Maternal side Chromosome Map update

I see that my Paternal side chromosome map was last published Dec 2016.
The intention was for the companion Maternal side map to follow shortly thereafter, but 2017 had other plans.

Click to enlarge

A quick reminder for myself of the maternal brickwall ancestors that I hope DNA will one day aid in cracking (see embedded WikiTree Widgets below for each of my maternal grandparent's pedigrees):

• Jane GIBSON: supposedly born Martock, Somerset in 1812, married Simon ANDREWS in Martock, 1840 and emigrates to New Zealand on the "Timandra", arriving 1842.
• William AUSTIN: husband of Emma Parker CLINTON - disappears after arrival in Australia;  Emma remarries as a spinster with no children!
• William CLINTON: married Jemima PARKER in London, 1810 - and had the above daughter Emma Parker CLINTON

Way too many unknown grandparent segments as yet - but I hope that visual phasing* of my 3 first cousins' DNA will reduce that.
*Visual phasing links:

• https://isogg.org/wiki/Visual_phasing
• http://thegeneticgenealogist.com/2016/11/21/visual-phasing-an-example-part-1-of-5/
• https://genealogylady.net/2017/05/02/down-the-dna-rabbit-hole-visual-phasing-with-two-siblings/
• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neB4oFlwJHA
  a hint: to mark who owns each crossover instead of the technique shown I used the owner's letter in a simple right justified cell which positioned the owner right next to the line.

My maternal grandfather's pedigree (WikiTree) - if you are a descendant of any of these PLEASE upload your autosomal DNA file (eg FamilyFinder from FamilyTreeDNA, Ancestry, MyHeritage, 23andme) to GEDMatch.com and contact me.
Every little clue helps.

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

 My maternal grandmother's pedigree (WikiTree)

embeddable family tree updated live from WikiTree

How many to go: Helen SINTON mtDNA update

Further research into descendants of Helen WIGHT nee SINTON, and a resulting update to WikiTree for her daughters' families in particular has extended the chart of those carrying Helen's mitochondrial DNA.
Unfortunately, it looks to be a rather short list of living candidates, and with at least one branch apparently in Sth Africa and another in Portugal, information is a little harder to come by. 

Would love to hear from:

• any descendants of Jane Wight BECKINGHAM nee McGREGOR, although indications are there's only one daughter, unmarried at age 30 when travelling to/from the UK in 1960.
• any descendants of Margaret Scott NORTH nee CROWDEN, born Edinburgh, but apparently marrying and living in Lisbon, Portugal in the 1950s
• any descendants of Isabella Wight SCOTT nee BELL, who married George Gideon SCOTT in 1936 at Innerleithen. 
• any living family for Helen Euphemia Leckie BROWN nee SOUTAR? 

The search might have to go back another generation and down the mtDNA candidates from Jane WIGHT, which might actually be easier.
Surely at least one of the Jane SINTON/James TELFER/TELFORD branch will have a living mtDNA descendant in Australia?

Love to hear from you if you can help in this quest.

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!

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

Barbara SCOTT

Reviews of older data are always fruitful.
One of the side effects of my review of the SCOTTs around Stapleton was finding that I had merged two Barbara SCOTTs of an age in my database.
- one baptised 1753, daughter of Robert & Bridget (GRAHAM) SCOTT (the parents of the Robert and Margaret at Corrylees mentioned in the prior post), whom I had married off to Thomas NICHOL.
- another recorded as married to Thomas NICHOL, with an extract from the marriage showing her father was John SCOTT.
This has now been corrected, and my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson updated showing both Barbaras, as well as all of the last month's updates.

SCOTTs of Stapleton?

I'd like to say that a DNA FamilyFinder match has meant a breakthrough on a brick wall, but in this case, merely a re-examination of one.
A friend and fellow researcher's brother popped up as a DNA match to me!
The only really likely looking match on their pedigree was their ancestor Margaret SCOTT of Kirklinton. Born within 10 years and miles of my Eleanor SCOTT.
The records for neither have proven very forthcoming to date.
However the review did mean, as I've explained on Eleanor's page, that her birth date has been revised and my knowledge of the SCOTTs in the area has grown a bit more.
Should any other descendants of Eleanor or Margaret care to see if they also match to add further evidence for or against this suggested relationship, do please order a FamilyFinder test.

Sidetracking

An update to my WorldConnect db LornaHenderson has been in train for a wee while now.
Anytime I run a check over the gedcom for potential problems I find either silly typos, outright mistakes, or gaps in the data that can be easily filled. Sidetracks always ensue.
The most recent proved a very interesting exercise.
It highlighted that I'd never found, or more accurately thought I'd never found, the family of Robert & Janet (SCOTT) WIGHT in the 1851 census. Wrong!
I'd found them years ago, but had shelved the id as I hadn't known anything about sons William and James, and the George with them was the wrong age. Nothing had led me back to review this isolated family sitting in my database.
So off I set to find the fate of the "newfound" children.

Several trees showed William as emigrating to Ohio and living in Iowa, married to a Mary SIMINS.
As his nephew William had indeed emigrated to Ohio, and been visited there by my 2*great grandmother, this seemed plausible, especially as the 1860 Ohio census age fitted.
I couldn't find a marriage to confirm the id, nor the birth of first daughter Margaret, supposedly born Edinburgh Feb 1854.
Subesquent census data, and William's death notice however all placed him as 10 years older and doubts began to creep in, so I moved William and Mary and family to show up (next update) in the WorldConnect potential rellies only (db LornaPotential) pending more info, and moved on to siblings Isabella and James.
With no sightings in the 1861 census I wondered if they might  not have survived - which may never have been able to be proven if it was between 1851 and the beginning of civil registration in 1855.
Thankfully for me, not so thankfully for the poor family, there were Isabella and James, both dying of typhus in Coldstream with a few months of each other, aged 4 and 17 respectively.
On a hunch, I then also searched for William - bingo. He had been the first of the family to succumb to typhus, aged 21, in February 1855 - so whoever the chap is in Ohio/Iowa aint him.

Always interested to find trees that match mine rather exactly, and note that my rethinks/subsequent research on who links to whom that I've documented aren't reflected on what look like copied data. (The earlier WIGHTs rethink refers.)

13th: Legerwood family

Stewart popped out of the woodwork to talk FAIRBAIRNs.
Although we aren't directly related, unless we eventually find out that these are connected genetically to my FAIRBAIRNs, we do share an interest in the same tree.
His and mine intersect at Helen Martin FAIRBAIRN (dtr of the Rev Andrew Martin FAIRBAIRN) who married Sir Russell SCOTT, one of my RICHARDSON descendants. (Sir Russell appeared briefly in Wikipedia under the Home Office link, but when I last checked, clicking on his link took me to Russell SCOTT aka Blinky the Clown!)
Check out the Fairbairn DNA Project Patriarchs page for a brief outline pedigree.
Locally there is another connection.
At one of our Scottish Interest Group sessions some time ago I mentioned my interest in FAIRBAIRNs, and afterwards Joan popped up saying she had some in her tree, would I be interested in finding out which ones.
Turned out she was the x greats granddtr of Helen Martin FAIRBAIRN's grandparents.

3rd: Non conformists

Been reading a bit about the Non Conformists of late, given that so many of the Scots who moved south can be found in their records .
Some links:
Dr William's Library
The Surman Index
Some indexes to registers are available for free searching at BMDRegisters.co.uk (but pay to view images - thanks Sue, for pointing me to this one).

Adam SCOTT appears in the Surman index, so I had a bit of an update for his family.
I knew he'd died between 1901 and 1924, and now also that Marion was a widow in 1911, but hadn't bothered tracking down his death given his name is a bit too common. The Surman index gives his date of death as 14 Sep 1908, so I thought it likely that he was the 1908 registration indexed in the District of Blackburn - but that chap is indexed as 39.
At the moment, I'm assuming it's a mistranscription for 59, even though the image of the index does show 39.
Can't yet figure out what happened to children Sydney and Margaret E after 1901. One day.
1911 did add another descendant into the tree, a dtr Jean Evelyn for Bertram & Christian Pettigrew WAGSTAFF in Ealing.

11th: Thomas Alston RICHARDSON found

A (10th Dec) posting in my Guestbook from a SCOTT/RICHARDSON descendant has led me to find what happened to Thomas Alston RICHARDSON (See this post from 2007)
Given I didn't have him married, and couldn't find a marriage in Scotland, I was a tad surprised to find someone claiming to be a descendant, although I shouldn't have been, as I'd also been unable to find a Scottish death for him.
A quick web search led me to a Voluntary liquidation notice by liquidator Thomas Alston Scott in the 1919 London Gazette for him, described his company as:
T. SCOTT & CO. (CARDIFF) Limited, Bakers, Pastry Cooks, Confectioners, etc.
So, off to the 1911 census for Wales, where he was found. Looking at the Enumerators' lists for the census, his shop was about 3 shops away from the Public School, so I guess he sold a lot of sweeties to the local school kids.
(Brother George was in Wales in the 1891 census, so I guess I should have looked there anyway before now.)
Good to hear from you Steve, (a 5th cousin, sharing Robert RICHARDSON and Margaret RUNCHAMAN).

Surrogate's Court Notice

What a wonderful happenstance find today.
Dick Eastman's newsletter mentioned the Fulton History site and its newspapers.
So I popped in a search for FAIRBAIRN and Delaware to see what would pop out.
By some miracle of modern technology, one of the items I got was a Surrogate's Court Notice for a list of people, presumed to be beneficiaries of Barbara FAIRBAIRN otherwise known as FAIRCHILD, requesting their attendance at the probate of her last will and testament.
Managed to identify everyone listed, and as a result, also realised I'd not found some of them in later records.
The family of Thomas & Anna SCOTT have now advanced to 1920 for Anna and two of the daughters (Vernona/Verona, and Beatrice) but lost them all again after that. Also added a husband and child for Viola (George C and Kenneth G HINMAN respectively) by the 1930 census. In the 1910 census George says he's been married 4 times, in 1930 he says he was first married at age 28, which makes him marrying 4 times between about 1906 and 1910. And in what looks like his death in Connecticut in 1950 the index says "never married", but wife Viola's death in 1964 shows her as widower, husband George.
Nothing like a good mystery - anyone out there interested in George C HINMAN, born NY about 1875/8, foreman in sewing machine factory. Parents either both b NY, or father b CT, mother b PA.

6th: Full Big Brother update

What with the number of changes of late, the exciting developments out of the Fairbairn DNA Project etc it is time I did a full site update.
The newly released version of Second Site, allows me to easily include some additional information on people not included on the site with a page of their own. The main change as a result of this is that below each person's page, if they have family, lifespan dates (mth/year only) now show.
Big Brother has therefore had a full refresh. If I've missed some links somewhere, please let me know.

Apart from a general tidy-up the main changes that I can remember are:

• Archibald FAIRBAIRN (marr. to Janet SCOTT) has had a revamp,


• John FAIRBAIRN (marr. to Elisabeth MILLER) of New York has been brought in from the cold and been incorporated into my FAIRBAIRN family and will now show up in the FAIRBAIRN descendant charts in due course (he's not yet online and linked)


• the neverending story
.

I see that there's a clutch of "Recent changes" shown for the LOCKIE/RUNCIMAN family, but they can be ignored, I was simply attaching a source document and tidying up some source citations, no new information involved.

Archie updated

Further to the new FAIRBAIRN dna results, from yesterday, I've updated the page for the Archibald who married Janet SCOTT.
Still want to find a representative for the dna project down from Archibald's assumed brothers Walter, marr. Agnes ROBISON/ROBERTSON, David, marr. Jane HERD, and James, marr. Joan FORSYTH, to prove this Archibald is really their brother, not to mention the much more speculative "brother", Robert, marr. Kate (SCOTT?).
Must be someone out there willing to help out.

and then I continued...

I'm in the middle of tidying up my great grandmother, Helen Sinton WIGHT's future web page entry, having realised that I've never posted her on the web.
Doing so involves quite a bit of tidy up and re-checking of years old research against data now more readily available.
I had never before found Helen/Ellen in the 1871 census as she wasn't obvious in Scotland, nor in Northumberland, which latter place she apparently emigrated from.
All is now explained, probably along with a family story from my Great Aunt Millie, who was rather found of increasing the importance of her ancestors. Dear Aunt Millie used to maintain that Helen, her mother, was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen Mother. A basic date check ensures that this is simply a complete load of rubbish, let alone that a farmer's daughter from Maxton in Roxburghshire was highly unlikely to hold such a position.

As with most family stories, there was probably a grain of truth in there somewhere, should we ever recognise it when it hit us.
Tonight it hit me. I found my great grannie, Helen Sinton WIGHT in the 1871 census, with the same occupation as on her emigration papers 4 years later. She is a housemaid in Belgrave Square - to William SCOTT, Baronet. (He's Sir William SCOTT of Ancrum, the 6th Baronet, and living at Ancrum, Roxburghshire, in the 1841 and 1851 census).

Poor Aunt Millie, I don't think she would approve of my demolishing her myths.

I've decided that this branch of the family had wanderlust. Helen travelled to London for work, and later emigrated, apparently on her own, to New Zealand.
I've previously also found that her mother Helen WIGHT nee SINTON, had travelled to America, as her photo was taken in Cleveland, Ohio, where she had presumably gone to visit her son William.

3rd: WIGHT updates

Given my WIGHT activity at the moment, I thought it was time to publish what I had on the supposed earliest WIGHT in my tree, James, marr. to Jennat SWORD.
However, as I say on the page, reviewing them after a number of years, I have to admit I need to recheck the links given I have them as having two sons named James, and the youngest looks rather unlikely to be the parents of James who married Issobel THOMSON.

Also published, on the WIGHT Surname DNA Project, is an abbreviated chart of their descendants in the hope a representative may be found.

Looking at the gaps in my knowledge, I started trying to find what happened to Robert the son of Robert WIGHT and Janet SCOTT. And quickly realised why I appear not to have progressed far with that line. Can't find them after 1881 in England or Scotland, and as yet, nor in USA or Canada. All I managed to advance was to finally find his marriage to Mary, despite Scotland's People having indexed Robert as WRIGHT, instead of the WIGHT his certificate states (correction lodged), and changed her from UnknownSurname into Mary BOYD.

Web pages updated to include an introductory page for The Wights.

Another Archibald, or is he?

The marriage cert. for Archibald FAIRBAIRN and Jane BLAKEY turned up today.
It shows Archibald's father as yet another Archibald FAIRBAIRN, a gardener.
There's an Archibald of exactly the right age, son of Archibald FAIRBAIRN and Janet SCOTT, born St Boswells, 1813.
I don't have father Archibald's occupation as a gardener however, more normally he shows up as the ubiquitous ag. lab., occasionally farm steward, and in 1841 when the presumed son Archibald married, the father shows as an ag lab at Greenwells Glenburney at Melrose.
As a descendant of Archibald and Jane FAIRBAIRN is in the dna project, if this hunch is correct, Doug (F-14) should be a very good match to Martin (F-1) our first project participant.
If he isn't, then I guess we need to keep digging to find distant cousins of both Martin and Doug to confirm their line's dna signature, or find another Archibald of the right age and place.
Anyone have any other Archibald/Archibald father/son pairs where the son was born Scotland around 1813?

Hounding ROWEs, fossicking in the FAIRBAIRNs

A fun day fossicking in the family of William and Margaret (SCOTT) FAIRBAIRN. This was prompted by finding a newly joined member of the Borders Family History Society interested in FAIRBAIRNs of Bowden, Galashiels, Selkirk, Smailholm. How could I resist.
John is a descendant of schoolmaster William, so we are now swapping notes on that lineage, and hopefully will find a living male FAIRBAIRN to represent them on the FAIRBAIRN Surname dna project.

Also on the family of one of the several Robert FAIRBAIRNs born around 1820. This one married a Catherine STEWART and I'd not placed him with an appropriate set of parents. My current theory is that he belongs to James FAIRBAIRN and Ann WALKER who married Melrose 1806 (banns Merton), and by 1841 were enumerated at "Stable", Galashiels, their children having been baptised in Crailing.
Anyone interested in this family of FAIRBAIRNs and able to help Bonnie and I sort them out?
Both of the above lineages will be added to the DNA Project Patriarch's page shortly.

Back to the Baskervilles. The addition of Baskerville to the name of a child of my Elizabeth ROWE/Hugh HAMLEY family has been explained. Not prescient knowledge of the hound at all, much more prosaic, Dad Hugh HAMLEY's Mum was apparently a BASKERVILLE. This from Vikki, a descendant via son James who married and emigrated to Adelaide, Australia shortly (a few days) thereafter. No wonder I couldn't find hide nor hair of him after his 1819 baptism in Bere Ferrers.

FAIRBAIRN descendants wanted...

Still plugging away trying to find living descendants on a couple of FAIRBAIRN lines to try and prove my theory of a relationship to Robert FAIRAIRN and Kate SCOTT of Napanee/Richmond Ontario and to my Archibald etc.
Anyone out there a descendant of the family of Archibald FAIRBAIRN and Jane BLAKEY? From Northumberland to Ontario.
Son Archibald was in McMurrich Township, Parry Sound, another, Robert FAIRBAIRN married Martha HUSTON and settled at Vegreville, Alberta.
Another line of interest is that of William FAIRBAIRN and Katherine MORGAN.
Known sons: Archibald Goodison (married Lucinda ROBINSON and Margaret AULD, lived North Fredericksburg for a while); Robert (married Alberta GARRISON and last sighted in Qu'appelle, Saskatchewan); William (married Minnie ANDERSON), still in Richmond, Lennox & Addington, Ontario in 1901; Wellington.

Devon inter-related families strike again.
When I started checking further on the TOOP family (see 21st), I realised that further back up the TOOP tree most people with this lot in their online trees seem to think there's a John TOOP and Sarah WILLCOCK(S). This Sarah being of an age to the the dtr of Walter WILLCOCK and Mary MORRELL, and therefore more of my BARTER descendants. The BARTER connection being dependent on the correct id of the Ann BARTER who married Walter's father Walter.
Along the way I found another OXENHAM married in, and lost Thomas Reed DAWE. Anyone seen him after his 1872 marriage to either Ellen DAWE or Mary Gill WILLCOCK? This Mary Gill WILLCOCK is the dtr of Jane OXENHAM and Henry WILLCOCK, butcher of Horrabridge, and I stumbled on the family because Richard TOOP was with them in the 1851 census.
The other groom in the 1872 marriage page was a Henry LANGMAN, but at the moment I cannot find who married whom via census or death data.

Back to Wick

Updated David FAIRBAIRN's page, and the FAIRBAIRN chart to reflect the removal of Martha from the immediate family (see 13th).

The Border line that produced a Congregational Minister who was in Wick in 1891 (father living in Ormiskirk, Lancashire) has another Caithness connection. David Russell SCOTT's dtr married in Edinburgh to Lancelot CORMACK (educational publisher) whose father was born Wick.

May 10, 2008: Simon writes home

Something seems to have changed with the Rootsweb GuestBooks, all posts are rejecting. I've logged an error and hope this will be temporary, and that the existing posts wont be lost, as I suspect this is something to do with the integration of Rootsweb into ancestry.com.
Been busy identifying and adding RICHARDSON photos to my database, thanks to Grace's photo album, nothing new online there as yet though.
Have included an 1842 letter home from Taranaki in the original documents subsite. It was written/dictated by Simon ANDREWS to his parents, and included in a book of "Letters From Settlers & Labouring Emigrants, in the New Zealand Company's Settlements of Wellington, Nelson, & New Plymouth" published in 1843. I note that it is now on Google books.
So this means that Simon ANDREWS, my 2greats, is finally online in my web pages, albeit only for his basic info. It's a fact of my life that those of the closest rellies that aren't on the web yet, have a bit too much data available, and I've not spent the time winnowing it down for the web.
The will of Margaret MOSSMAN nee SCOTT has a few more bits transcribed, and behind the scenes a bit more data on some of the people involved.