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.

William GRAHAM or CARRUTHERS

Yesterday's post re Eleanor MURRAY, marr. to the William GRAHAM who died at Firbank

(thank you David for the photo), did of course lead me to re-examining the alternatives for their grandson William GRAHAM or CARRUTHERS, born 1791 to George GRAHAM of Firbank and Easet CARRUTHERS of Stagmire (who put off marrying until 1795).
David has added a third contender into the mix briefly discussed back in these posts.
He adds his William CARRUTHERS and Hannah DUERS.

I'm still leaning towards the William GRAHAM who married Jane FERGUSON in 1816, mainly because of the predominance of Easet as a forename in the family.
In the process I have added a Sarah GRAHAM into the mix, eldest daughter of William GRAHAM and Jane FERGUSON that I ddin't have before, but whose existance does rather explain the LITTLE grandchildren with William and Jane in some of the censuses - and yes, she also has a dtr Easet.

Right Eleanor after all

I was obviously being too cautious back when I posted on William GRAHAM's page that the only marriage to an Eleanor that I could find was in Carlisle, and it didn't "feel" right for a Kirklinton couple.
David has very kindly posted the marriage bonds in my Guestbook, so William's page, and the GRAHAM tree have been updated to show Eleanor as a MURRAY.
Ignore the entries for RUNCIMAN in the recent changes index - I've been revamping the One Name Study pages to more easily generate them, so an awful lot of RUNCIMAN data has been edited, but mainly only to set assorted flags in my database to show which data goes where.

"Keeps Lodgers"

A new light was shed on one of the extended FAIRBAIRN family today.
I was trawling the National Archives of Scotland (NAS) Catalogue and came across this entry for Ann CURLE or FAIRBAIRN who had appeared in the 1841 Kelso census as "keeps lodgers":
The catalogue entry shed light on what sort of lodgers, reading:
"Petition and complaint in case brought by William Smith, Procurator Fiscal, against Ann Curle or Fairbairn, residing in Kelso, for harbouring vagabonds, vagrants and other idle persons"
Ann CURLE was married to Robert FAIRBAIRN, son of George and Janet (MURRAY) FAIRBAIRN.
The FAIRBAIRN Surname dna project is still looking for a proven representative of this family as we only have representatives from George and Janet's assumed son James (married Helen GOODFELLLOW and emigrated to Canada).

Wouldn't you know it...

As soon as I decide there's a lull on updates to the visible, published, data, along comes a bunch more, just after I've updated the online databases!

Thanks Bobby, the GRAY updates will appear in due course.

Bobby saw my posting (page down to my one) on the Caithness.org forum asking for GRAY descendants who might be interested in proving a theory about two GRAY families in Watten, Caithness, by joining the GRAY DNA project.

He then acted on a hunch about a BRUCE in his tree, and sure enough, found an additional daughter for the family of William GRAY and Margaret SUTHERLAND.
There's a Margaret who married a William MURRAY and lived at Olgrinmore, Halkirk (1851).

Behind the scenes however, Harry and I have been having fun sorting out his STEPHENSON family of Edinburgh, formerly Kelso, Ancrum, Gifford, and as he's just found out, Cumberland, thanks to Sonia in Mississippi. I'm just tagging along for the ride as there's a WIGHT connection in there that one day we may prove is related to the other STEPHENSON/WIGHT connection that makes us distant cousins.

Aug 11th, 2007

11th: Wight and Sinton charts updated and extended a generation downwards. This was prompted by contact from a person interested in Jane Wight SINTON, who married John MURRAY of Northumblerland, and from a posting in my guestbook by a 3rd cousin down the line of Peter Sinton WIGHT and Jessie Ellen DAVIDSON. Hope some updates to the tree result.
I've also been contacted by an Australian interested in the family of Jacob SPURR. Detals provided were scanty (no place data), but it looks very like Jacob, son of the Joseph who married Elizabeth HANNAFORD, with assorted LILLICRAP connections that may well prove to be inter-connections.
Not that I've finished fiddling with the web pages and tidying things up, but it's quite a relief to get back to the backlog of emails instead of staring at webpages and testing links to see what I forgot to change.