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.

The Australian Melting Pot

The Australian melting pot strikes again.
Only once have I ever found a connection between my paternal ancestral forest and my maternal one.
Even then it was rather tenuous.
Helen CLYNE, a descendant of a FINLAYSON family who just have to be connected to my James FINLAYSON of Clayoch (Caithness), married John GIBSON in Victoria. Their son George, married his cousin Edna GIBSON, whose grandfather was my 2 greats grandmother's second husband, Capt John GIBSON. Confused? Of course.

Just this week another connection, slightly less tenuous, has popped out of the woodwork.
A thank you for posting the info on Jane SINTON was received, welcome, and surprising, in that not many people stop and thank you for the data being shared.
Another of the Sth Australian branches of the Jane SINTON/ James TELFER/TELFORD tree, originating on the Scottish Borders, has now been better documented.  Along the way the delights of the communal, free, WikiTree have also been shared, and Lisa is underway using software developed for the purpose of sharing family trees - but I do recommend that you don't fully trust online trees for your data - keep a master copy on your own computer using a good genie package ( I use TMG, but also recommend RootsMagic. Load any trials that take your fancy and try out one to suit you, data can always be shifted from one to the other using GEDCOM export/import).

The connection? In our initial email swap I noticed that Lisa also mentioned James son of Gaius WINES as one of her ancestors - Gaius' second wife was one Hannah WINES, one of my Somerset rellies from South Petherton. Chances are Gaius is as well, but the connection isn't documented , at least not that I currently know of. (Perhaps my Thomas and Gaius' grandfather Robert are siblings?).

I'd transcribed Gaius' 1869 will when I was in Taunton, way back in 1994.  It had mentioned ""and as I assisted all my sons when they emigrated to Australia I have not further provided for them by this my will but my desire is that if my son Robert shall return to England within 5 years after my said daughters shall have come into possession of my said property he shall receive the sum of ten pounds ... contributed and paid equally by my said daughters and that if either of my sons James and Sampson shall return to England within the like period then I wish him to have the sum of five pounds paid in like manner".
Tucked inside the will was an account: beavers and gloves £1; for cake 7s; cheese 6s; ale 6s; wine 2 4; bottle gin 3 6; Mr Clark for ham 8 3; owe John Banfield for one sack of barley; paid for butter  1 4; Sounds like a good send off.

SINTONs and TELFORDs

The update binge continues with my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson also being republished.
Of recent note are the updates to the Australian SINTON/TELFER/TELFORD descendants in Sth Australia. Thank you Linda for getting in touch and helping sort out at least some of the SMITHs of Glenburnie, and prompting the overdue review of Dorothy's 2008 info.
The Mt Gambier cemetery records were also a great help in overcoming the deficiencies in the BDM indexes for Sth Australia.

5th: Time for the SINTONs

Courtesy of a couple of FindAGrave people finding my tree and providing links to headstones they had contributed to, a couple of SINTON branches have been updated, with additional help from the wonderful network of helpful people out there in the genealogical community willing to take headstone photos and search records they have (thank you Ken, Linda, Norrie & Scott).
The updates will appear in assorted online trees in due course.

• The Fife TELFER family of William TELFER & Lillias SKIRVING
  
• The SINTON/FAIRBAIRN branch of John FAIRBAIRN & Margaret MORRISON in Ontario.

Interesting that the latter's dtr Jessie's (EBY) headstone has her as 6 years older than she actually was, especially as in all census data her age is accurate. Who says that women always lie about their age, implying that they are younger than they are!

4th: Two for the price of one

Harry kindly forwarded an OPR page he had downloaded for something when he noticed that it would push all my Borders buttons - mentioned SINTON, FAIRBAIRN and occurred in Southdean (it also had a couple of OLIVERs on it).

The SINTON reference was the marriage entry for Robert TELFER and Agnes SINTON, which I had an incomplete transcript of, but no copy, so that filled in a gap in my records.

The FAIRBAIRN reference was the marriage of a Nancy FAIRBAIRN to John RIDDELL (2 Dec 1808), which sounded (mostly) familiar.
That too filled a couple of gaps in my records. Nancy was previously only known to me as Agnes, and I knew her parents had moved from St Boswells to Macksidemoor, Southdean by 1804, and were recorded at Moorhead in 1806.
So still there in 1808, and now with a marriage date for Agnes/Nancy, a bit earlier than I'd guessed from the age of the 1st child known to me (Archibald, 1812, Nisbet Mill).

Updates to the WorldConnect links above will follow in due course.
(Thanks Harry)

May 3, 2008: SINTON & TAYLOR updates

Jane TELFER/TELFORD nee SINTON has now been included on my web pages.

More info received from Peter, the descendant of Leslie Bowman CADELL & Agnes Taylor LYONS, which has brought that line down to the present.

May 1, 2008: Willing RICHARDSONs

Check out the updated Originals pages.
A RICHARDSON will has been added, although I've not yet linked hardly any of the people mentioned in the document (I'm still on the first page marvelling at how many houses she had to leave to her nieces and nephews).
This will is part of a bundle of photos and letters delivered today by Grace from Hataitai, quite a bonus really as I was only expecting the will. It's one of those coincidence things again. I rang her yesterday to tell her about being contacted by the grddtr of William Record RICHARDSON, only to be greeted by, "Lorna, I was going to ring you tonight, I'm coming out your way tomorrow and was hoping to meet you and give you the will to copy".
A most welcome surprise, and visit, I'll be busy scanning for a while now.

I'm even more convinced that Jane TELFER nee SINTON in Sth Australia is my Helen's sister. Same chubby face. I'll pop a page up on the web for her when I surface a bit more. In the meantime, a few of the new twigs will be on the SINTON chart.

Apr 29, 2008: SINTON surprise

An interesting couple of days working on my favourite trees, the Border WIGHTs and SINTONs.
Both arose from GenesReunited contacts, and although it has turned out that neither are conclusively linked, information has been updated, thanks to Stephen, for prompting more research on the families of John WIGHT and Jessie HOBKIRK, resulting in another child for the family.
Also to Bill, ex of Jedburgh, now in Oz for our SINTON correspondence, during which it turned out that I'd met his Mum back in 1995!
Was able to set him straight about some of his earlier SINTON connections (family of James SINTON and Isabella FLEMING, whom I've now added to the SINTON Surname DNA Project patriarchs page), and may even find someone to join the DNA project to see if they do or don't relate to my Southdean lot.

And just when I was settling back from a fun update session, in comes an email from Perth, WA asking if I knew anything about a Jane SINTON of Southdean who had married James TELFER.
Yes, but not much, just an 1836 marriage where Jane was of Southdean and James of Jedburgh. I'd not found anything further in Scotland for the couple. No wonder really as they'd emigrated, arriving Adelaide in 1839. The Jedburgh OPR added that James was a farm servant of Edgerston, in Jedburgh Parish and Jane of Dikeraw, Parish of Chesters (where the SINTON descendant Janet MATHER nee SINTON was from about 1810 thru at least 1841) and Verity provided the birth/death dates and children. This latter showed a 2nd son Peter and 1st dtr Jane, which, together with a birth date/place for mother Jane of 1812, Southdean, means I'm happy to welcome them to the family of Peter SINTON and Jane WIGHT, and look forward to learning more.

Dec 3, 2007: More SINTONs and TELFERs

Continuing Southdean SINTON tracing. Thought I was onto one of them in England, and with a child named John Isaac Barrow SINTON, I thought I even had someone who might be easy to find in records. Unfortunately he was easiest to find in a marriage and death record, registered a quarter apart in 1866, so that trail went cold far too quickly, both for me and for him I guess.
I did eventually find his parents in 1871, they'd been indexed as SANTON, and in 1851 as SENTER. I've no idea if this George is the descendant of William and Isobel (BLACK) SINTON, as I only know he's the right age and was born Scotland. Interestingly enough, by 1871, a nephew had joined the family, born around 1857 in the United States, but so far, he too has disappeared into oblivion before and after this one census.
I will be including a bit more of this family in my Rootsweb databases in the hope someone pops out of the woodwork, but so far it doesn't look like anyone researching this family has shared much/any data online.
Had much more success with the descendants of Cecilia TELFER nee MATHER. A lot of the family moved south into England (Yorkshire and London), then one branch at least (Robert & Ann Brown (DORWARD) TELFER), onto Canada, not that I'm having much luck finding them beyond the 1906 Alberta census.

SINTON charts updated: both the brief one here and the full SINTON chart on the main part of the web pages

Dec 2, 2007: Southdean SINTONs

Decided to continue hunting for other Southdean SINTON descendants to see who I might find still living and willing to participate in the SINTON Surname DNA project.
Sorted out several duplications in my database on the family of William SINTON and Isobel BLACK, some of whose children show up in census data as being born Southdean, even though their baptisms were in Jedburgh at the Associated Session Congregation or Free Church. Some day I might find out where all the Free Churches were in the area, perhaps that was the closest for them?
William and Isobel are the parents of both the Agnes SINTON who married Robert TELFER and of John SINTON who married Dorothy EASTHAM.
William TELFER, son of Agnes & Robert, married Cecilia MATHER, grddtr of Peter and Janet (DONALDSON) SINTON.
Several more twigs will therefore show up on the assorted SINTON charts as I've found a few more of them in censuses etc.