a daughter.
When the tack of Balmeanach expired in 1811, Major Roderick MacLeod,
who was then eighty-three years of age, took up residence at Vatten, in
the parish of Duirinish, where he died, according to the SCOTS MAGAZINE,
on 31st October 1814, aged eighty-six years. He was the last of the
family to occupy Balmeanach.