Welcome to the website for The Clan Hope of Craighall Society
Officially Recognized by The Late Hereditary Chief of Clan Hope
Sir John Carl Alexander Hope, 18th Bt. of Craighall
and also by the
Current Chief: Sir Alexander Archibald Douglas Hope, OBE, 19th Bt. of Craighall, Chief of the Name and Arms of Hope, Chief of Clan Hope
Craighall Seal and document from Sir John Hope, Sir Thomas Hope's son, and written in the year 1636
Annual Membership Renewals for 2026.
Annual membership renewals are now past due date to remain Active for the 2026 calendar year.
If you are an annual member our membership Secretary will be sending a membership renewal advice email please check that we have your current email address.
Annual members should receive a reminder to renew each year in December for payment by 31st January in the following year.
You can renew your membership at anytime to become Active again or apply for New Membership.
While we use PayPal for Membership dues you can still use your Credit or Debit Card to pay your membership without a PayPal account.
Just fill in your membership renewal form and after clicking on Submit click on the PayPal payment link on the next page.
Choose a 'PayPal Guest Checkout'
This allows memebrs to pay with a debit or credit card safely through the PayPal gateway without creating or logging into a Paypal account.
Just select the option to 'pay with card' enter your details and decline the option to create an account.
There is no fee charged to you when paying this way or if your pay with a PayPal account.
Don't forget to keep your email address up to date so you don't miss renewal and continue receiving the Newsletter.
Clan Hope of Craighall Society Newsletter Update
Clan Hope - Naidheachdan Dňchas - Hope News Newsletter will continue to be sent to Active Members on a quarterly basis.
Ours Newsletter Editor Maggie Hope Tucker, publishes 4 newsletters a year which are emailed to Active Members.
Newsletter are sent at the beginning of January, April, July, and October
We need your contributions for the newsletter to remain relevant.
These can be stories about your family line, events you may be planning or have recently held, announcements of Scottish and Celtic events, recipes, stories as well as photos that might illustrate your contribution.
Really if you think you have something that other Clan Hope members would like to read about then please contribute.
It's your clan and we want to make the newsletter the hub for members to find out about what is happening in the clan around the world.
Please make sure you don't miss out on receiving your copy of the newsletter.
Just check your email address on the Active Members page and, if it isn't correct, email our Membership Secretary, Cynthia Hope Henderson via membership[at]clanhope.org but replace the [at] with an @ symbol.
You can find an archive of previous newsletters via the Newsletters menu under the CLAN heading on the left of this page.
Clan Hope of Craighall Tartan for the USA, North America and the UK
We are excited to announce two new official kilt makers for authentic Clan Hope tartan kilts, kilted skirts, shashes, scarves and plaids in the Northern Hemiphere.
Margaret Nelson of Tacoma Traditional Kilts is being sent 16 yards of our tartan and will soon be ready to take orders.
In Edinburgh, Scotland, Jack Hope of Braw Kilts is our official kilt maker for the UK and we are negotiating a supply of Hope tartan soon.
Meanwhile our official kilt maker in Australia St. Kilda Retail still has Hope Tartan and other items including Hope Caps Badges, Kilt pins and Plaid brooches.
The Hope Surname DNA Project
For several years there has been an ongoing project to collect DNA from those persons bearing the Hope surname.
The project is conducted through Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) and is currently administered by Richard R Hope.
With FTDNA we are able to identify all of the different haplogroups that the different Hopes are related to, separate each Hope into their correct haplogroup and identify the relationship distance between all of the Hope’s currently in the project.
Although FTDNA is similar to other DNA tests such as ancestry.com it is not the same and the data obtained by both tests is not 100% compatible.
As most of you know the Hope surname originated as a place name so we we should and do find different DNA in the different Hope family groups. To date FTDNA has identified 20 different haplogroups in our participants. Surprisingly, the majority of our participants fall into only two haplogroups the largest group is the Craighall line which is related to the Chief of Clan Hope, the second largest group is the Viking line which traces back to Norway. Both groups have been indigenous to the Scottish/English border for hundreds of years and are still represented there. Members of both groups can now be found in England, Scotland, Canada, Australia and the USA.
The remaining 18 groups are currently found in Ireland and the USA, three groups are indigenous to Ireland, the Hopes of Westmeath can be traced back to the 12th century.
A fourth group from the Craighall line is also found in Ireland.
The remaining 15 groups are found in the USA and only have one or two samples in each haplogroup.
We call these orphan groups since they are only found in the USA and in most cases can not be traced back to Europe.
Many people think that the Hope surname DNA project is part of Clan Hope however it is a totally separate organization, that said there is definitely a symbiotic relationship between the two programs.
For those of you who have participated in the FTDNA Hope surname DNA project it is recommended that you sign into FTDNA an least once a year to review your test results, they can and sometimes do change, also look at your access authorization, when you set up your FTDNA account you set the level of access to your information by the administrators, most accounts should be set at “limited” which give the administrators access to your data but limits what they can do with it. The “minimum” and “advanced “ access should seldom be used.
If no one in your direct family line has never participated in the FTDNA Hope surname DNA project please consider doing so, you may be surprised at what you will find out about your families histories.
Also, if you have done a DNA test through another company please submit the date to FTDNA, although not a perfect match it will provide valuable data to FTDNA and the Hope surname DNA project administrators.
The Hope surname DNA project has been a success, we have connected family members across the oceans plus we have connected members of the same family, brothers and sisters who did not know they had siblings.
Our success to-date has been because of everyone’s participation in the project.
Post by Richard R Hope