First found in counties Armagh and Down, where they were anciently known as the Mac Giolla Fhiondain, devotees of St. Fintan an ancient sept of Oriel,(roughly equivalent to Ulster,) and the clann being one of the founding septs of Northern Ireland.

In the late 18th century, Irish Families began emigrating to North America in the search of a plot of land to call their own. This pattern of emigration grew steadily until the 1840s when the Great Potato Famine of the 1840s cause thousands of Irish to flee the death and disease that accompanied the disaster. Those that made it alive to the shores of the United States and British North America (later to become Canada) were, however, instrumental in the development of those two powerful nations. Many of these Irish immigrants proudly bore the name of McClendon: James McLinden arrived in Philadelphia Pennsylvania in 1768; Arthur McLindon arrived in Philadelphia in 1858; William McLindon arrived in Philadelphia in 1880.

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