Megsmire

Back in 1994 I was fortunate enough to be able to visit Nichol Forest in Cumberland, where my TURNBULL ancestors (great grandmother Ellen TURNBULL and her parents) came from, and to research them in the Carlisle Record Office.
While there I noted any likely looking information that may at some stage connect, even if I didn't know exactly how, where or when at the time.
One such was the 1842 will of Walter of Megsmire (which place I visited, or at least where I decided it probably was from census data). It was a very detailed will, and sexist (but of its time), dividing his moss up into sixths, with each of five sons getting one sixth but three daughters sharing the remaining sixth.
Walter survived to appear in the 1841 census as a 75 year old, but that didn't lead me to match him up to the known Nichol Forest families.
Yesterday however George, a descendant, provided me with a copy of Walter's 1842 death cert, which gave his age as 80, and an added impetus to try again, given that between then and now much more research on TURNBULL baptisms had occurred.
I now believe Walter to be the son of James TURNBULL & Betty BELL, and baptised in 1762 (at Canonbie). This makes George and I 7th cousins, which has taken us at least 9 years of (very) intermittent correspondence trying to prove our relationship via the TURNBULLs.

With both yesterday's news re Lester LESLIE aka Jack WALSH, and this TURNBULL reshuffle, my webpages have been updated, and the next batch of changes included in my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson (Walter has been shifted from LornaPotential, which has also had an update, as has the data I contribute to OneGreatFamily, which can include other families unrelated to me, but of relevance to the FAIRBAIRN and RUNCIMAN DNA projects and One Name Studies - FAIRBAIRN, RUNCIMAN).

I even had a rush of blood to my head and also gave the much less often updated Rootsweb pages a refresh. They don't contain as much supplementary information as my main pages, but will hopefully still exist long after I've ceased paying for my own domain name.

Still avoiding tax returns

Ordered the Canonbie MIs published by the Dumfries and Galloway FHS from the NZ Society library to check out any more TURNBULLs that might be obvious there.
Unfortunately the only TURNBULLs there were the ones I already knew about, Robert and family, so no new TURNBULL mysteries solved, BUT, I did of course check the index for other surnames of interest, and the one and only FAIRBURN aka FAIRBAIRN turned out to solve a mystery of the varying ages for one Margaret, d/o Walter FAIRBAIRN and Grace ARMSTRONG. Easily solved, there was, as suspected, an earlier Margaret who died.
A couple of English certs have turned up and confirmed my guesses as to which death registration might belong to Walter FAIRBAIRN (of Haltwhistle, son of the above Walter - talk about synchronicity!), and Robert SINTON of Castle Ward, NBL.

Aug 28, 2007: Crossing the styx (Border)

Small world territory. Bridget has helped me a lot with my Cumberland research, and had a query about information available about a possible relation of hers here in NZ. Turned out he has a monument erected to him on Mt Egmont. I found a picture of it, and it looks amazingly like the one I have a picture of me and my Grannie sitting at the base of, back when I was around 10.
Which was incidental to her reporting that the Canonbie MIs she was reading had my TURNBULL family in them. No wonder I couldn't find a grave for them in Nichol Forest, I was looking on the wrong side of the Border. They may well have lived their entire lives around Nichol Forest in Cumberland, but when their son Walter died aged 4 in 1826 it looks like they buried him in his mother's home ground instead of theirs, Canonbie in Scotland. Robert's page has therefore been updated and the two children added to the web pages.