18th: if they can't get it right...

I was browsing the Scotlands People feature on Famous Scots and noticed it had the will of Sir William Fairbairn.
Wrong.
Yes it was the will of a William Fairbairn who died about the same time (1873), but that of the Edinburgh surveyor, married to Agnes Hamilton DODDS, and brother of the Free Church Minister of Allanton, and most definitely not that of Sir William, engineer, born Kelso 1789, living in Surrey at the time he died in 1874.

Check out the Fairbairn DNA project for the outline pedigrees of the people mentioned.

11th: Where things lead

One of the Message Alerts that Rootsweb sends out for message boards I have registered an interest in mentioned an IVISON.
I thought that name sounded a bit familiar, and given it is also a little unusual, I went searching in my database to see why I thought I had someone of that name.
Well, only one.
Last year I had pieced together a theoretical family for one of my WIGHTs based on one of the children being Isabella Ivison WIGHT, as I'd found a possible marriage for John Adam Thomas WIGHT to an Elizabeth PERCIVAL, whose mother was an Isabel IVISON.
(see blog filtered for IVISON)
I later confirmed they were indeed the right family.
Spurred on by this more recent reminder of the name, and with more information now available, I spent a while checking the ancestry indexes for births, deaths, and marriages 1916 thru 2005 and have updated the family a bit more.
Couldn't find them anywhere in England in 1911 however under any search criteria I could think of. Which was a little surprising as they do seem to have stayed around Northumberland.
Next WorldConnect update will have a few more twigs on that part of the WIGHT tree.

8th: WARE branch updated

Thanks to Nick providing an outline descendant chart for Gertrude TURNER (dtr of William TURNER and Mary Ann WARE), I spent a happy time checking it off and adding dates and places, where I could. Surnames added into that branch of the tree include: SHARRATT, NORTON, PEPPER, HIGGINBOTHAM, BRASNETT, McCAUSLAND, LOVELESS, ATKINSON, ASHMAN and HOPE, none of which feature elsewhere, so no new inter-connections for this Devon family that moved to London.

The results of our endeavours will appear on WorldConnect in due course, and are already in my ancestry tree LornaHen, included there as I found the source records.

Gateshead to Manitoba, DODDS reviewed

Although I've not renewed my sub to MyHeritage (well it was free for five years from the old GenCircles and now will cost), the tree is still sitting there, searchable.
A side effect of this is that people may still send me emails about matches, but I wont be able to reply (unless they include an email address).
One such arrived today, a Katie asking about her 3*great grandparents William DODDS and Agnes Robertson DAVIDSON of Gateshead.
Up to now I'd not advanced all the family as far as 1901, but spurred on by the knowledge that at least one branch must have produced several more generations, I had another look today.
Still don't know where Katie fits, but do appear to have found that dtr Rosina Hunter DODDS married an ELLIOTT, a descendant of whom has a tree on ancestry; and that the John (who had married a Sarah someone by 1901) and family had all hopped off to Manitoba by 1903.
I've also resurrected father William, he can't be the one of the right age in the death index in 1902 as he's a widower in the 1911 census with son James.
So, Katie, I hope you find this eventually, and contact me from my website as I'd love to know where you do fit into the family.

1st: PURDIE mystery solved

I'd previously given up trying to find Margaret PURDIE nee FAIRBAIRN and family in 1841, although I had eventually found hubby Charles gamekeeping in Buckinghamshire.
Got a bit more stubborn today, having found that in the 1871 census daughter Cecilia thought she was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, so thought they might be there.
No wonder I was having trouble. The Wherstead Suffolk census shows Margaret saying she was 40 instead of 48, and they had been indexed as PURDUE born Ireland, instead of Scotland, even Cecilia, who was shown as Acilia, 5 born Scotland, not England.
It did add a daughter Elizabeth into the family, but didn't solve the mystery of the Williams in the family.

Where did the year go?

2009 seems to have vanished exceedingly fast. Not sure I've achieved much, but I've had a great deal of fun along the way. Many thanks to all who helped.

Ended the genealogical year by updating the neverending story to include this month's complications that have been added to my FAIRBAIRN research, with a hope that the dna project's findings may eventually resolve the questions asked.

All the best to you and yours, and may 2010 prove as interesting a year to all (only 5 hours left in 2009 here in kiwi-land).

Some wedding!

I don't know who the James FAIRBAIRN was who married in 1737, but I think I'd like to know what this NAS Catalogue GD18/5415 refers too:
"Letters (2) to Sir John Clerk from James Fairbairn requesting money for his wedding and giving an account of the uproar which occurred on his wedding day"
(this being in the papers of the Clerk family of Penicuik)
Postscript: he has to be the James who married Margaret GIBSON