Showing posts with label Bermuda. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bermuda. Show all posts

Sunday, 16 September 2012

3rd daughter identified

John has cracked the puzzle as to who the third surviving daughter was for James, tailor of Hamilton Bermuda and wife May MOFFAT.
He is working his way through James' 1879 will, which names the daughters, providing Naomi LEE as the missing one, presumably married to executor "son-in-law: George Andrews LEE.
Back to the Rootsweb Bermuda website and the family of Robert LEE & Mary McPHEE for more info.
Naomi's surname isn't mentioned, but it does show George Andrews LEE's first wife as Clarinda Darling FRITH, daughter of Hezekiah FRITH and Mary MATSON.
So Clarinda's brother Hezekiah FRITH married Naomi's elder sister Catherine Hadden Moffat RICHARDSON - keeping things in the family.
A quick search of Genealogy Bank newspapers adds a few snippets as to Naomi's life in New York, whence she had emigrated by 1875ish.  A custody battle for her McDONALD grandchildren, orphaned by the death of their mother (Ada Julia Alicia McDONALD nee LEE) in 1894 makes several column inches in several papers.
My Richardson page has been updated as the charts should now include one or two other twigs, both from the above, and from assorted digging around trying to find living descendants from the families listed, and that of James & Margaret (MABON) RICHARDSON in particular.

Wednesday, 15 August 2012

I'm almost convinced

But have I convinced anyone else?
Some additional circumstantial evidence for the theory of the the two James families, that of James and Margaret (MABON) RICHARDSON, and that of James & Christian (OUTERSON) RICHARDSON being one and the same James:
-  George (mother MABON) also emigrated to the States and is to be found in Omro, Winnebago, Wisconsin in 1860 three census pages before his presumed step-brother Robert who has his mother Christian (OUTERSON) living with him.
- George 's wife is Margaret MELDRUM
- David, George's assumed step brother names his daughter Ella Meldrum RICHARDSON
- a snippet view of "New Brunswick Lineages" on google books brought to my attention by John shows James as 1770 (Edinburgh) -1850 (Lower Canada) - which age makes it highly likely that he remarried (Christian was born around 1796)
So, just maybe John's Adam, born 1835 New York, belongs to James and Christian? This is only 3 years after their last known Scottish son was born.
All pure speculation of course, but even though there isn't, yet, a proven dna signature for James' line(s), we do still have a Bermuda, and a New York connection.

Love to hear from any direct male line RICHARDSON descendants of the above families who might like to explore this further.

Sunday, 12 August 2012

Speculation rife

Couldn't quite give up on the RICHARDSONs.
Went back to my 2008 notes from the Morebattle Gateshaw session records to see if there might be a re-marriage of the widowed James, whose wife Margaret MABON had died in childbirth in 1812.
Although 8 years seems a little too long to wait to get a mother to his bairns, the family of James and Christian (OUTERSON) RICHARDSON came back into view. There's nothing on the 1820 Eckford marriage entry that indicates James was a widower, just that he was from Morebattle.
I'd never managed to find traces of them in Scottish censuses.
Spurred on by reminding myself that they had a son named Archibald Moffat RICHARDSON (Morebattle, 1832), I widened the net to the States.
An Archibald Moffat name is just too much of a coincidence given the Bermuda James' wife Mary MOFFATT, and her father Archibald MOFFATT.

Son Robert pops up in Winnebago Co., Wisconsin by 1850, stating he was born in Canada! Later censuses correct that back to Scotland, with 1900 adding an emigration date of 1841, and the 1860 having (mother assumed) Christy RICHARDSON, aged 64, born Scotland with the family.
His two subsequent remarriage indexes, between them, show his parents as James RICHARDSON and Christiana "OTTASUS" !
The mistranscriptions of OUTERSON abound, but that one takes the cake.

With the hint of Canada being somehow significant the net got wider.
Up popped son Andrew, with (assumed mother) Christian in the Quebec household in 1881.
Andrew thought he had emigrated in 1837.
One family tree has decided that Christian was born in Yorkshire (census records both indicated Scotland) - but as the Bermuda James married and had one child in Leeds, this may have been a bit of lingering family misinformation?

Another tree claims David for the James/Christian family but I haven't yet verified that one, other than yes, he's the right age, and of more than passing interest, is to be found in Oneida county, New York in one census - where Thomas of Bermuda settled. Well, the same county anyway, Thomas was at Trenton, David at Deerfield - which appear to be about 12 miles apart.

Just maybe, one day we'll find that John's Adam, born 1835 in New York, does belong to James of Morebattle after all, but the father not the son?  He's only 3 years after Archibald Moffat RICHARDSON was born in Morebattle to Christian.


Saturday, 11 August 2012

The difference an s makes

Back to the drawing board.
Having gone from the Bermuda Triangle to the Pirates of the Caribbean*, John has reviewed the information that led us to examine the family of James & Margaret (MABON) RICHARDSON of Morebattle, descendants in Bermuda, Canada and the States - at least.

His relationship has been relegated to one by marriage as it was the granddaughter of James RICHARDSON, tailor in Bermuda, that was the connection, not her husband William Meade RICHARDSON, sometime photographer of Bermuda, later of Wisconsin (Mrs W M RICHARDSON, not Mr W M RICHARDSON).

However, Ralph's and my interest remain because of the Morebattle Gateshaw session connection.

The newly uploaded Richardson page on my family tree pages has been updated to reflect this change.

* The Pirates reference being that James' daughter Catherine Haddon Moffatt RICHARDSON married Hezekiah FRITH, grandson of the pirate.

Tuesday, 7 August 2012

Bermuda!

Some time ago we found a dna match between Ralph and John RICHARDSON.
John's family knowledge started in New York with the birth of an Adam in 1835, but without any knowledge of his parents.
John has been back in touch, having found a snippet that indicates Adam father was a James, tailor, who emigrated to Bermuda with a brother (also a tailor, unnamed, but probably Thomas as his Oneida death is reported in a Bermuda paper and states the relationship to James ).

So, the prior suggestion that his family might be Adam and Margaret (BROWN) RICHARDSON has taken a new turn of events.

James' 1879 obit. brings in a brother John of North Georgetown, and a sister Mrs Samuel MOFFAT of Beechridge, (Beauharnais, Quebec), which most definitely leads to the family of James RICHARDSON & Margaret MABON of Morebattle.
When reading the Gateshaw Session records I had noted this family as being of potential interest, so it just goes to show that all little snippets squirrelled away usually come in handy sooner or later!

John is now on a hunt to definitively link his Adam to James, but there is indeed circumstantial evidence in that he did know that Adam's three sons had a photography studio in Bermuda before returning to their birthplace of Wisconsin.
And I've found that Thomas, a tailor, died 1880 in Oneida, NY, had a son William Thomas, or Thomas William, born Bermuda around 1850, who was a photographer.

Investigations proceed.