A Braw Day at Maclay

T’was a bonnie day, it was! A spring morning near the lake—with the birds chirpin’ and the pipes pipin’. And the pretty tartans a-flappin’ in the breeze!

Oh sorry, Tallahasseeans, for the brogue and the burr. But April 6—known in the United States and Canada as Tartan Day, in Scotland as its 1320 Independence Day, and here in Northeast Tallahassee as the day when Louise Fleischmann Maclay donated Maclay Gardens to the State of Florida 72 years ago—was both a thrilling Scottish spectacle of commemoration and a folksy family reunion.

In pleated plaids, pipers droned and drummers beat a heart-pounding march across the oak-circled lawn of the Maclay House. For many of the 43 members of the Alfred B. and Louise Maclay family, who had come from across the country, it was their first time visiting the property. But decked out in specially created “Maclay Tartan” baseball caps and in a variety of plaid dresses, shorts, and shoes, the Maclay clan seemed to grow more proud as the day progressed.

“This gives a new sense of family,” says 14-year-old Clara Maclay. “I now know where it all started.”

And that story is long. The original property was called “Killearn,” in honor of Alfred Maclay’s Scottish roots. It was always envisioned by the New York Maclays as a vast and formal gardens. Surrounded by farmland and lake-dotted woods, it was the perfect winter respite. When Alfred Maclay died, his wife, Louise, moved down year-round. Her grandsons say they remember her as a woman with strong opinions and upper-class manners. “We had to call her ‘Grandmother,’ not ‘Grandma,’” says one.

Photos by Tory Stolper Photography

Though she was an heiress in the Fleischmann’s Yeast family, Louise held a fierce loyalty to all things Scottish. She open her Killearn Gardens to the public in 1946 and donated the 307 acres to the state in 1953. Incensed that 12 years later a nearby housing development seemed to appropriate the name “Killearn” and give the streets “Irish” monikers, Louise had her gardens renamed “Maclay.”

The City of Tallahassee has always embraced Maclay Gardens, which was named TripAdvisor’s No. 1 botanical garden in the country in 2023. Volunteer organizations, like the Friends of Maclay, assist the Florida Park Service in the upkeep of its famous azalea and rose gardens, winding brick paths, and lakeside vistas. They also learn about the flora, the fauna, and even the fairies who reside there.

Nancy McClure, a volunteer, had fantasized and then written a chapbook about such Scottish fairies she called the Wee Ones, who “live in a Maclay Gardens’ tree.” Visiting children loved the tale and began to write letters to the fairies, which they stuck in crevices in the oak. Creating the fairies’ origin story, McClure realized there was a vibrant Scottish connection to the gardens that wasn’t being told. Other volunteers embraced the idea of highlighting that relationship. But being Scottish, a Maclay fairy or one of its clan would need a tartan. The quest for an identifying tartan would draw the extended members of the Maclay family into a closer relationship with the gardens their grandmother loved.

Photos by Tory Stolper Photography

Eric King, past president of the St. Andrew’s Society of Tallahassee, says that in the 1800s, clan chiefs were a bit like feudal landlords, providing clothing for those who lived, worked, and defended their land. The tartan’s variegated plaid patterns, seen originally in China and Austria, had come to the Scottish Highlands centuries before, but by the 1600s they were seen as wearable designations of clan loyalty. But Killearn in Scotland didn’t have its own tartan pattern. The Tallahassee fairies were tartan-less. And therefore, so were the progeny of the Maclay family.

But volunteer Nancy McClure was on a mission. She identified a “tartan specialist,” 89-year-old Zellna Shaw, who after much research and extrapolation pointed to the likely association of the Scottish Maclays with the Stuart Appin clan. This led to the historically accurate design of a banner and tartan pattern specifically for the Maclays. The banner—with its white, bearded unicorn and gold fringe, and the red and blue crisscrossed threads of the plaid—was unveiled by the oldest and the youngest of the Maclays and paraded in the bright April sun.

After the tartan was formally “consecrated” with a dip of its corner in a silvered dish of scotch, the pipers again began to drone their ancient pipes. And it seems likely the Wee Ones in the oak were clapping their little hands.