Campbell

The Clan Campbell Society of North America describes the Campbell sett as thirteen bands of blue, green and black, identical to the Black Watch sett but in lighter shades. The register's Campbell record says the same, with Black Watch in darker dyes. The register holds the threadcount only behind a login, so none is given here; the swatch image is the register's own rendering of the registered sett.

The register dates the Campbell (Clan/Family) entry to 1 January 1739 and ties it to the founding of the 43rd Regiment, later the Black Watch. It gives no designer. The Clan Campbell Society of North America says the Black Watch was drawn from independent companies, three of them Campbell. Neither source describes a record of the pattern being chosen for the clan on a particular date.

The register says the pattern became the official Campbell tartan in the early 1800s, without citing a document. Sources do not agree on the direction of the link. The register presents Campbell as a clan use of the Black Watch pattern. The society presents Black Watch as the Campbell sett in darker dyes, and the Cockburn Collection (about 1810 to 1815) holds a specimen of the Government tartan labelled Campbell Argyll. What the surviving records show is a shared sett and a shared early nineteenth-century labelling. They do not show which name came first, and no source consulted settles it. The Cockburn specimens add a point: the same Government sett carries four clan labels in that one collection, so a label on an early specimen records what a collector or merchant called the cloth, not necessarily a clan's own claim to it.

The chiefs are the Dukes of Argyll. The society says the present Duke approves the Campbell tartan, and the register says he wears it. The society names four official Campbell tartans, citing Alastair Campbell of Airds, The Campbell Tartan (1985): Campbell, Campbell of Cawdor, Campbell of Breadalbane and Campbell of Loudoun. The three branch setts are described in the sections below.

The register lists several Campbell entries. Campbell (Clan/Family, STA 1) is the Black Watch-based sett. Campbell (Military, STA 12) is dated 1870. Campbell Dress #1 and Campbell Hunting are also listed, but their records were not read. Campbell of Argyll appears in four versions. The society says the past seven chiefs disavowed the Campbell of Argyll sett and quotes Airds: it is not a pattern with the chief's approval as an official Campbell tartan. Registration does not imply chief's approval, so a registered Argyll sett can be both on the register and unapproved.

Campbell of Cawdor is the first of the three branch setts the Clan Campbell Society of North America lists beside the main Campbell tartan. The society describes it as the Black Watch sett with red and light blue stripes added, and calls it one of Wilson's variations on the military sett. The register's record (STA reference 2) gives a tartan date of 1 January 1798, names no designer, and says the present chief authorises it.

Its note carries a naming history that the society's summary leaves out: the pattern was numbered first, was named Argyle in 1798 and Argylle in 1819, and only later appeared as Campbell of Cawdor. On that sequence Cawdor is the latest of three names on one cloth, not the oldest. The register cites the Cawdor name in W. and A. Smith (1850) and in the 1880 Clans Originaux, and records a sample in the Scottish Tartans Authority Dalgety Collection. Both printed appearances are mid-nineteenth century, so the earliest documented tie between this sett and the Cawdor family is no earlier than 1850 in the sources read.

Three limits apply. The 1798 date is the register's date for the pattern, not a date on which the Cawdor Campbells adopted it. The phrase "Wilson's variation" is the society's wording; the register names no maker for the added stripes. The threadcount is held only for logged-in register users, so none is given here.

For a reader choosing between the setts: Cawdor is the one that is both chief-authorised and distinguishable from plain Campbell by red and light blue, whereas Breadalbane and Loudoun are told apart by yellow, and by white and yellow.

Campbell of Breadalbane takes the Campbell colours and adds yellow stripes. The register files it under Military, not Clan/Family (STA reference 209, designer Wilsons of Bannockburn, tartan date 1 January 1793). That classification matters: the pattern is recorded first as a regimental cloth, and its use as a Campbell clan tartan is the clan society's later adoption.

The register's note calls the entry a careful reproduction of the Campbell of Breadalbane worn by the Fencibles from 1793 until their disbandment in 1802, authenticated from a regimental uniform belonging to Major Campbell and from period illustrations. So the 1793 date belongs to the original regimental cloth, and the register's own record rests on a uniform and illustrations this site has not seen. The reproduction's date is not stated.

The society gives 1810 as the earliest sighting, which is a different claim from the register's 1793 and sits seventeen years later. Neither source explains the gap. The most that can be said is that a yellow-striped Black Watch variant is recorded in a regimental context at the end of the eighteenth century and is in circulation under the Campbell name by 1810 on the society's account.

The society says the sett is traditionally worn by the Breadalbane or Glenorchy branches. The register's military category places no limit on wearers, and nothing read here shows a ruling by a chief on who may wear it. Of the four official Campbell tartans it is the closest in colour to Loudoun, which carries a white and yellow stripe where Breadalbane carries yellow only.

Campbell of Loudoun is the least common of the four official Campbell tartans. The society calls it the rarest, says the chief, Mac Cailein Mor, acknowledges it, and lists it from Alastair Campbell of Airds (1985). It is almost identical to Breadalbane, with a white and yellow stripe where Breadalbane has yellow only.

The register's record (STA reference 4436) is in Clan/Family, names no designer and gives a tartan date of 30 November 1988. That date is a recording date and says nothing about the pattern's age. The note is more informative: it says the entry appears to be the accepted version shown in the 1906 W. and A. K. Johnston books, and that it differs from the earlier sett in Clans Originaux, where the blue has no black tramlines. At least two printed Loudoun patterns therefore exist, and a cloth sold as Loudoun may follow either. The register places Castle Loudoun in Ayrshire, five miles east of Kilmarnock.

What the record does not show: who made the 1906 version, when the Loudoun name was first attached to a sett, and the threadcount, which sits behind the register login.

The society says the tartan is for people with Loudoun lineage or a connection to that cadet branch. The register states no rule. Because two versions exist, anyone ordering Loudoun should ask the weaver which printed source the cloth follows.