Membership

General Information

Until the late eighteenth century, there were very few Mathesons anywhere outside Scotland. Today, however, the family has spread across the globe and there are few countries where the name is not known. Norway is just one example of where many Mathesons have settled. The Clan Matheson Society was set up in the mid-twentieth century to help members keep in touch with their family and roots. As well as running their own events and keeping in contact with their own communities, each branch of the Society takes every opportunity they can to get together. This is helped by regular Clan Gatherings, every six years in Scotland and in-between hosted by other Branches. In addition, members often visit branches informally in other countries. If there is no branch in your country, please contact the Clan Chief for further assistance.

The Clan publishes an annual Newsletter. Previous years' Newsletters are available to everyone online; the current year's is available only to members both as a free printed version and online in the members-only section. These frequently contain an article on Clan history or genealogy and there are sections of this website on these topics (see History tab above). Contributions of articles from members are very welcome and are collated annually by the Branches. The newsletter editor is happy to be contacted for advice.

Members-Only Information

We are developing a password-protected area for information confidential to Members (see Members drop-down). Members wanting access are asked to approach the local Chief's Lieutenant or their appointed deputy in the Branch who, having checked their membership, sends a request containing the Member's full name (by which they are known to their Branch) and membership number (if the Branch has these), plus their email address to the webmaster for this site; along with confirmation that they are a member. This will lead to the generation of a password to be used with their email address as user-id. If the Member has an @clanmatheson.org email address (because they have a role in the Clan) this should be used and the user-id will be just the bit before the @. Webmaster will respond by email directly to the Member giving them confirmation of their user-id and password. Branches are asked to let Webmaster know if anyone with access to the members-only area ceases to be a Member so that their access can be rescinded.

The members-only area was briefly announced in the 2025 International Newsletter. It is up the Branches if they want actively to encourage their members to have access but it is early days at the moment so there is not all that much there yet and most of what there is will appeal mainly to those researching their family history. It is part of a larger project to to assemble the Clan's archives on-line for long term preservation and much of this will then be publicised via this part of the site, with the personal or confidential information, e.g. genealogical or copyright, available only to members. Members are asked to respect this confidentiality and not make any of this material available to those who are not themselves members. Current contents include:

• Matheson Family Trees derived from information collected over the years and loaded into a Webtrees database.
• An Extended Genealogy of the Clan Chiefs
• Information on the Clan tartan
• A copy of the current newsletter (previous years are on the main site)
• Additions to the generally available lists of books and of articles where copyright or confidentiality preclude their wider publication.
• Other archival material, e.g. pictures, again where copyright or confidentiality preclude their wider publication.