Hoping something is true...

... isn't the same as it being true.
A couple of years ago I found some HAMILTON twigs in Australia.
The several trees on ancestry all claimed George HAMILTON and Isabella ORMISTON as their ancestors.
At the time I was on a quest to find a direct male line descendant of this couple (or for that matter any of the preceding generations) who might be willing to be a guinea pig and do his thing for family history by participating in the FAMILTON DNA Project.
Still looking - hint, hint! Remember that the line of the Ancrum weavers that we hope to match are of an unusual haplogroup for the Borders (G), which might add some interest to the search.

Information from an 1899 family tree had shown that several of the sons had indeed gone to Australia, nothing further known.

Superficially the information checked out but with nothing concrete to prove the linkage, and with, I do admit, a slight niggle as one of the death index entries had a wrong mother's forename.

Something led me back to the family this week.
Time moves on, more records are more readily available.

The main link to descendants was William Sydney HAMILTON, son of George HAMILTON and Catherine HENDERSON.
However he is now known to not be the one marrying DRYER and producing descendants, as his headstone shows he died aged 8 months and is buried with three of his siblings (Peter Henderson, Jessie, and Catherine HAMILTON) who all died as infants, and his mother Catherine Henderson HAMILTON of Argyll (not Ireland).

Further info was found this time round on the son who survived infancy, George.
So, several twigs lost and only one gained - IF the George marrying Catherine is indeed our George.
We do know that the George marrying Catherine was 28 in 1848, which fits, but that's circumstantial evidence as his death has not yet been found.
Some trees show George as the 1883 death indexed as parents George and Isabella. However the matching death notice shows that George as 21, native of Glasgow, where there's a matching birth indexed in Govan to George HAMILTON and Isabella BOW.

Son George married a Charlotte Jane McMASTER and produced at least one son, Gordon Cumming HAMILTON.
An note on a FamilySearch tree adds that he was the first to drive a car over the Blue Mountains from Sydney - haven't yet found any record of that.
Can anyone elaborate?
Can anyone fully confirm that this George married to Catherine HENDERSON is the son of George and Isabella (ORMISTON) HAMILTON?

My WorldConnect database LornaHenderson that contains the basic BDM data for all the dead rellies and connections has been updated to reflect this change of tack, and bring in all the updates from the last few months.

Familton/Hamilton

As I'm addicted to genetic genealogy, in case readers hadn't guessed by now, a while ago I succumbed to an ancestry.com sale and added one of their dna kits to my sum of knowledge.
Although I now see firsthand how woeful their tools are for actually confirming their suggested matches, I do have to report a success.

Using the search by location for Roxburghshire, Scotland over my suggested matches brought up several trees of interest.
One of particular interest showed an end of line HAMILTON as Archibald HAMILTON and Isabella HEN(D)RY whom I know to be of the Abbey Hotel, Melrose (father George appears on my webpages complete with photo).

Our DNA match was predicted as confidence "very low", and I strongly suspect that FamilyTree DNA wouldn't even show it as a match, but nonetheless, having confirmed sufficient of the papertrail shown, I believe we are 7th cousins!
This is somewhat beyond the normal range of autosomal dna testing for a great deal of confidence, so maybe there's a closer papertrail in there somewhere, but for now I'm happy to have found a Californian branch of my FAMILTONs.

However, the next step is to try and verify which segment of my dna can be tracked back to our shared ancestors, William FAMILTON and Elizabeth WILSON (which descendant chart now has at least some of the newfound (to me) line appearing on it).
This couple are the parents of the Bessy FAMILTON who married John RUNCIMAN and we have several descendants with detectable matches back to at least the next generation down.
With a lot of luck and co-operation with the ancestry match we should be able to use the wonderful third party tools at GEDMatch.com to see if the shared segment is detectable in some of those.

Any other FAMILTON/HAMILTON descendants out there wanting to try their luck at a detectable match via this tree, do join my FamilyFinder project FFLornaHen and order a FamilyFinder test. I'll happily help you through the maze of results.

16th: John or Albert?

Thought I was onto a lead for some modern day descendants of my rather distant FAMILTON forebears.
One branch had ended up in Racine, Wisconsin, and I'd found what looked like the son John of the family living in Minneapolis in the 1920 census with a wife Margaret, and children Mabel and Winston. Age right, birth state right, father shown as born Scotland, occupation not out of the question.
But no. Tracking back on Winston, the 1900 census had the family as Albert B & Margaret HAMILTON instead of John and Margaret!
Sure enough, FamilySearch Minnesota BDM indexes show Albert as his name, and a family tree on ancestry that cited sources, agreed, and gave his pedigree - not the John I was looking for after all.

This activity being driven by a phone call from Val nee FAMILTON a few days ago to introduce herself.
Her call had prompted me to review where I'd got to with the FAMILTON DNA project, and a few hurried additions to the patriarchs page and a bit of a tidy up led me to add a post to that project diary, and cast around for likely new candidates to prove the assorted lines (my Earlston weavers, the Ancrum weavers, and the Northumberland based families) were related, despite the lack of paper trail.
Love to hear from any direct male line FAMILTONs who may be willing to participate.

8th: FAMILTONs and HAMILTONs

In addition, the fledgling FAMILTON Surname DNA project results are also beginning to arrive.
Only 12 markers so far, but interestingly enough, a 12/12 match is being reported with a HAMILTON who knows nothing of any Scottish ancestry, but can trace the line back to a John HAMILTON born Ireland and died Sth Carolina (no timeframe supplied).
However the family researcher indicates this is a G Haplogroup and as our results don't yet give a haplogroup, we are unsure if this will hold up when further results are available.
Watch the FAMILTON Surname DNA Project Diary for updates.

22nd: Triumph of hope over experience?

Recently one of my FAMILTONs was on the same page as a FAIRBAIRN I was chasing around the Earlston records.
Which got me thinking about the FAMILTONs again.
Are the Earlston weavers related to the Ancrum weavers? And do the Northumberland ones fit in or not?
So I've set up yet another dna project.

Not sure if this one will fly or not, but there are several modern day families still with the name around, mainly, as far as I can tell, in Northumberland, New Zealand and the States, but none in the Scottish phone book.

I know that my particular line did change to HAMILTON, during the course of one 1753 deed, and seem to have stuck with that surname for successive generations.

Any takers?

Over view of the assorted links, which have been set up with the same structure as most of my other DNA projects can be found on the introduction of the project at the DNA Projects Portal.

Aliens galore

Even more HENDERSON/McGREGOR updates. Noreen in BC has been talking to the rellies and gleaning some family stories, which has give us some great leads as to what happened to the assorted families. Timescales seem to be subject to the usual vagaries of memory, and one story places Daniel McGREGOR in Ontario, but this is proving hard to validate.
She was very surprised to find that one family also lived in BC.

The HENDERSON descendant chart has been updated as a temporary measure until I've finished this rash of updates and can update World Connect again.

Immigration records have been a great help in tracking down what happened to some of them. I just love the phrase that appears on the US Alien manifests, "nearest relative or friend in country whence alien came".

Surnames added into the HENDERSON tree as a result include: COUSIN, HAMILTON, TAYLOR, CAMERON, with associated places including Ontario, and British Columbia, but also New Jersey, and of course outer space for the aliens.