Bridge of Allan smiths

Wonderful what a fresh pair of eyes does.
Robert's interest in my HENDERSONs, sparked by his relationship to Margaret COUPER, who married Archibald son of Archibald HENDERSON  & Margaret McEWAN, has had both of us reviewing available information on the other children, and descendants, of Archibald and Margaret (McEWAN) H.

I'd previously thought that their son William must have died prior to 1855, probably prior to 1841, as there were no obvious sightings anywhere, other than an 1841 census entry that would otherwise fit apart from it being claimed as William born 1810 Cowie Hill, Logie, by a researcher as the son of William HENDERSON & Jean DUNCAN that I'd been in contact with back in 1994.

The more I look at this family, the more I'm becoming convinced that this is indeed my William.
Proof definitely lacking however as he does indeed appear to have died between 1846 and 1851, with Margaret also appearing to have inconveniently died between 1851 and 1855.

However, 5 of the 6 children emigrated to Melbourne, Australia in 1857, possibly with their grandmother Elizabeth SINCLAIR nee WATSON, so I'm now scurrying around seeing what else I can find.

Reviewing the 1994 correspondence I now note that the birthdate/place and parents of William were tentative at the time, not proven - so time to be checked where possible - and with a bit of luck a suitable dna candidate found for the HENDERSON DNA project? (The latter currently looks a little unlikely as far as Y-DNA is concerned, but possibly FamilyFinder may show a match to one or other of the 4 of us tested for this line over either Family Finder and/or Y-DNA)

Anyone know anything about a William HENDERSON, smith at Bridge of Allan between 1841 and 1851 in particular?

Where things lead

Started catching up on processing the transcripts from NRH that Robert so kindly sends every so often.
This one was a 1936 FAIRBAIRN/HALL marriage I was trying to slot into his correct FAIRBAIRN tree. In the process of that I corrected one of my FAIRBAIRN trees convincing myself that the informant for their son Robert's death (his son David) got his grandmother's name wrong (given as Elizabeth WATSON, instead of Margaret **see below).
That sorted, I turned my attention to the 1936 bride, whose father was given as Robert Oliver HALL.
With names like that it was a fair bet that that their just might be a connection to one or other of my Southdean trees - and how.
Robert turned out to be the brother of Isabella and Margaret, both of whom I already knew had married into my tree, one to a WIGHT line, the other to a SINTON line. All are children of James HALL and Alison OLIVER, with James having a brother Thomas who also married into my SINTON tree.
A wonderful set of connections.

But wait, there's more.
Keying all of this into my ancestry tree as I found the related census records etc up popped a family tree match down the WIGHT line.
I had never gotten back to John James TURNBULL (or many of his siblings) to figure out their fate beyond 1881, and there was Morag's tree. So an email was sent and I now have a newfound cousin in Canada, who replied promptly, and has given me some updates on her farflung branch.

** and even more.
Checking back to my database as I wrote the above, I realised that although I had corrected Robert's mother to Margaret WATSON, I had not noticed that I already had others of the correct family in my database already.
Robert had a brother James whose son James married in Quebec (1860 to Catherine PIDGEON).
When time permits an outline tree will probably be included in the Wanted! pages of the Fairbairn ONS/DNA project to see if there are any additional connections.