Tuesday 4 December 2012

Sidetracking

An update to my WorldConnect db LornaHenderson has been in train for a wee while now.
Anytime I run a check over the gedcom for potential problems I find either silly typos, outright mistakes, or gaps in the data that can be easily filled. Sidetracks always ensue.
The most recent proved a very interesting exercise.
It highlighted that I'd never found, or more accurately thought I'd never found, the family of Robert & Janet (SCOTT) WIGHT in the 1851 census. Wrong!
I'd found them years ago, but had shelved the id as I hadn't known anything about sons William and James, and the George with them was the wrong age. Nothing had led me back to review this isolated family sitting in my database.
So off I set to find the fate of the "newfound" children.

Several trees showed William as emigrating to Ohio and living in Iowa, married to a Mary SIMINS.
As his nephew William had indeed emigrated to Ohio, and been visited there by my 2*great grandmother, this seemed plausible, especially as the 1860 Ohio census age fitted.
I couldn't find a marriage to confirm the id, nor the birth of first daughter Margaret, supposedly born Edinburgh Feb 1854.
Subesquent census data, and William's death notice however all placed him as 10 years older and doubts began to creep in, so I moved William and Mary and family to show up (next update) in the WorldConnect potential rellies only (db LornaPotential) pending more info, and moved on to siblings Isabella and James.
With no sightings in the 1861 census I wondered if they might  not have survived - which may never have been able to be proven if it was between 1851 and the beginning of civil registration in 1855.
Thankfully for me, not so thankfully for the poor family, there were Isabella and James, both dying of typhus in Coldstream with a few months of each other, aged 4 and 17 respectively.
On a hunch, I then also searched for William - bingo. He had been the first of the family to succumb to typhus, aged 21, in February 1855 - so whoever the chap is in Ohio/Iowa aint him.

Always interested to find trees that match mine rather exactly, and note that my rethinks/subsequent research on who links to whom that I've documented aren't reflected on what look like copied data. (The earlier WIGHTs rethink refers.)


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