28th: Cleugh Burnfoot

My main Family Tree web pages have been updated - only 4 months since the last update!
I think that all of the descendant charts are now in the new interactive format, ie lines able to be opened/closed in order to get a better picture of where someone "fits".

Took the opportunity to include the before/after images of Cleugh Burnfoot, home to James & Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON and family from at least 1841 to 1847.
These come courtesy of cousin Bill (for which many thanks) who visited Scotland recently and obediently went to Forth and knocked on the door of the only house along the B7016 that could be the place I saw back in 1994/5. Good to be proven right, and also many thanks to the current owners for welcoming Bill & Cheryl into their home and supplying the "before" photos.
What a marvellous transformation.
These can be found in the Places link - scroll down to SCT > Forth and click on the little information icon (the individual place pages can be renumbered when I rebuild the web site, so I'm only including the overall link here).

Also took the opportunity to include a page for David FAIRBAIRN of Hawkesbury in order to share the wonderful photo Gordon sent me some time ago.
My FAIRBAIRN surname page has also been updated and now includes a few more skeleton descendant charts for the lines now showing as a "match" thanks to the participants in the DNA project.

Several broken links have also been fixed.

That William

The William LILLICRAP mentioned in the post of the 13th is now confirmed as belonging to John & Jessie (REEP) LILLICRAP.
As a result of this, and a number of other recent updates, WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has now been updated.

26th: New DNA link

Courtesy of Dick Eastman's newsletter, anyone contemplating dna testing may care to visit this site.
It contains a newly written 12 page guide "How to Identify Ancestors and Confirm Relationships through DNA Testing."
The link has been added to Lorna's Links.

22nd: Well travelled

Normally Fairbairn DNA project news appears in the blog related to the project.
This exception is because the latest kit order is for a line that should show up on my side of Lineage 1 - a descendant of Walter & Clarissa (FAIRBAIRN) FAIRBAIRN.
The contact has of course led to some updates to the tree.
Walter must have led an interesting life - certainly peripatetic, as I've found him traveling to/from California and Shanghai, Hong Kong, Burma, India in the 1930s. One passenger list shows him as an oil well driller.

13th: Which William?

A granddtr of William & Fanny Adelaide (PIERCEY) LILLICRAP contacted me as a result of William being in my BDM database of "likely rellies" LornaPotential on RootsWeb WorldConnect.
I'm now convinced that he does fit into the family of John & Mary Ann (SPURR) LILLICRAP family but whether as William son of Richard Henry & Jane (SPURR) LILLICRAP or as the son of John & Jessie (REEP) LILLICRAP is still open as there's contradictory information yet to be resolved.
On balance, I suspect he's the son of John & Jessie given the references to Leathertor, Walkhampton.

11th: Someone is wrong on the internet...

While doing some FAIRBAIRN research I noted that someone had kindly uploaded the death cert. for James JARDINE to their ancestry tree.
Another tree had claimed his wife Mary FAIRBAIRN in rather fanciful fashion (hence the title of this post - I am often pointed at this xkcd cartoon "Duty calls" when I comment on yet another tree that has children born before their parents, marriages at age 5 etc etc etc.
So some updates ensued in my tree for the JARDINE/FAIRBAIRN family of Hawick, the 1911 census making me realise how come I'd not found all of the children in other census data - 12 children, but only 3 living by that time, which also added 3 unknown and presumably shortlived members to the family.

8th: OAG twigs

Ancestry's Recent Member Connect Activity alerted me to someone researching the family of David & Johnina (BAIN) OAG, so I had a look to see what light might be shed on exactly how many children Johnina actually had.
Time is running out for first hand knowledge as apparently there is only one of the children still living.
As yet I have no corroboration that Christina married to a James someone with children Alec, Dora and Jean, and supposed sister Janet married to a John someone with children Jean, John, James, do actually belong in this family.
Wonder if Janet is actually half sister Janet Flett BAIN instead? To date I've not sighted the latter beyond 1901.
Can anyone shed further light on this?

Railway records

The heading is a bit of a misnomer.
I was following information that Ancestry had included a number of Railway records and thought I'd see what I could find about Sir Robert TURNBULL and his railway oriented offspring.
Oddly enough, and most unusually (not), I got sidetracked once I realised that it had been some time since I last checked what might now be more readily available for this family.
A number of wills have now been found in the England & Wales, National Probate Calendar (Index of Wills and Administrations), 1861-1941, and several death dates and places found for assorted TURNBULLs, and the SPEAKMAN offspring in particular.
Along the way I found that one descendant, Lionel SPEAKMAN, went from Manager of the Furness Railway Co. to become London Manager, later Board Member, for Dalgety & Co. He appears in shipping records to-ing and fro-ing between the UK and Australia/New Zealand, and on one trip, was over in Perth catching up on his brother Robert Percy SPEAKMAN, who appears to have tried his hand at the Murchison Goldfields before taking up farming in Western Australia.

1st: Ignore "recent changes"

Any "recent change" index showing changes to great great grannie Honor ROWE nee DAWE can be ignored, I was tweaking data to work better with the new version of Second Site (my web page generator from my TMG database) when it groups the events shown for each person.