The Mybster fall out continues

Yes, it's Mybster Inn reporting time again.
Since the last post my knowledge of the SUTHERLANDs of Forse has grown in leaps and bounds thanks to a lot of research after some welcome leads from correspondents. Descendants are a wide-spread lot!

I had hopes that the 1880s SUTHERLAND chart which showed the Margaret SUTHERLAND who married William GRAY on it with "Tormsdale" written after their names, would also include my 5*great grandmother Janet SUTHERLAND, sister-in-law of William GRAY.  No such luck. She remains a mystery despite being at Tormsdale when she married.

This time it was back to a Helen GRAY who had married Alexander SUTHERLAND.
I do so love Parish Registers when they put more than the bare minimum of details.

Halkirk nicely includes witnesses, often with their place of residence.
Thurso goes one better and includes occupations for the males involved.
At least in the time period I was looking at.

The entries of particular interest showed that William GRAY, married to Helen DOUGLAS, had the baptisms of their children witnessed by a useful set of probable relatives.
When they were living at Sibster (Halkirk) a John GRAY of Milntown was a witness to the baptism of daughter Elizabeth in 1821.
After they moved to Hoy (Thurso) son Donald's 1826 baptism shows William as a mason, and the baptism was witnessed by John GRAY miller in Halkirk.
Which makes this John highly likely to be one and the same person, and William's younger brother, lending considerable weight to the identification of the William married to Helen being William the son of David and Elizabeth (MacLEOD) GRAY.

Time to (re)check William's baptism in the light of all the knowledge obtained subsequently to the initial research many years ago.
When William was baptized, father David had asked his nephew Donald, the son of his eldest brother Donald, to be a witness. Handy, they were living nearby.
From the baptismal registers we can trace Donald's movement from Mybster when he married in 1781 to Toftingall for the birth of his first daughter in 1782, and was still there in 1783 when he stood witness for William's 1783 baptism, staying at Toftingall until at least 1787, after which they moved back to Halkirk (1790).

Up until yesterday William GRAY son of David GRAY and Elizabeth MacLEOD had sat in the database baptized and nothing further known.
Now he has a wife and a heap of descendants, including the above Helen GRAY who married Alexander SUTHERLAND in Mybster.

The Marina mentioned in the John O'Groat Journal article on the letter home to Mybster from Donald Gray SUTHERLAND about Ned Kelly's death is hereby declared to be a sixth cousin twice removed and we are even happier to have found each other as a result, however distantly related.

My main GRAY descendant chart has been updated, and the GRAYs promoted from just a descendant chart to having a page of their own, with a map. Long past time I did so.

Mybster Inn

Last post I mentioned research into the GRAY/SUTHERLAND family of the Mybster Inn.
This activity was prompted by mention on the Caithness Family History Society mailing list about their grandson Donald Gray SUTHERLAND who had witnessed the death of Ned Kelly and written home about his experiences.
Family had gifted the original of the letter to the Victoria State Archives, who now have the image online. Read about it here and read the letter here.
This family had long been on my radar as potential relatives of my own GRAYs and I had researched them every so often to no great conclusion as to how they connected, other than noting that several trees had obviously not sighted David's death certificate and had him assigned to the wrong parents.

Spurred by the more recent interest I am now a lot better informed about the family and only marginally closer to a conclusion as to where they "fit".
The extended family has been uploaded to WikiTree - where several of the partners also connect into known trees.  It would be good to get a direct male line descendants of both the GRAY and SUTHERLAND families involved to participate in their respective DNA Surname projects (GRAY, SUTHERLAND) to see what that shows us. (Good time to test, FamilyTree DNA have announced their annual sale.)

As investigations continued it dawned on me that it is indeed highly likely that David GRAY of Mybster is indeed a descendant, somewhere, somehow, of my GRAYs.
The SUTHERLANDs connected to this family lead back to an Alexander & Dolina/Dolly/Donaldina (SUTHERLAND) SUTHERLAND of Tormsdale, which just happens to be where the Margaret SUTHERLAND who married "my" William GRAY of Mybster came from. Both of which I'd completely forgotten about over time.
I'd also forgotten that an Alexander I'd thought might be a son of John and Margaret (FOWLER) GRAY lived at Mybster.
Alexander married a Margaret SUTHERLAND and I'd not researched sufficiently to connect Alexander to John and Margaret.
This time round however, with further baptisms examined to see who the witnesses were, I've concluded that Alexander is indeed their son.
The GRAY descendant chart has been updated.

Wochab

Many years ago a friend's niece came visiting and we ended up swapping family history, in particular about our respective ancestors in Caithness.
At the time there was no apparent connection, but the name of one of hers stuck in my brain cells as being particularly unusual - Mary Wochab GEORGESON.
Some 10-15 years later my interest in Mary and her family has risen as research into the GRAY family of the Mybster Inn, and their extended family, led me back to her.
This time round, with a bit more digging, I've decided that she is indeed of the same family of GEORGESONs as mine.
Her ancestor William has been decreed (by me) to be brother to my Donald - well on the balance of probability anyway, given the circumstantial evidence. 

The friendly Caithness Family History Society mailing list also came to the rescue as to why she may have such an unusual name - an alternate spelling of Wauchope, a village in Dumfries.
So I'm going to ascribe the name to a Dumfries shepherd who had moved north to Caithness with sheep after the clearances. Which family member had the hankering for home has yet to be determined however.
My posting also resurrected correspondence with a descendant of William's. Pays to advertise - and to ask questions.