Collaborative trees - the upside

Many of you may already have realised I'm a great fan of collaborative trees, WikiTree and FamilySearch in particular.

The downsides (enthusiastic newbies connecting up families with the scantest of evidence, or agin the evidence without a thought) are far far outweighed by the benefits of sharing.

Examples of both hit home strongly last night. (See next post for yesterday's example of the downside.)

For the huge plus side, my weekly Watch list email from FamilySearch highlighted that someone had added both a previously unknown child to the family of my 4x great grandparents Archibald Fairbain and Alison Crosser, and a baptism source for my 3x great grandfather Walter. (FamilySearch / WikiTree)

Which latter in particular is a bit embarrassing.

After all my research into Fairbairns you'd think I'd have gone back and rechecked my early work looking for the gaps that could now be filled.

There he is, baptized just across the border in Norham.
Which fits his 1841 census entry saying he was born in England, even if he did recant on that by 1851.

It's hardly an out of the way place for them to have been.
Courtesy of google we can see that it was 4 miles between Norham and Swinton where by the time the 1851 census came round Walter said he was born, having forgotten that 10 years earlier he'd said "England".

Unfortunately, there appear to only be the two baptisms there, no marriage for Archibald and Alison to fill that record gap, but also none for the presumed eldest son Archibald to contradict that he is the one baptized in Whitsome & Hilton, Berwickshire in 1783. :)
There seems to be only one other Fairbairn baptizing his children around this timeframe (1760 to 1800), a Thomas, with a William and an Ann.

Thank you to the person updating the Fairbairn tree that brought this to my attention.
Updates will ensue on WikiTree (done) and my Webpages
 

Chasing rabbits

I finished a "DNA finds" session at our local Genie group the other week with this image:

and, as always, ignored my own advice.
I should be methodically finishing off analysing, and publishing, what we've learnt from newly in  known-family tests on each of my Andrews, Rowe, and Dawe * lines.
* including finally, after 10 years, confirming the yDNA signature for the line of Isaac DAWE of Lamerton, Devon.

Instead I was having a look at the posts in the FaceBook group Genetic Genealogy Tips & Techniques and couldn't resist trying out one on how to visualise your Ancestry match lists (this link to my DNASurnames blog where I post general DNA type posts as opposed to those more related to my own genealogy work).
I ended up with a filtered set of groups that actually do interact - or have a match of particular interest in them:

My Henderson/Millar brickwall will some year find an answer amongst the dark blue group on the left.
My Jane Gibson brickwall amongst those in the light blue cluster top right.
That on the bottom right reminded me I'd not finished chasing the rabbit that led to a small cluster of more extended Fairbairn family matches ....

First you find her, then you lose her

A distant cousin popped up on WikiTree the other day, so I connected his ancestor, Janet SINTON up to her parents, James SINTON & Margaret WILKIE.
Then looked to see if there was any research outstanding on the family that might be advanced.

Janet had a sister Mary SINTON, aged 37, still living, when father James died in 1855.
But where was she between 1818 and 1855? What happened to her?
Past investigations had found no obvious death, marriage, or census entry in Scotland, and rather too many Mary anyones, preferably born Melrose or Bowden, in the 1851 census in Scotland, let alone of an age, born Scotland, in England.

So this time I tried immigration records - and turned up a Mary SINTON emigrating to New York on the "Yazoo", arriving in July 1838.
Bit of a long shot I thought - until I noticed the family above her on the passenger list.

John & Margaret FAIRBAIRN with family - known to have ended up in Ontario by Dec 1838, dying in Blandford.

Margaret was Mary's older sister.

So the chase has shifted from after 1855, likely Scotland, to finding any evidence of Mary after 1838, likely Canada but possibly USA, and her death after 1855 somewhere.

What changing a letter can uncover

Twice in the last month I've had reason to review past research that had come to a full stop.
One because of a contact on WikiTree who had connected up another branch of the FAIRBAIRNs, the other from a post on my guestbook that I've only just noticed.
Both led me to review the families concerned in my database to see what might now be available.

The first made me realise that although a marriage certificate was indexed as HIGGINS, and clearly to me even on a reread, stated the husband of Elizabeth FAIRBAIRN was a Thomas HIGGINS, it was actually WIGGINS.
No wonder I got nowhere trying to find what happened to them after their marriage!
Thank you Bill for uploading data on the WIGGINS - happy to have helped untangle the two related Elizabeths.

The second correction was from bad arithmetic on my part and a blurry certificate.
Carrie May FAIRBAIRN married in Toronto in 1914 to, I interpreted, a Charles D COWIS.
The COWIS instead of COWIE I have an excuse for as it was rather unclear. Marrying him off at 16 instead of 26 when the 26 was clear enough on the cert. however I do not have an excuse for at all.
Again, amazing how people are more easily found when you have a more correct age, and surname.

Time I updated RootsWeb WorldConnect database LornaHenderson methinks.

Gone fishing.

I've added a new database to my WorldConnect account - LornaFishing.
It joins:

• LornaHenderson - the known relations (mostly those) no longer with us, and their connections and inter-connections
• LornaPotential - those researched for potential connections
• and some RUNCIMAN data there.

LornaFishing consists only of families I have researched because of DNA matches in the hope of finding yet another descendant of the family who has tested and whose absence or presence of a match will help pinpoint that the researched line is indeed where the match belongs.

Of particular interest:

• Elizabeth CHRYSTAL of Kippen's family - because of a dna match to a descendant of Duncan ROBERTSON and Margaret MILLAR
• John MITCHELL & Elizabeth WILSON of Edinburgh - because of the triangulated dna match to a segment I've inherited from Archibald and Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN - see prior post
• Some descendants of Matilda Edmonstone TURNER nee McKENZIE - to see if this pinpoints the match to the LEOV extended family - having seemingly ruled out the earlier LEOV/SULLIVAN family  
• The GRAHAMs of Botetourt (VA) - see even earlier posts
• the family of John LOCKHART and Elizabeth JOHNSON marr. 1828 St Ninians, STI

I've still to transfer into LornaFishing some of the families previously researched and published in  LornaPotential as I've decided to separate out general research from DNA match targetted research.

Identically named trees exist on both Ancestry.com and on MyHeritage, for exactly the same purpose, and I make no pretence that the three trees contain the same set of people, but the purpose is identical in all instances.
Fishing.
So if you spot an ancestor in any of the above trees and  have tested your autosomal DNA, do let me know, I'd love to swap notes and compare DNA to see if a match holds up on the lines suspected.

Has DNA testing come up trumps?

Early days yet, but indications are that we may be on the way to proving that Robert FAIRBAIRN,  married to Kate SCOTT and emigrated to Ontario around 1827/8 is indeed a son of Archibald and Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN.
One of my closer previously unknown DNA matches appears on a segment of dna that I share with a known double cousin (4C1R and 5th, as he descends from both James and from David, sons of Archibald and Alison).
"Do you have any known FAIRBAIRN ancestry" I asked.
"Yes, a Mary Catherine FAIRBAIRN married to Peter Nelson KELLER."
Now I just happen to know that Mary is Robert's granddaughter.

Although I don't yet know how my match links to Mary, or whether there's another line in her ancestry that could account for this match, I'm pleasantly hopeful we're finally on our way to proving my long held theory about Robert being "family".
Updates on Mary's family will now ensue.
Confirmation may shortly be forthcoming as the kit from another descendant of Robert & Kate's is en route back to the lab.
It would still be great to find a direct male line FAIRBAIRN descendant of Robert's willing to do a y_DNA test to quickly and more easily prove this link though!

Under my nose

Solved one of my long standing mysteries today.
Joan who shares an interest in my FAIRBAIRN family of Walter and Grace (ARMSTRONG) FAIRBAIRN of Tinnishall, Canonbie, popped out of the woodwork again to share an 1891 letter from Grace to her nephew, John LITTLE.
She had mentioned it a year or so ago, and back then my efforts at solving the mystery of what happened to Walter and Grace's son William had continued as a brick wall.

The letter explicitly mentioned where Grace's family were on 6th March 1891, including William, whom I had not found beyond the 1851 census when he was at home with Walter and Grace as William FAIRBAIRN, 5, son, born Canonbie.
So he had survived.

How hard can it be to find a William FAIRBAIRN, florist in Hampshire in the 1891 census of 4 April when his mother had mentioned him on the 6th of March? But no, still no sightings 1861 to 1911, Scotland or England.

The answer was right under my nose all along of course.

As his birth had preceded Walter and Grace's marriage by a couple of years, I went looking for births of William's in Canonbie to mother Grace ARMSTRONG.
Two presented themselves in the right timeframes.
One was with Andrew DAVIDSON, but that family included children back to when Grace would have been only 12.
The other was a William born 1845 to William WHITE and Grace ARMSTRONG, no other children obvious.

Off to ScotlandsPeople to see what the baptism actually said.
Only to find that they showed that I'd already viewed the record!
Perhaps I'd gotten sidetracked back whenever, and simply forgotten I'd checked that, or possibly checked and discarded but not noted anything in my records?
Nope.
All was explained when the page was re-examined.
The page was headed 1855.
Three baptisms with Grace as the mother were all on the same page, the first WHITE, William born Jun 1845, baptized Mar 1845, to William WHITE and Grace, the next two, both FAIRBAIRN, Agnes and Margaret to Walter FAIRBAIRN and Grace.
I'd only ever looked at the FAIRBAIRN entries I was initially interested in and not looked up the page!

Yes, now easily viewed in 1871 (gardener at Capenoch, Dumfries), 1881 (gardener at Mortlake, Surrey with wife Helen), and 1891 there he was in Havant, Hants as a florist, all as William WHITE.

Still missing in action in 1861.

Increasing FORTUNE

Another of the descendants of Jessie FORTUNE nee ORMISTON has got in touch, prompting me to do a bit more exploration of the FORTUNE family begun last month.
Bit more success this time in finding what happened to some of the descendants.
Some trees have Andrew Park FORTUNE as dying in British Columbia in 1954, which I cannot confirm, but at least he has a Canadian connection as his Boer War medal card shows that after he had served in the Commander in Chief's Body Guard, he transferred to the 2nd Canadian Rifles.
Whether this was before or after the note saying "discharged to settle in Sth Africa" is unclear.
Regardless, it does explain how come he wasn't to be found in the 1901 census in the UK.

Webpages partially updated to include a page for Jessie's Mum Jeany FAIRBAIRN - anyone know what happened to her?
I finally decided that it was silly having both Jeany and Jan in the family both born around 1826 and fate unknown, they have to be one and same person - so I've halved the mysteries in the family!

FAIRBAIRN descendant chart also updated.

Chromosome map update

The above is an update on my earlier Chromosome picture, but using a more comprehensive tool, thanks to Kitty Cooper's ChromosomeMapper.
The reason for this update is the small orange segment of dna on chromosome 15, a newly detected, triangulated match* between myself, two maternal aunts and Richard, my 6th cousin once removed.
I and the aunts descend from Elizabeth ALGAR and Richard PEEK, Richard descends from Elizabeth's brother Samuel ALGAR of Yealmpton, Devon.
Their parents, Samuel ALGAR & Sarah LOWRY married in 1720, at Yealmpton.

There aren't quite as many unmapped areas as all the grey indicates on the above, I've simply left off the match segments from the very close relations where there is insufficient information on matches to enable segments to be tied to specific earlier ancestors.

To identify more of the grey bits, and thus help break through some of the brick walls, I would particularly love to hear from descendants of the following of my ancestral lines who may be interested in exploring their genetic heritage, and thus help pinpoint where some of the many  matches "fit":
- William CLINTON & Jemima PARKER
- Robert TURNBULL & Eleanor SCOTT
- Andrew GRAHAM & Jane GRAHAM
- William BATY & Sarah BATY
- John DAVIDSON & Agnes FAIRBAIRN
Check out my FamilyFinder project FFLornaHen, and the FAQs about FamilyTree DNA's  FamilyFinder test, and if willing to help, please contact me (details on footer of most of my webpages)

* for an explanation on mapping and triangulation, see this article in Roberta Estes' DNAeXplained blog

Canonbie FAIRBAIRNs

Certainly pays to advertise (ie publish trees online).
A potential newfound cousin popped out of the woodwork this week asking about Walter FAIRBAIRN and Grace ARMSTRONG.
She had inherited some family letters and was trying to figure out who was related to whom, knowing only that one or other of them was an uncle or aunt to her great grandparents.
I'm still awaiting a response to my information, but in the meantime have done a bit more digging on the family and pinned down another twig having found what looks like Walter and Grace's granddaughter Grace MURRAY in Manitoba.
Updates will added to the WorldConnect db LornaHenderson once proof found that it's the right Grace.

Have you considered...

FamilyTree DNA have announced another good round of test discounts.
Details available on the DNASurnames project diary where the list of projects I have an interest in may also be found.
Direct male line descendants of my DAWE, WIGHT, & FAMILTON lines are particularly wanted.
Happy to explain how this is a painless, harmless process that will enhance our knowledge of the families concerned - contact details in footers of most pages.
We've had great successes with the RUNCIMAN and FAIRBAIRN projects.
Some links that may help explain dna testing for genealogy can be found on my Lorna Genie site.

How many husbands?

Contact from Veronica has led me to review where my research had left the family of Robert Herd FAIRBAIRN Jnr.
Back in 2008 or thereabouts his family was a bit of a puzzle as to whether or not there were one or two Roberts.
I convinced myself that there was indeed only one, but wife #1 had obviously not died, as she had popped up as large as life as an 87 yr old telephone operator in the 1930 census of Redington, Nebraska.
This time round, with much more information readily available and indexed, and with a very helpful BUSHEE researcher who had posted a biography of Lucy on his ancestry tree, there will be a lot more certainty to Robert's page next update. (As well as naturalization and land details for his grandfather David, married to Jane HERD).
Lucy seems to have led a colourful life.
Five "husbands" are mentioned. So far I've only found one marriage indexed, that to Walter GAGE (as Lucy FAIRBAIRN), but have found her in census data with Robert FAIRBAIRN, Walter GAGE, and "husband" #5 Harry GORDON. The quotes are because although the article states that Walter had died, then she married #4 HUNTOON, then #5, Harry, in 1893. Walter appears to have been happily living in California since 1888, dying there in 1910.  Guess if you can divorce one husband back in the 1860s, another isn't a problem.

Sintons, Fairbairns and Hendersons

Family Tree DNA recently "invited" assorted dna participants to add Family Finder to their DNA knowledge, at a considerable discount.
This tests chronicles your autosomal dna, ie that you inherit from all of your direct ancestors, as compared to the Y-DNA used for Surname dna projects which is only passed on from father to son, or the mtDNA similarly only from a mother to her children, but only passed on by the female line.
Should you be lucky enough for Family Finder to find a match with someone else in their database, you get to see which bits of your chromosome you match on.
As this test is really only most useful for the closer generations, up to 5-6 generations, ie back to 2-3*great grandparents, to find matches, it was a bit of a long shot to expect Peter and Michael to show up with the distant ancestry that we shared, but we decided to proceed anyway.
Peter and I have Peter SINTON and Jane WIGHT as common ancestors, my 3*great grandparents.
Michael and I share  Walter FAIRBAIRN & Agnes ROBINSON, also my 3* great grandparents, but Michael's 4*greats.

As you can see above, the blue portions are far more prominent.
They reflect my shared ancestry with Bill. We share William HENDERSON & Helen Sinton WIGHT, my great grandparents.
I guess we can conclude that the overlapping pink and blue lines are shared SINTON ancestry (unless of course there is an undocumented relationship between Jane WIGHT, Peter SINTON's wife, and Helen Sinton WIGHT's ancestry).

Ever hopeful

Thought I'd found a connection between the  FAMILTONs I was researching today and my DAWE/GALE twigs: Northumberland and Devon. Still wondering how come they met!
Closer inspection however showed that there were two Martha GALEs of an age born Devon around 1830, one the niece of the John GALE who married Betsy DAWE, the other the daughter of a Maria GALE. The latter's daughter is the one who married Thomas Potts FAMILTON of Preston.

Wondering where I've been?
Check out the FAIRBAIRN and RUNCIMAN project diaries and/or the recent change indexes for their respective One Name Studies, along with the FAMILTON DNA project diary. One day we'll find a willing candidate or two to test the theories on how some of the trees inter-relate.

Those aside here has been some DAW activity following Sheila's posting on my Guestbook with the current investigation being whether or not the Maud Millicent DAWE that Fredy DAW married was a relation?  Jury still out.

STEVENSONs of Hokitika

Not sure how I ended up in the ADDISON/STEVENSON part of my database, but having done so, it looked time for an update.
Several births, deaths, and marriages have now been confirmed, spouses correctly named, one or two descendants names, and the wonderful cemetery database resource of the Westland District Council has been found.
My WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has already started an update process so this version wont contain any data from the newly found Hokitika headstone photos on the above site, but does contain many updates to the family.
They descend from Margaret FAIRBAIRN and Joseph BROOMFIELD via their daughter Agnes whose photo in an inherited album opened up a whole new line of research, so many years ago.  She looked far too well dressed to be one of my relatives, but no, she was indeed, as labelled in the album, my great grandfather Adam DAVIDSON's cousin. 

Carried along

Read an interesting parish burial entry today - 1818 Edinburgh St Cuthberts.
Past Edinburgh parish burial records have often been very informative with ages, occupations, causes of death, addresses etc, so when I tried interpreting an unlabelled column as a cause of death, my first guess was "strokes", but it did look rather more like "spokes" - which sounded rather painful !
Looking at the other entries on the page however I've deduced that they were recording how the dear departed was carried to their final resting place: "Arms", Shoulders", "hearse", "Coach" and "half spokes" being the other entries.
Expensive business this dying lark.
Robert FAIRBAIRN of St Leonard Street looked like his estate paid 5/3d for mortcloth, 2/4d for poor, 9d for "keepers", 1/- recorder, 1/- for grave digger and 1/3d for beadles.
The estate got off comparatively lightly with the one recorded has having the hearse (Lucy WALKER, relict of WALKER, writer) paying £1/-/6d for mortcloth, 5/- for turf, 4/8 for poor, £1/1/- for "Warrants", 1/6d for keepers, , 5/- for recorder, 1/- for grave digger, 1/3d for beadles (11/7d compared to £2/19/11d if I can still add in LSD)

3 months of updates

Quite an impressively long list of recent changes - but don't be fooled.
Many are minor changes to citations, or the last edit date changed because a scanned certificate has been added (which wont be visible on the family tree pages, but may be if included on the Originals subsite - not yet updated).
Another reason for inclusion in the recent change index is the addition of links to a hopefully relevant dna page for those belonging to dna tested lines (some of which links may still not yet work).
 
At least two new people now have pages, probably others:
Grace MEIKLE nee ROBERTSON, mentioned recently
Elizabeth HAMLEY nee ROWE, although the impetus for her publication eludes me at the moment.

Now that more of the FAIRBAIRN trees are included on the One Name Study pages, the FAIRBAIRN page has been cut back to only include trees for the more closely related FAIRBAIRNs.

Many updates probably don't feature in the recent changes index but only in the updated descendancy charts.

Ego-less genealogy?

In my dim and distant past as a computer programmer I remember being much taken with a book Ego-less Programming, or some such title.
WeRelate looks like the genealogical equivalent.

It's another collaborative tree aiming at no duplications, people linked and working on ONE version of a person/family in a wiki, same concept as Wikipedia but purpose built for genealogy, and much more easily pre-loaded with data (by gedcom).

So far I've only experimented with one small family whose research was completed (as much as any genealogy ever is) over the last few days, the Pawtucket FAIRBAIRNs from Glasgow who have sat in my database for several years without a home or further work until I stumbled upon a missing link that enabled me to link up Robert Bruce FAIRBAIRN, the banker of Roxbury, Massachusetts to Robert and Jean FAIRBAIRN, and identify Jean's maiden name as URQUHART despite the inventive spelling of the Americans over the years.  Throw in a couple of Thaddeus FAIRBAIRNs, and a Florence Nightingale FAIRBAIRN ++ and there's a little family unit to test out WeRelate with.
(if there's any direct male line FAIRBAIRN still around willing to join the FAIRBAIRN  Surname DNA project, there's still discounts going to the end of this month)

Love the validation of the submitted gedcom.
Took me a couple of goes to pass the first hurdle of date and place warnings.
Also love the ability to link to existing sources and places where appropriate.
Yet to try out the merging of submitted data with existing data, and can only see one of my RUNCIMAN clan there already to test that out on, but have to get my submitted gedcom past the next level of scrutiny first.

Kudos

Kudos to our Dept of Internal Affairs for a very prompt, efficient response to an incorrect death index online.
The death index for a William FAIRBAIRN, known to have died in 1912 by the online Christchurch City Council cemetery records, was not immediately obvious in the NZ Historical Death index online as either FAIRBAIRN or FAIRBURN (not so much kudos for no wildcard search facility).
Back to the fiche index at the local library, and there he was, as FAIRBURN.
Sent an email last night to the Dept of Internal Affairs to inform them that their index had a chap missing and by the time I checked my email in the morning there was a reply explaining that he had been mistakenly indexed initially with his occupation as his surname, and it had been corrected. It was.

Fast lady

Hope that the actual image of this entry shows a different picture than the transcripts.
A 1901 census in Troqueer shows what look like twins in a SHORTREED family:
James 9 mos b Galashiels, Selkirk; Andrew 9 mos b Maxwelltown, Kirkcudbright
Mum Annie nee HOOD must have had to move rather fast to achieve that!
This HOOD activity being prompted by Harry bringing a RootsChat posting to my attention.


 He's a good relative finder.

An interesting set of DNA results in the FAIRBAIRN project in the last couple of days. Completely unexpected.