Related or not?

The more observant of you may have noticed that my main webpages have been updated (Big Brother).
The list of recent changes is rather bunched up on yesterday, mainly because that was when I checked off the people updated since the last publication - and of course found and fixed all (most of?) the typos etc.

Jemima PARKER appears because I've been fossicking around seeing whether or not any of the  FamilyFinder matches of descendants can shed any light on her and William CLINTON's ancestry - and seeing if there are any lines of enquiry left to pursue.
This time round I decided to see if anything could be found via the marriage witnesses, given I'd a question mark on the spelling of one of them.
The witnesses to their 1810 marriage at St Alphage were given as a James [H/K]UZELL  and Ann CAMPBELL, and after a few false starts on what the name was most likely to be, I found what looks a likely pair marrying at St Alphage in 1813, James HAZELL and Ann CAMPBELL.

Anyone know anything about the family?
Dragged off the street to be witnesses? Friends? Relations? Waiting around in the church for another event?

I'm still digging, but it looks like James might have been a leather cutter, and may still have been alive in 1842 but I've not yet positively identified him or any of the family (daughters Sarah Ann, 1814, Charlotte, 1815, James Henry 1820, all baptized St Giles, Cripplegate) in the 1841 census.
There's a possibility in Essex which piqued my interest given Jemima's background, another in Berkshire and another in Somerset, which latter I think can be discounted. Jury still out on the others.

No news

No news is good news, isn't it?
Bit preoccupied elsewhere than genealogy for a while.
The update to my main Family Tree site is mostly a catchup, with all the recent changes shown since the last update (6th April to now 17th July) are mostly background data tidyups or links to other sites, rather than new data.
There are probably several new twigs on assorted descendant charts though.

The "home" link from this site has changed slightly because of a background experiment, which may mean that anyone going direct to my main domain Lornahen.com might get some unexpected results.

3 months of updates

Quite an impressively long list of recent changes - but don't be fooled.
Many are minor changes to citations, or the last edit date changed because a scanned certificate has been added (which wont be visible on the family tree pages, but may be if included on the Originals subsite - not yet updated).
Another reason for inclusion in the recent change index is the addition of links to a hopefully relevant dna page for those belonging to dna tested lines (some of which links may still not yet work).
 
At least two new people now have pages, probably others:
Grace MEIKLE nee ROBERTSON, mentioned recently
Elizabeth HAMLEY nee ROWE, although the impetus for her publication eludes me at the moment.

Now that more of the FAIRBAIRN trees are included on the One Name Study pages, the FAIRBAIRN page has been cut back to only include trees for the more closely related FAIRBAIRNs.

Many updates probably don't feature in the recent changes index but only in the updated descendancy charts.

More twigs

Republished the WIGHT descendant chart to incorporate a few more of the twigs Harry has been feeding me in the last few days.
Also revamped the charts on the RUNCIMAN page as they were not yet in the new more interactive format.
This latter activity was prompted by some RUNCIMAN research where I stumbled across a family in Liverpool who tracked back to the line of William of Crail, and may, or may not, explain the mysterious Richard buried in Buenos Aires.

28th: Cleugh Burnfoot

My main Family Tree web pages have been updated - only 4 months since the last update!
I think that all of the descendant charts are now in the new interactive format, ie lines able to be opened/closed in order to get a better picture of where someone "fits".

Took the opportunity to include the before/after images of Cleugh Burnfoot, home to James & Amelia (MILLAR) HENDERSON and family from at least 1841 to 1847.
These come courtesy of cousin Bill (for which many thanks) who visited Scotland recently and obediently went to Forth and knocked on the door of the only house along the B7016 that could be the place I saw back in 1994/5. Good to be proven right, and also many thanks to the current owners for welcoming Bill & Cheryl into their home and supplying the "before" photos.
What a marvellous transformation.
These can be found in the Places link - scroll down to SCT > Forth and click on the little information icon (the individual place pages can be renumbered when I rebuild the web site, so I'm only including the overall link here).

Also took the opportunity to include a page for David FAIRBAIRN of Hawkesbury in order to share the wonderful photo Gordon sent me some time ago.
My FAIRBAIRN surname page has also been updated and now includes a few more skeleton descendant charts for the lines now showing as a "match" thanks to the participants in the DNA project.

Several broken links have also been fixed.

Revamp

SecondSite, the program I use to generate my web pages from my Genealogy database (TMG), has come out with some interesting new features.
It was a good time to review bits of my main website.
As always, when testing, I find things that are missing, have incorrect links etc etc, so a few of those have been tidied up, some snippets added to timelines and so on.

However, the main change will be added gradually as I review all the charts.

What is now possible, is to produce a dynamic descendant chart that can be expanded/collapsed to help you get the feel for where the person of interest on the chart "fits".
I've defaulted them to "open collapsed", so that the initial view you will see is that of your person of interest, and their relationship to the subject of the chart they appear on, but you can then either open/close individual branches, or nip up to the top of the chart and expand or collapse the whole chart.
I started with the FAIRBAIRN chart for my Archibald, but several others have already been converted.
One thing that was always missing from the existing descendant charts was the spouse at the lowest level of the chart. These now show.
In addition there's an alternate view of a pedigree chart with much the same expand/collapse dynamic view, but instead of being presented in the more normal flying geese formation, this one shows the parents immediately beneath each ancestor on the chart, AND has the ability to show where a person has more than one set of "parents", eg adoptive parents, foster parents, or simply alternates from research where conclusions have not yet been reached.
As yet there's only one of these charts available, and that's my own pedigree on the charts page of my main web site, but it is highly likely that this will be used in the One Name Study pages, where alternates exist on where someone "fits".

Quite apart from the above changes, there may well be some extra snippets on the GRAHAM chart from the branch in Sth Australia (see posting in my Guestbook, 12 Jan), and one or two more snippets on the WIGHT branch in Sunderland, the family of Hector Cowans GRAY and Elizabeth WIGHT on the WIGHT chart, but whether or not anything appears there depends on how many generations down the tree the changes are, as the charts may cut off a generation or two too early.

19th: Web updates/ interesting sites

Must be surfacing from the non genie stuff that has been swamping me most of this year.
Think I've brought most of my web pages up to date, fixing several broken links etc (but probably not all).

Have rationalised the FAIRBAIRN and RUNCIMAN project diaries into one each per surname instead of one each for their respective DNA and One Name Study projects - see FairbairnsAll and RuncimansAll for the current versions - all history has been migrated, but the older DNA and One Name Study blogs remain in place given there may be links to existing posts.

Harry has provided a couple of interesting web sites:
The War Graves Photographic Project
and
Addressing History, this latter being particularly interesting if your people of interest are likely to have made it into a Directory in Edinburgh.
As their blurb states, it "combines data from digitised historical Scottish Post Office Directories (PODs) with contemporaneous historical maps"

15th: Minor updates to web

Reloaded my main family tree pages.
You'll have to search fairly hard for the changes, none are the published people with pages of their own, so the recent changes index doesn't have any new entries.
However several charts will now have new twigs on them and one or two added names as partners have been identified etc.
eg William Fairside HAMLEY's wife has been confirmed as Florence Mabel THYNNE, and will show up on the ROWE chart;
a couple of present day COMBELLACKs now appear in their rightful place at the end of the DAWE chart etc etc.
Made time to get more of my recent updates up to date on OneGreatFamily
as well.
Everything to end of July is now there, my own families, and the FAIRBAIRN and RUNCIMAN investigations which result in at least 3 generations of family trees.

But, as is usual these days, most of my current investigations will be reported under the dna blogs, or the one name study pages - see links at top left.
It's quite interesting seeing which family lines pop up unexpectedly on the other side of the world.
Have now placed an Agnes FAIRBAIRN (married a John CRIGHTON) that I came across recently marrying in Balmain, Sydney in 1876.
My initial thought was that she may have been one of the sisters of Robert FAIRBAIRN, the Resident Magistrate of Freemantle, grdson of the Robert and Janet (AINSLIE) FAIRBAIRN I've been investigating (and have now popped a summary on the dna Patriarch's page - as reported in the Fairbairn dna blog).
Don't yet know if any others of the family emigrated, but her marriage notice in the paper shows her to be the second daughter of the late Thomas FAIRBAIRN, M.D. of Edinburgh.

Can resist everything but tempatation (and wine and chocolate and..)

Couldn't resist also updating the front end to my RUNCIMAN families as a result of yesterday's findings.
William of Crail has been included as well as a descendant chart of some of his family (by no means complete).

19th: Long time coming

It's been a while, but every time I set too checking my updates were ready for the web, I got sidetracked, so next time there were even more to check.
The task got too big.
Now, however, three months later, it is done.
The recent changes index shows the people affected who actually have a page of their own, but the descendancy charts will also include whichever people I've found since the last update, back in mid November.
Most will have been mentioned in passing here on this blog, but not necessarily.

The latest contact has been from another descendant of the William McADIE who married Sarah ABBOTT trying to convince me that this William is the William of an age and birthplace, son of George McADIE and Elizabeth ROSIE.
I'm not altogether sure why I'm resisting this quite so strenuously as it does seem a likely match BUT there are still at least two other William's not yet sufficiently ruled out of contention, the naming pattern doesn't quite "fit", and if we've all found the only 1851 census contender for the chap marrying Sarah (or the son of George and Elizabeth for that matter), his occupation doesn't gel with the rest of the family and his own later occupation.
Whichever way it goes, I've ended up putting what I know about both of them on the web. Check out William and William.

28th: Continuing in update mode

My main web pages have been fully reloaded, others will follow as time permits.

Full set of BAIN dna results now in. Too early to tell if we have an accurate DNA signature for the line of John BAIN (married Catherine GRAY) as there are no matches to other tested BAIN families (see full BAIN dna project).
We only have one representative for our BAIN line and would very much like a second line to be represented to confirm this dna signature.

Aug 11, 2008: Johanna remembered

Yet more work on the James BAIN/Helen ANDREW portion of the thicket.
Descendant chart updated, and more importantly, a page added for Johanna. Nice pic ta Livy. Few more twigs and investigations to come yet.

Apr 26, 2008: never ending story..

Read the never ending story about the tale of the FAIRBAIRN research to date on Archibald and William/David, culminating in the dna matches between the three lines not previously believed related.
The relevant FAIRBAIRN page and related charts likewise are also now updated to reflect my current thinking on the relationships between these families.

Nov 11, 2007: Lots of updates

Despite what my Recent Changes page says for today, the only real change is the addition of William GRAHAM, who has just been added to the web.
In addition the GRAHAM chart also has some updates, down from Dulcibella.
Both WorldConnect databases LornaHenderson and LornaPotential have been updated as there were quite a few snippets here and there to include, ie some HENDERSON/McGREGOR updates on the New Jersey branch courtesy of Linda, and the Scottish lot courtesy of Robert, some WALDIE/WIGHT snippets via census data, and a binge on McEWANs etc etc etc).

Oct 19, 2007: Houstoun we have lift off & shelling out on SHIELs

A SHIELL day. Shelled out heaps of shekels to Scotlands People today. Hard to stop once you start.
Amazing where I get diverted to when I start on RICHARDSONs. Having popped the earlier RICHARDSON family on the web yesterday I went back to review exactly what I did know and where I got it from. One thing led to another, and I seem to have spent most of the day checking and chasing the SHIELs of Jedburgh Parish, quite succesfully as I've finally solved the mystery of Houstoun. No we don't quite have lift off, but there really was a Houstoun/Houston in Jedburgh, aka Ulston. It's too small a place for google maps but is on my landranger 74.
I also found a wife for James, so no doubt he's happy. Even if he had one all along, I didn't know who she was, just hadn't made the time to look. Economy of surnames again, she's another SHIEL. Added several more children to the family, Margaret's siblings, several of whom had the same names, so either it was a very confusing household with 2 called Agnes, James, John and probably Robert, or there were at least 4 deaths.

Web pages updated as a result of all this activity as several more of my direct ancestors have now been included.