Fate of Mary Ann LIVOCK

Remember how a while ago Michael popped out of the woodwork having identified the first wife of the Rev Robert TURNBULL?
And how we couldn't find her death? The closest match by place being a few weeks shy of when Robert remarried, which seemed unlikely undue haste.

Karen, a descendant of David STEVENSON and his wife Eliza (who turned out to be Mary Ann's sister) came up trumps.
She read the online correspondence of David STEVENSON rather more closely than I and found his report back to wife Eliza and the Rev Turnbull of a visit to Milverton in Somerset to see "poor Mary Ann's grave".
Somerset would never have featured on my radar as a place to look for Mary Ann's death.
Karen also found a transcript of the burials at St Michael's, Milverton, and I found several 1843 advertisements for the Milverton Classical and Commercial School, "Master Mr Turnbull".
He obviously couldn't teach Greek!

Mary Ann now appears on my webpages with her own page

First the bridesmaid, then the bride

Another example of why it pays to advertise, ie publish your research, and the gaps.
In my inbox today arrived a certificate and a note  saying "I think I've found the first wife of the Rev. Robert TURNBULL for you".
Sure enough!!
The Robert on the cert. was shown as a schoolmaster, son of a carpenter Robert.
So far so good.
Even better, one of the witnesses was a Dav[id] STEVENSON.
The Revd Robert's son Robert, later Sir Robert of the LNWR, is to be found in the 1871  census as a visitor in the household of a David STEVENSON, a railway manager, born Islington, MDX.

And just to make even more certain, another of the witnesses was one Louisa Philippine MAES.

Timeline:
Jan 1843 Robert marries Mary Ann LIVOCK, daughter of John LIVOCK, Coal Merchant.
Nov 1844 Robert marries, as a widower, Louisa Philippine MAES.

Now to find Mary Ann's death.
One possibility in Pancras looks a few short weeks prior to Robert's marriage to Louisa!!
There are others to investigate.

My benefactor was interested in the LIVOCK family because of John William LIVOCK the architect who had designed railway stations.
He had added that Mary Ann's sister Eliza married David STEVENSON, the witness, and with whom (Sir) Robert was in 1871.
This branch of the TURNBULL family does seem to attract railway connections.

Now I'm on the hunt to identify Mary Ann and Eliza's mother as she appears to have been born in Cumberland.
This family may well do a full research circle, Cumberland to St Pancras and back to Cumberland. 

Naomi

Naomi is a sister of one of the "Seven Daughters of Eve".
This is of interest as the mtDNA results are just in for the direct maternal descendant of Margaret McEWAN, wife of Archibald HENDERSON.
Don't think our overall sum of genealogical knowledge has been advanced a lot, but it is good to know that her descendant belongs to haplogroup W, a subgroup of haplogroup N.
The results did make me check where the direct maternal line led back to, and as a result a few dates have been amended, and an extra generation added - that of George STEVENSON & Jean OSWALL of Stirling, parents of Margaret.

STEVENSONs of Hokitika

Not sure how I ended up in the ADDISON/STEVENSON part of my database, but having done so, it looked time for an update.
Several births, deaths, and marriages have now been confirmed, spouses correctly named, one or two descendants names, and the wonderful cemetery database resource of the Westland District Council has been found.
My WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has already started an update process so this version wont contain any data from the newly found Hokitika headstone photos on the above site, but does contain many updates to the family.
They descend from Margaret FAIRBAIRN and Joseph BROOMFIELD via their daughter Agnes whose photo in an inherited album opened up a whole new line of research, so many years ago.  She looked far too well dressed to be one of my relatives, but no, she was indeed, as labelled in the album, my great grandfather Adam DAVIDSON's cousin. 

One thing leads to another

Continuing the recent activity from the WIGHT/THOMSON review led Harry to recheck for more of his WIGHT/STEPHENSONs, and of course I got sidetracked onto them as well.
Both of us were surprised to find another child, or possibly 2, in the family of William STEVENSON and Agnes RAMAGE, having found "mother", Mrs STEVENSON, living with a previously unknown son Thomas, and his brother William, in Selkirk in 1901 (bit lucky that, she died in 1901).
Thomas pre-dated her marriage to hubby William and shows up on FamilySearch Scotland Births and Baptisms as Thomas RAMAGE and was brought up by a William & Eliza BEATTIE as both adopted son, and nephew (my unchecked assumption is that Eliza might be Agnes' sister).
William however  was born Melrose, in Dec 1872 to William and Agnes (RAMAGE) STEVENSON, as William Robert STEVENSON.
But having found him in 1891 and 1901 he then disappears.
A tree on ancestry provided a hint that a chap of the right age, but no parents provided, had a daughter Margaret Hamilton STEVENSON who married in Australia (Ian Murray THOMSON - no obvious connection to the THOMSONs of recent activity, being of Fife origins) in 1932, and provided death dates, but no places, for William and his wife Agnes Hamilton nee GRIEVE.

Still haven't found their emigration records, but William and Agnes (GRIEVE) STEVENSON were in Geelong by at least 1924.

So, that little mystery is well on the way to being solved, which leaves the fate of William Snr's sister Sarah.....

My main web pages have been updated to include the above in the WIGHT tree (and possibly the RUNCIMAN and FAMILTON ones, depending on how many generations down we've got to by now).

One of the changes is a overdue replacement of my paternal ancestors and siblings chart. I noticed the other day that it still showed my older thoughts on how the Bowden WIGHT tree looked (refered to here).
The other change is to the home page for Big Brother - it now includes a summary of the last 5 posts from this blog - thanks to an update to the program I use to generate the webpages from my TMG database, SecondSite.

25th: Remember to review your data!

Always good practice to review your data. One thing all these DNA studies have done is cause me to look at a heap of relations that I've not re-examined evidence for their assorted events in a long time.
The latest has resulted in a webpage comment being added about the James WIGHT/Isabella HALL couple, as working back the estimated ages/dates you get to a potentially rather young Mum for Isabella. They aren't outrageously out, just a bit tight, and do assume that Jane STEVENSON did get her correct age on her headstone.

More FAIRBAIRN DNA Results in, still showing a good match between the James & Helen (GOODFELLOW) and the Trotter & Jane (FAIRBAIRN) FAIRBAIRN lines of Spencerville, Ontario and Sunderland, Durham, respectively, and still a match, although less strong, to the others assumed to be down from John & Bessie (FFLINT) FAIRBAIRN.

Aug 18, 2007: Hendersons galore & Hounam

Odd how one thing leads to another. I finally found out that Second Site (my web page generator) has (always had?) a feature that allows charts generated in TMG to be included on the web, with photos included and still be able to link back to their pages on the site, if any.
So I've included an ancestor chart from Dad that also shows the siblings of the ancestors, and thumbnail images if I've actually included them in my database. But first I had to catch up on a backlog of photo scanning and processing, including some from my trip last year. Check out the new Henderson's galore page.

The clutch of WIGHT/HALL/STEVENSON names shown under the Recent changes index for yesterday/today are because I included the HALL/STEVENSON/WIGHT headstone photo from Hounam. I also added some pics of the Hounam church in the place index.
Reviewing the MIs transcript of the stone (it was pretty illegible) I decided that I have to rethink whether or not Isabella and James WIGHT really do fit into the family of James WIGHT and Isabella HALL. For the moment, I've included James Hall WIGHT and left the latter two there as siblings, however unlikely this now seems, given this makes two James' in the family, born about the same time.

Anyway, big brother has now been updated.