RootsWeb WorldConnect

Some of you may know that RootsWeb has been having issues of late, some months even.
The mailing lists do seem to be gradually becoming operational again.
I gave up on my Guestbook ever becoming operational again and created a replacement, along with a snapshot of the entries that had been made up to Jun 2016.
The latest casualty, which had been working quite recently, was my LornaHenderson, WorldConnect database.
At the moment, and for the last few days, an update has been stalled after the load but before being made visible to the public again.
RootsWeb acknowledge problems exist but have no estimated time for a fix.

With that uncertainty and the usefulness of being able to point people to the BDM summary for all of the rellies and their connections I've quickly created* a, hopefully temporary, replacement

• the temporary replacement
• the permanent link - in case it starts working again - which it has 27 Dec

My main page Online Databases list on LornaHen has been tweaked to point to the temporary link in the meantime.

* by the newly available GedSite by John Cardinal. Using an existing GEDCom, the one the WorldConnect database is stuck on, it took less than an hour to set up and most of that was tweaking the wording of the main page and changing my mind about what other links to include in the menu.

Curate with a hearing problem?

There seems to be a bit of a trend about oral traditions/hearing issues here at the moment.

My WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has been republished to include the last few months worth of updates.
Many updates are the result of checking off research from the early days when so few sources were readily available - in particular some of the dates for the family of Anna Maria ANDREWS  and John Lidderdale PURDIE (having been prompted by a DNA match with a descendant), but also some of the BAINs.
The most recent set however were for the family of Richard MATTERS/METTERS and Elizabeth NORRISH thanks to a smartmatch from MyHeritage alerting me to a tree posted by a descendant.
From Devon to London to Argentina to Devon to New Zealand.
I've found a 5th cousin lives over the hill from me!
This exercise reminded me that I'd never satisfactorily resolved/tidied up the family of Ann daughter of Richard and Elizabeth, nor found the baptisms for the family.
The latter turned out to be because back when that research was first done, Non Conformist baptisms weren't as readily available. Now they are indexed on FamilySearch and Ancestry (at least), with the images available on TheGenealogist.co.uk
That solved I turned my attention back to Ann's marriage to John BORROWMAN.
Still no joy.
Has anyone found it?
The best I could come up with was John's marriage in 1848 to a Mary Ann MEADOWS.
Right father and father's occupation, date fits known info, ie Ann shown in the 1851 census where she was living at home with her parents, shown as Ann BORROWMAN, married, and Richard/Elizabeth's granddaughter Fanny Barford MATTERS aged 3 born Devonport in the household.
The first  child for Ann and John I know about is son John born 1853.
Fanny later shows up with John and Ann as daughter, Fanny BORROWMAN, but her marriage certificate to George BURDICK shows her father as _____ and herself as Fanny BORROWMAN nee MATTERS, spinster

So, can anyone claim a Mary Ann MEADOWS of full age, X her mark, father Richard MEADOWS, farmer, who married John BORROWMAN, carpenter Royal Navy residence at marriage HMS Wellesley?
Is this Ann MATTERS as recorded by a Curate unused to the local accent? But if so, why Mary Ann?

MANSONs of Caithness anyone?

Have had another great find from DNA testing this week.
Although I do suspect that at least part of it was under my nose, un-analysed from a while ago.

One of my larger matches on 23andme shared genomes, ie we can now see the details of where we match.
Turned out to be at a spot I already knew about two other, smaller, matches and had got as far as determining that we shared some unknown ancestor back up my father's side somewhere.
Needle in haystack.
But the haystack has just got quite a lot smaller.
It is looking far more likely to be my Caithness ancestral lines.

Although none of these matches were on GEDMatch where we could compare across all three companies, one had helpfully tested on both 23andme and on FamilyTreeDNA.
Where I could see that he matched not only myself, but also the late David FINLAYSON, and David's 1C1R who shares his James COGHILL and Isabella WATERS (married 1873 Dunnet, Caithness) as their most recent common ancestors.

But did I also match David there? Not according to FamilyTreeDNA.

Back to the wonderful GEDMatch to see if there was a match below the matching thresholds FTDNA apply. Yes, just below the FTDNA threshold, two segments, totalling 17cM in all, one right where I wanted it to be.

I don't, to my knowledge, have any known COGHILL or WATERS direct ancestry, but we all do have MANSON families - who doesn't if your ancestors come from Caithness? Not that I can see any immediate connection, but somewhere, somewhen, there is a common ancestor who gave us that shared bit of dna on chromosome 13.

My known MANSON ancestry is more from Watten, tiny bit further south than Olrig/Dunnet etc.

Love to hear from anyone with any of the above MANSONs in their ancestry, particularly if you've ventured into DNA testing for genealogy so we can share research and genetics, and hopefully begin to pinpoint which family lines are involved.

Pity that it didn't show up as David's paternal side as we had always considered that our FINLAYSONs just might be related, just back from the beginning of parish records in Bower.
Looks to be a bit far for atDNA to prove, even with the inter-related Caithness families ensuring dna survival beyond the normal expected inheritance probabilities down the generations.

My RootsWeb WorldConnect database LornaHenderson will be updated shortly to include the relevant bits of the above pedigrees, or more accurately, the one or two missing linkages to connect up people already there, as many of David's "cousins" married my "cousins",  in Caithness, Australia, and New Zealand.

WorldConnect - BDM data redux

As per yesterday's post, my updates continue.
WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has been refreshed.

In addition to both LornaPotential and LornaHenderson being on RootsWeb for posterity, both have been uploaded to my Henderson Web Site on MyHeritage.
This time I have hopes that the latter will continue to be able to be synchronised with  my desktop, never having been able to do so up till now for reasons they've not been able to fathom.

With the changes to MyHeritage over the last while, records found in their searches can now be attached to trees, much like Ancestry, but I have to confess the latter impinges on my consciousness more than MyHeritage does, so my trees there, although incomplete, are more actively worked on.
MyHeritage's strength, for me, remains the smartmatch facility I've found useful since GenCircles days.

Regardless of which site, contact from relatives, however distant, is welcome.

Barbara SCOTT

Reviews of older data are always fruitful.
One of the side effects of my review of the SCOTTs around Stapleton was finding that I had merged two Barbara SCOTTs of an age in my database.
- one baptised 1753, daughter of Robert & Bridget (GRAHAM) SCOTT (the parents of the Robert and Margaret at Corrylees mentioned in the prior post), whom I had married off to Thomas NICHOL.
- another recorded as married to Thomas NICHOL, with an extract from the marriage showing her father was John SCOTT.
This has now been corrected, and my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson updated showing both Barbaras, as well as all of the last month's updates.

Importance of checking the originals!

A review of some early DAWE research has led to a change of tack for the family of Richard, son of Gregory NICHOLAS and Sarah DAWE.
I had this Richard married to Henrietta RALPH and they've been sitting in my database as a family for some years now.
Always pays to review past research, AND to check original records to corroborate the census data and indexes.
The NICHOLAS families of Whitchurch do seem to specialise in reusing first names and having children of the same names and ages. They've taken a bit of untangling, not just Richard.

Richard's wife looks more like she'll turn out to be the Sarah BIDGOOD living next door to Richard's uncle in the 1841 census, and possibly related to his aunt Joan's husband Abraham BIDGOOD or TURNER. 
The marriage cert. showed his parents as Richard NICHOLAS, blacksmith, instead of the expected Gregory.

The above, plus time to review all the (overdue) pending updates to the family tree on the web, mean that my main webpages (Big Brother) have been republished, and an update to WorldConnect database LornaHenderson is in process.

WorldConnect

Given that updates seem to be flavour of the week, my RootsWeb WorldConnect db LornaHenderson has also been updated. It will therefore contain the last 4 months of updates to all those connected to my extended tree, along with some pockets of connections to those connections.
BMDBs (Births, Marriages, Deaths, Burials) as usual, plus this time Census events have been included, date and place only.

As before,  for source information you will still need to contact me to find out where the information shown was obtained. This is because the older source data has never been re-examined to ensure nothing private is inadvertently shown, eg email addresses, dates for living people.

There's one less "orphan", ie a person known to be connected somehow but not where or how.
However the definition of "sister" on a US immigration form proved rather loose.
I'd not been able to fit a sister, supposedly Mrs T C JENKINS, into the family concerned (Marshall METHERELL) and up to now had also not found the "sister" in the US census.
This time round I investigated Marshall a little more and found a second marriage, and a child in the Pennsylvania records - where the sponsors for the baptism of the child were Thomas and Jessie JENKINS.
Seemed too much of a coincidence. This time, with first names now available, Mrs T C JENKINS has been found, and identified as Jessie DAVEY, so  rather looks to be a sister of Marshall's first wife Ann DAVEY, instead of Marshall's sister.

At last

My WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has been re-loaded to reflect the last few months research, or at least those bits of it relating to my relations and their connections.

Still working on the equivalent - Lorna Potential ie the potential rellies.

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.)

WorldConnect updated

A fresh copy of the WorldConnect database LornaHenderson, the online tree of BDM data on the rellies no longer with us, and their connections,  has been uploaded.
Last updated in April, so a few months of updates.
Although not proven to be a connection, some of the Morebattle RICHARDSON research from the last few days has also been included in the hope of flushing some descendants out of the woodwork.

While onto updates, database LornaPotential has also had a rather overdue review.
Several people have been shifted into the above Lorna Henderson database as they are now either know to be relations, or connect to people who are, others have been dropped off. There's more that can be reviewed given the timespan since last review (last updated March 2010!), and the fact that 50 of them are "orphans", ie not connected to anyone else in the database, but pegged as of potential interest, mostly as possible sightings of one or other of the rellies.

Isn't it wonderful...

... that when someone shows you how to re-interpret a mystery that all the records you couldn't find are now easily found!

Midi popped out of the woodwork to let me know the fruits of the research that she, and a very helpful Devon Online Parish Clerk (OPC), had put together in the search for her 3*great grandmother, one Thomasin aka Tammay aka Thomazin aka Tamson etc etc etc YEOMAN.
During that research she happened upon the 1861 census entry showing one of Tammay's married daughters, Jane WALTERS, in the family of Nathaniel DAWE and wife Tammay, in Plymouth, showing as a daughter of Nathaniel's.
Not that I'd searched particularly concertedly, but on the information shown I'd never managed to find Jane DAW(E)'s marriage to WALTERS, nor her birth, nor the marriage for Nathaniel and Tammay.
Knowing what I now know, out they popped:

• "daughter" Jane's 1848 marriage as Jane COTTON to William WALTERS (at least the husband had been correct all along thankfully)
• Jane's 1817 baptism in Plymouth Charles, father Sampson COTTON a miller at Lipson Mill

both images now being available on FindMyPast. 

Midi supplied both of Thomasin's marriages (which images I've not yet managed to find on FindMyPast):

• firstly to Sampson COTTON in May 1816 at Charles the Martyr, Plymouth
• secondly to Nathaniel DAWE in May 1824, Stoke Damerel.

Adding that Sampson had died in 1822 and was buried at/from the Ebeneezer Methodist Chapel in Plymouth, aged 34. And that son Samuel COTTON was a witness to the marriage of Nathaniel DAWE junior's marriage in 1855.
In my defence, I did have a note that possibly the marriage to Nathaniel might be around 1825 rather than 1816 given that's when the next children arrived, but I'd obviously not searched hard enough back when I had access to the Plymouth/Stoke Damerel parish records.

Jane WALTER's family will continue to be included in my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson, so that the research that has been shared  by/with me over the years down that line still shows, but they are now COTTON, not DAWE, descendents.
In the process a few other COTTONs in the database have had their dates checked and approximations now match reality, the family of James COTTON (b. Sth Africa) and Hannah Emma Jones BROOKING. Also added three more children into the family from the 1911 census, which included a 1 month old mite Emmie Violet, crossed out, who turned out to have been born and died the year before.

The database has been reloaded to reflect all of the above, along with the recent activity on the family of Alexander HENDERSON of the P.O. Buildings, Biggar - although several of the newly identified twigs are amongst the living and thus not shown in this extracted database. Would love to hear from the children of Alexander's son Alexander in California.

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. 

Hopton, Millfield et al

Contact from Helen set me off on a THOMSON update. She had noted William THOMSON of Hopton in my database and wondered what connection he was to me.
A first quick look showed that he was included because he, and his second cousin, had both married into my RUNCIMAN family. But the mention of Hopton reminded me of the bunch of THOMSONs buried at Maxton, very close to my WIGHTs (who had THOMSON connections), so I did a bit more digging. I'd not touched these latter THOMSONs for 20 years - what an amazing amount of information is now so much more readily available.
Additional info on the assorted THOMSON headstone families was found, and the above William THOMSON also connected in. Contact with Harry about this activity unearthed his 20 yr old photos of the headstones concerned:

Places associated with these farming THOMSONs inlcude Reperlaw (Raplaw, Replaw), Millfield, Hopton (Hobton) and Over Roxburgh.
The other headstone with this lot was that of an Adam, farmer at Rutherford, but born Fogo, whose father appears to have farmed at Bogend, not as yet known to be connected - anyone researching this lot?
During this, I did convince myself that the James THOMSON married to Janet FAIRBAIRN of Yarlside was a grandson of Thomas & Helen (SCOTT) THOMSON of Millfield. (See Fairbairn Surname DNA Project for further info, and the Borders Family History Society Journal of Oct 2010 for an article on a Thomson reunion)
As a result of all of this activity, my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has been updated to include some of these families, as one day, we may be able to connect them up to my Bowden/Maxton THOMSONs. The update also includes a few more LIDDLE twigs found recently.
While fossicking around on Millfield and Hopton I happened across some interesting House of Commons papers, Volume 14 which included the 1837 Report of the Select Committee, with Minutes of Evidence on Fictitious Votes (Scotland). This is online at google books and has several lists of tenants, joint or single, together with some land transaction sasines. Andrew THOMSON and brother Walter were both listed as tenants at Millfield in 1832.

That William

The William LILLICRAP mentioned in the post of the 13th is now confirmed as belonging to John & Jessie (REEP) LILLICRAP.
As a result of this, and a number of other recent updates, WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has now been updated.

SINTONs and TELFORDs

The update binge continues with my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson also being republished.
Of recent note are the updates to the Australian SINTON/TELFER/TELFORD descendants in Sth Australia. Thank you Linda for getting in touch and helping sort out at least some of the SMITHs of Glenburnie, and prompting the overdue review of Dorothy's 2008 info.
The Mt Gambier cemetery records were also a great help in overcoming the deficiencies in the BDM indexes for Sth Australia.

Fewer orphans

I'm in the process of checking another update to my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson.

Part of that check is to see if I can connect a few of the "orphaned" people in my database that are known to be related, but I've no idea how.  They've usually been found because there were "grandchild of xxx" in a census, or informant for a BDM etc.

This time round I've placed:
- Thomas BROWN, informant for the death of his brother-in-law Alexander LIDDLE in 1926 (he was married to Agnes WIGHTMAN, sister of Alexander's wife Jessie).
- Maggie P  and John P AINSLIE, who probably show up as HALL at the moment, given as part of this check I realised I'd recorded them inaccurately from the 1891 census. According to the 1901 census they belong to Euphemia AINSLIE or HALL, as they appear on that census as step children to Euphemia's husband Peter RIDDELL
But I gave up, again, on identifying which METHERELL married a T C JENKINS some time before 1923 and was living in Philadelphia - at least according to the emigration records for her brother Marshall METHERELL.
Several of his sisters are now more fully identified, with husbands and children as a result, so some progress, with names such as DONEY,  HAM and ROGERS, being added to the tree.

At this rate of progress, could be a while before the updates arrive.

17th: Catching up even more

I'm sure it (this catch up mode) will be temporary, but for now, my December edits to published data have been uploaded to OneGreatFamily
(see this prior post for explanation of what/how), and my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson, which holds all my dead rellies and connections BDM data, has also been updated - so the links from the connections over the last week will now show updated info.

Recovery from my PC woes is proceeding, but not without its dramas, of course.
Desktop now working, but not all programs yet re-installed, so not fully functional.

Snippets here, snippets there

I'm in catch up mode.
Emails from February last year have even been actioned (but not necessarily all the ones in between still awaiting attention)!
My WorldConnect database LornaHenderson has been updated with all the current BDM data on the rellies and their connections, so that's the last two months of updates published with all the snippets that others have contacted me with, plus whatever I've worked on over that time, whatever that all was.
The most recent was the WOONTON/RICHARDSON info Wayne sent me back in Feb 2010, supplemented by some more digging around in the relatively recently available Australia BDM data on ancestry.

At last

Now that 2011 is well under way, I'm finally catching up on bits of 2010.
My LornaHenderson database on WorldConnect has had a long overdue update.
Not completely sure what all has changed since the last update (last August), but I do know that I've finally finished checking off the DAW updates Val sent, plus some work on the related families who connect.
This time round (last attempt was 2002) I managed to confirm David's son Thomas' death - ancestry had him indexed as DAN, not DAW, and I've still not managed to find the registration on FindMyPast.
Also managed to reduce the number of "orphans" in the db down to 45. "Orphan" merely means I know the people concerned are related, but not really how.
Never did solve how Elizabeth GRAY was a granddaughter of Hector GRAY and Elizabeth WIGHT, but did manage to extend my knowledge of the latter's family somewhat - adding in some DAVISON, BISSETT, FOSTER/FORSTER & ATKINSON surnames into the family, confirming some earlier suspicions of who married whom, mostly all in Sunderland, Durham.

Keeping it in the family *2

A last ditch attempt to see if I could any WIGHT descendants willing to join the WIGHT Surname DNA project before the good discounts run out at the end of the month (year) saw me seeing if I could update the family of this George WIGHT, whom, back then in 2005, I could not find beyond 1891.
Still can't find him in 1901, but have found his wife and children, all in Southampton, and think I can spot likely death registrations, in Southampton, for George and Helen/Ellen Ann WIGHT in 1904 and 1905 respectively.

The keeping it in the family references of the title apply to:
1) his grandson Harold Leslie WIGHT because he seems to have married both a Doris N and an Eileen Mary HAYNES, relationship unknown, but both from Southampton, and of an age to be siblings (born 1908 and 1911 respectively).
2) George's son Robert and Robert's son George - were found as crew on the same ship to New York in 1920, Robert as 45, Ship's cook, George as 20, Asst Cook;

So, George's coffee house in 1891 must have sparked off a family business or two.
Son Robert has a restaurant in Southampton in 1901, dtr Jennie has married a Manager of a cocoa shop by 1901.
By 1911 Robert is no longer running a restaurant as he is shown as a ship's cook (mercantile).
Think I also spotted the said Harold as an entree cook on another voyage to New York.

With the WIGHT DNA project now having at least two Borders lines represented, it would be good to get my Border WIGHTs into the project, along with the other WIGHT tree that is heavily inter-twined, that of John & Ann (MIDDLEMAS) WIGHT - or any others for that matter.
Some outline trees are available on the Patriarchs page of the project.

Apart from the above, I'm still plugging away at resolving the "orphans" before I do the next update to my WorldConnect db LornaHenderson, that and working thru some DAW updates Val sent a while ago, together with trying to piece together the likely trees from the latest Fairbairn DNA project results (should be some more interesting ones of those coming up about February as three more trees should be represented by then, and one more branch of the RUNCIMANs).