Thursday 28 May 2015

Twenty years is too long

I spend rather too long on trying to join dots on long dead, distant relatives at the expense of maintaining contact with the living.
I was forcibly reminded of this the other day when I finally figured out a long time puzzle in the family tree and went to share it with a descendant of John BAIN and Sinclair MANSON whom I knew would be interested *.
Too late. She had died in the too long an interval since we'd been in contact, which I was rather shocked to note was 20 years ago.
That did lead me into an, ongoing, update on the more modern branches of my BAIN relatives in New Zealand.
Two others lost in the interim (so far), but I did also re-connect with the last surviving representative of her generation - great to catch up, and to get another representative down from Donald BAIN and Maggie TAYLOR into the DNA tested category for posterity and future research into our Caithness inter-connections.
If interested in exploring your genetic connections, do consider a FamilyFinder test from FamilyTreeDNA, and if a descendant of Donald and Maggie, the autosomal DNA project FFLornaHen would love to hear from you.

* For anyone else who may be interested in the ancestry of John WARES, whose death index/certificate I'd not found all those years ago - the phrase in probate records "who died on or about (insert date here)", covers a multitude of sins, but I'd never found one two years out before.
In years past I'd given up looking through the fiche index for the matching death.
Now, we can simply click on a website.
There he was, right day and month, two years later than the probate stated he had died (yes it was a probate well after the event).
Turns out that his parents were John WARES and Janet BAIN in Staxigoe, Wick, Caithness.
FamilySearch tree has been updated to connect him to his parents, my WorldConnect Database LornaHenderson will be updated shortly.
No known connection, yet, between his mother Janet BAIN and his wife Jamesina BAIN's families.

Sunday 10 May 2015

The BATEMAN Family

This photograph may be of use to someone.
It comes from my Nana DAVIDSON's photo album and was labelled by my Aunt Isabel as "The Bateman family  no relations"
Taken at Wrigglesworth & Binns studio in either Wellington, Christchurch or Dunedin, but most likely Dunedin.
Further over in the album is a photo of a young man on a bike labelled Ted Bateman, possibly the one on the left above, and even further over, two baby photos labelled Ted and Bert Bateman, another of a young girl labelled Ruby Bateman luxuriating against a fur rug!

A quick search of the NZ BDM Historical indexes indicates they could be three of the children of John Henry BATEMAN and Annie Logan REDPATH, which couple married in 1894.
PapersPast helpfully provides a marriage notice:
MARRIAGES.
Bateman Redpath. On 20th June, at the residence of the bride's mother, Mt. Stuart, by the Rev. Jas. Skinner, M.A., Waitahuna, John Henry Bateman, eldest son of Thomas Henry Bateman, late of Bampton, Oxfordshire, England, to Annie Logan, fourth daughter of the late Thomas Redpath, Mt. Stuart.
(from Tuapeka Times, Volume XXVI, Issue 4116, 7 July 1894, Page 2)
Which does make me rather puzzled as to location at the moment.
Redpath however is a good Borders name, so perhaps Adam DAVIDSON's network of friends includes Annie's family, although by the dates, the friendship seems likely to be a generation closer to present day.

Nephew Dodds

On my Round TUIT is a task to work through Nana's photo album scanning the photos, and publishing them, some for identification purposes.
The album itself has seen better days,


but does hold a treasure trove of photos, mostly from the DAVIDSON/BAIN side of the family, some even identified, albeit well after the event, by my late Aunt Isabel HENDERSON. These notes were invaluable to me when I began, all those years ago, to try and work out who on earth was who, and where they all came from.
Whereas the BAIN and HENDERSON side of the family has some chance of finding others in NZ with the same photos and some family knowledge, I am the sole remaining DAVIDSON descendant from the two brothers (Adam and James) who emigrated in the late 1870s, all of their siblings remaining in Scotland, with only Agnes (below) moving away - to Gateshead.
The next generations spread further afield with representatives in Canada and Australia as well.

The photo selected today was labelled as a nephew of Grandfather Davidsons named DODDS.
Research had indicated that he was therefore likely to be a son of William DODDS and Agnes Robertson DAVIDSON who married at Chirnside (Berwickshire) in 1869 where the known sons are James (born Chirnside, 1870), John (b. Chirnside, 1871) or William (b. abt 1877 Gateshead).
The only other obviously identified photo of this branch is of a family group



labelled as "Mr & Mrs DODDS & family Grandfather Davidsons relations", with the reverse showing the photographer as Woodcock & Robinson.
This same photographic studio was responsible for other unlabelled photographs in the album  (same backdrop) that seem likely to be the prior generation of either the FAIRBAIRN or DAVIDSON forebears of my Great Grandad Adam DAVIDSON, and it is assumed, his sister in the photograph above, Agnes Robertson DODDS nee DAVIDSON.
BUT, those two children look further apart in age than James and John would be, and if the younger is actually a girl and Rosina, where's her other older brother? (All survived to adulthood.)
Wonder why there's no photo of daughter Rosina Hunter DODDS (b. 1874, Chirnside)?

Anyone recognise these photos?

Here's a WikiTree descendant chart from John DAVIDSON, father of Adam and Agnes.
Anyone interested in contributing to WikiTree to update the family knowledge would be most welcome, registration is free.