Sidetracking

An update to my WorldConnect db LornaHenderson has been in train for a wee while now.
Anytime I run a check over the gedcom for potential problems I find either silly typos, outright mistakes, or gaps in the data that can be easily filled. Sidetracks always ensue.
The most recent proved a very interesting exercise.
It highlighted that I'd never found, or more accurately thought I'd never found, the family of Robert & Janet (SCOTT) WIGHT in the 1851 census. Wrong!
I'd found them years ago, but had shelved the id as I hadn't known anything about sons William and James, and the George with them was the wrong age. Nothing had led me back to review this isolated family sitting in my database.
So off I set to find the fate of the "newfound" children.

Several trees showed William as emigrating to Ohio and living in Iowa, married to a Mary SIMINS.
As his nephew William had indeed emigrated to Ohio, and been visited there by my 2*great grandmother, this seemed plausible, especially as the 1860 Ohio census age fitted.
I couldn't find a marriage to confirm the id, nor the birth of first daughter Margaret, supposedly born Edinburgh Feb 1854.
Subesquent census data, and William's death notice however all placed him as 10 years older and doubts began to creep in, so I moved William and Mary and family to show up (next update) in the WorldConnect potential rellies only (db LornaPotential) pending more info, and moved on to siblings Isabella and James.
With no sightings in the 1861 census I wondered if they might  not have survived - which may never have been able to be proven if it was between 1851 and the beginning of civil registration in 1855.
Thankfully for me, not so thankfully for the poor family, there were Isabella and James, both dying of typhus in Coldstream with a few months of each other, aged 4 and 17 respectively.
On a hunch, I then also searched for William - bingo. He had been the first of the family to succumb to typhus, aged 21, in February 1855 - so whoever the chap is in Ohio/Iowa aint him.

Always interested to find trees that match mine rather exactly, and note that my rethinks/subsequent research on who links to whom that I've documented aren't reflected on what look like copied data. (The earlier WIGHTs rethink refers.)

Morebattle ctd

My RICHARDSON page has been updated to include a couple more descendant charts, and a slightly updated timeline (including one or two date ranges for some families to show when their children were being baptized at Morebattle).
As I continue digging around on Borders RICHARDSONs I come across families I've looked at before, some had already been included in my LornaPotential database for many years.
So, if they had a Morebattle connection, or a connection to those that do, they've now been included on the RICHARDSON page. Might help someone!

20th: Devon, Middlesex and NZ

Brenda has turned up an unexpected connection between her ancestors that makes some of the Taranaki families even more inter-related than before, albeit distantly.
On her RIDDLE forebears she turned up a family of MATTENLY (or MATTINGLYs) whose descendants married into one of her husband's, and my ROWE family, that of Frank COLLINGS' daughter Joyce who married George F GIBBONS. The same MATTENLY family also track down to Brenda.
The linkages, but not full trees, will be included in my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson in due course.

Confirmed hunch re REY, willing ROWEs

Confirmation received that I was indeed on the right trail for at least one of the children of Thomas Storror HULL and Ada Trimble DAVEY. Ada Norah HULL married Leonard REY in Heavitree, Oct 1929, Leonard a buyer, son of a Peter REY retired civil servant, & Ada d/o Thomas HULL a woollen merchant.
Marion has written to the last address I have for a Colin who looks like he might be their son, given he was last known to be on the same street in Exeter.

Transcript received, from Ernest, of the 1858 will of James ROWE, h/o Elizabeth COLMAN, which has completely convinced Ernest and I that we have indeed connnected James up to the correct father, Matthias (as opposed to his being his cousin James bap, 1788, the son of John and Charity (BLAGDON) ROWE). He leaves the Kantham property he inherited from his father, to his son Henry Colman ROWE jointly with wife Elizabeth. It also provides an alternate surname for dtr Jane, who the Lydford marriages on GenUKi show as marrying a Samuel GORDON. She is referred to as Jane GOODYEAR in the will, and I now can spot the other half of her marriage on FreeBMD as Samuel GOODER.

LornaPotential updated, mainly to remove the Quebec families of William & David FAIRBAIRN, now included in the descendants chart for John & Bessie (FLINT) FAIRBAIRN, in readiness to publishing them in the rellies database LornaHenderson instead, but that will take some time as I check off what I do and don't have.

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 26, 2007: New York New York?

Also chased around on the New York FAIRBAIRNs in readiness for contacting them re the dna survey. The ones I've previously been in contact with seem to have vanished. I have a gut feel that they really are a branch that belongs to my Walter and Agnes FAIRBAIRN, although they didn't follow the Scottish naming pattern (introducing several rather non Scottish sounding forenames), there are a number of Walters in the family and at least one Archibald, which is very promising. Included a few more of them in the latest update to my LornaPotential database on Rootsweb WorldConnect.
Also created a SINTON page along the lines of the HENDERSON and RUNCIMAN pages that already exist.

Sep 6, 2007: Small world territory and updates

Found a couple more RICHARDSON relations whilst browsing Ancestry today. Noticed that a couple of trees had the same RICHARDSON and RUNCIMAN names as my tree so went investigating. Guess I'll only hear from them if their user info on ancestry is up to date. Small world territory. One of them appears to be from the Robert RICHARDSON Jane YOUNG branch of the tree but has ended up in the same Northumberland town as a RICHARDSON researcher down from the John RICHARDSON / Elizabeth SHIELL line.
The PC Robert RICHARDSON, of Northumberland, is of this RICHARDSON/YOUNG line (and still hasn't been written up).
I'm in the process of preparing a presentation for the Computer Users Group of the local genealogy society. Which means I'm looking around for suitable screen shots as illustrations. As a result I've found someone else researching the family that Margaret Alice RUNCIMAN belongs too and have sent her a message, brought the family of Duncan McGREGOR and Helen MOULTRIE up to the 1901 census and updated my LornaPotential database.