New year, new updates

2020 is starting off a lot better than 2019.
Not that I make resolutions for a New Year as I'll only break them within the first few days (no chocolate? pay more attention to housework?) I do tend to check what hasn't been updated lately.

My gateway web pages (LornaHen) the related more detailed family website (BigBrother) and the basic BDM snapshots of the deceased rellies and their connections (RootsWeb Worldconnect replacement) have all had a refresh.
It's been a while and several links had become obsolete or unworkable (WorldConnect in particular, why did they change it? It's not for the better.).
Research has also moved on and new connections made. You all know how genealogy and DNA goes!

Perhaps the revitalization from a New Year will also extend to the long overdue updates to DNASurnames, and the Fairbairn and Runciman sites as there have definitely been new findings in the first two in particular with BigY results arriving.

It's not that there hasn't been any activity, just that what has been updated has mostly been tidied up on the FamilySearch tree and WikiTree, as have a lot of DNA connection investigations.

For the more intriguing of the latter I've started using WikiTree custom pages to keep track of the connected families and DNA conclusions as a result of the investigations.

WikiTree allows you to create custom pages for anything you wish and operates a category system to link profiles of interest.
Most of these are eg by place, surname, one name studies etc which have a monitored hierarchy but can also include Personal Categories which you link to yourself as the main grouping.

If a person on WikiTree has been associated with a category a tiny almost invisible link will appear at the top of their profile page

clicking on the link takes you to the bottom of the page where there is a list of categories associated with the person, eg my fledgling investigation into what I hope will be new Turnbull matches

One resolution I have made, is to review my chromosome maps and hopefully show progress since last year. 

Related or not?

The more observant of you may have noticed that my main webpages have been updated (Big Brother).
The list of recent changes is rather bunched up on yesterday, mainly because that was when I checked off the people updated since the last publication - and of course found and fixed all (most of?) the typos etc.

Jemima PARKER appears because I've been fossicking around seeing whether or not any of the  FamilyFinder matches of descendants can shed any light on her and William CLINTON's ancestry - and seeing if there are any lines of enquiry left to pursue.
This time round I decided to see if anything could be found via the marriage witnesses, given I'd a question mark on the spelling of one of them.
The witnesses to their 1810 marriage at St Alphage were given as a James [H/K]UZELL  and Ann CAMPBELL, and after a few false starts on what the name was most likely to be, I found what looks a likely pair marrying at St Alphage in 1813, James HAZELL and Ann CAMPBELL.

Anyone know anything about the family?
Dragged off the street to be witnesses? Friends? Relations? Waiting around in the church for another event?

I'm still digging, but it looks like James might have been a leather cutter, and may still have been alive in 1842 but I've not yet positively identified him or any of the family (daughters Sarah Ann, 1814, Charlotte, 1815, James Henry 1820, all baptized St Giles, Cripplegate) in the 1841 census.
There's a possibility in Essex which piqued my interest given Jemima's background, another in Berkshire and another in Somerset, which latter I think can be discounted. Jury still out on the others.

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.

When is an update not an update?

When it's the 20th April and shown as such on my Recent Changes index.
All of those listed as "updated", with the exception of James ROWE and Jessie SUTHERLAND, are behind the scenes tidy ups with no information added.
James is there as his baptism and burial information have been checked, found wanting, and updated.
Jessie because her death in Victoria, Australia has now been found.

Big Brother updated

"Big Brother" is my main Family Tree set of web pages ("Little sis" being my very first set of webapges, VERY infrequently updated, see Home, for further explanation of what exists were).

If you are used to navigating the menus you will need to break old habits and find where they've shifted to.
SecondSite, the program used to generate these pages direct from my TMG genealogy database, has been updated and allowed me to use Sub Menus.
So all that clutter of surnames etc has been reduced to a much cleaner menu structure.
Everything that used to be there is still there, just shifted in the menu.
For any menu item showing an arrow, either click on the menu item and see an explanation about the offerings beneath it, or hover over the menu item and select a sub menu.
Failing that, why not use the Site Search?

In general, menu items in the sidebar are family specific, although the last three will take you to other sites where copies of my data exists in differently navigable forms.
Those in the top menu are links to other of my webpages.

William HENDERSON

I've decided to claim the William HENDERSON married to Margaret SINCLAIR as "my" William.
Seems a bit too much to expect two William HENDERSON smiths at the Bridge of Allan with Archibald & Margaret as family names.
This adds SINCLAIR, TODD, BRADDISH, McCLURE and SPEAR (at least) into the HENDERSON names.
Interesting to note the occurrence of twins in this line, as well as in that of my James.

My family tree web pages (Big Brother) have been fully updated to reflect this, and any other snippets that have been included since last full update.
As several pages state:  love to hear from any descendants, particularly any with early photographs, or anyone willing to add to our knowledge of the HENDERSON dna.

As a result of the above update the HENDERSON page has had a bit of a revamp and more of the HENDERSON descendants' vital records (BDMs) now appear as pins on the map on that page.

LornaHen.com

Thought it was time to update a few of my webpages. The main family tree website, "big brother", has been fully reloaded. A lot of the entries in the Recent Changes index are merely tidy-ups to do with links to/from the FAIRBAIRN and RUNCIMAN One Name Study and DNA projects, with some exceptions. Many updates will only be visible in updated descendant charts, eg RUNCIMAN, DAVIDSON and RICHARDSON for the more recent finds. The heads of the Michigan RUNCIMAN families now have pages of their own, along with their father William. A feedback form has been added - see footer of each page - one day I really must put a captcha challenge on it to stop the spam! The menu items have been slightly rearranged and rationalised. Also updated is the main gateway page. "Lorna's life". It now includes links to assorted other pages explaining the differences between them, plus the latest entries for three of the main genealogy blogs I use to update progress. Lorna's links has had a few tweaks as well, consolidating the backup research logs into yearly files (and catching them up to this more regularly updated blog), adding a few more links to sites I currently use. Even my original family tree site, "little sis" has been reloaded, prompted by the main change to the RUNCIMAN tree. Yet to come, an update to WorldConnect database LornaHenderson (where all the basic BDM data for all the dead rellies and inter-connected people is available) - that's been delayed while I do a check of the "orphans" I was about to upload as I do more research to try and attach them to their family.

RootsWeb

It has been a while since I updated the version of my pages on RootsWeb Freepages!
They still had the older version of the WIGHT family tree tracking back to Jennet SWORD instead of Margaret HOUD.
All remedied. Even had a bit of a theme change, and for a brief space of time is slightly ahead of my main site, Big Brother.

More STEPHENSONs

Murphy's Law no doubt states that the minute you do an update more information springs to life, or you find something wrong.
And if Murphy didn't say it, I will.
"Big Brother" has been reloaded with a few more WIGHT/STEPHENSON twigs, including a few more placeholders for the Australian branch that we'd love to hear from now that we know they exist!

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.

21st: Main web pages updated

About time I did a republish of my main web pages (Big Brother) given it's a month and a half since the last update.
Don't think any new people have been included, but several existing people have either had new information added, or their exisitng page tweaked. In general, the FAIRBAIRNs are there because of new information, probably either London records, or 1911 census lookups. The FAMILTON/RUNCIMANs are merely tweaks to how the information is displayed.
All are listed uner 21 May on the Recent Changes index.
One tweak was to alter the place index legends to G and B from G and L, as the former Live Earth has been Bing for a while.
If you've not visited any of the little information icons on the place index, nor explored street views on google, I thoroughly recommend doing so.  Great fun driving yourself around an amazing number of filmed locations and doing 360 degree panning shots simply by sitting at home at your computer using the arrow keys!

21st: Better searching

The more alert of you may have noticed that the blog version of my research diary has changed. Not just the look, but also the location.
This is because I've shifted it to being fully hosted on blogspot, rather than on my domain pages. Main reason for this shift is to enable better searching - use the search box "powered by Google", rather than the one at the top in the blog navigation bar which I've never had much success using.

Continuing the METTERS/SKEWES family updates.
Found an old "to do" note to myself to check out Ellen Maud SKEWES again, and as a result I've removed the son I had assigned to her and assigned him back to the other Henry and Ellen SYMONS/SIMMONS. Interesting that both Ellens were born Bere Ferrers, however the Henrys were Henry William SYMONS and Henry James H SIMMONS. Still looking for the latter Henry and "my" Ellen after their marriage in 1894 though.

Big Brother has been updated, so all trees should now show be latest versions.

16th: Big brother updated

Probably time I updated Big Brother again, seem to have got sidetracked from keeping my main pages updated.

The main changes of late have been on the GRAY front, with the family of Margaret GRAY, newly confirmed as a dtr of William GRAY and Margaret SUTHERLAND.
A fair few of her descendants have been tracked and included in the GRAY chart, and I've also given Margaret a page of her own, purely to show I've identified Tormsdale, where her 1855 death cert said she was born.
This exercise did result in many updates to the MORGAN families of Thurso and Halkirk, but most of those aren't in my published data, and haven't resulted in any connection to Kathrin MORGAN being discovered.

Also a few tweaks in the HAMLEY tree thanks to Vikki who sent me a copy of Elizabeth HAMLEY nee ROWE's 1865 death cert. Given the informant was Charles HAMLEY, assumed to be her son Charles Baskerville HAMLEY, I checked where I'd got too in documenting his family too. Still cannot find dtr Selina Mary in 1901 at all, but did find her in Plymouth with husband, piano dealer Charles Frederick HOCKING in 1911 (no children with them). Earlier census identifications are complicated somewhat by there being another Charles & Selina HOCKING couple (in Cornwall) who married earlier. Will show up on the ROWE chart as a few added twigs.

6th: Full Big Brother update

What with the number of changes of late, the exciting developments out of the Fairbairn DNA Project etc it is time I did a full site update.
The newly released version of Second Site, allows me to easily include some additional information on people not included on the site with a page of their own. The main change as a result of this is that below each person's page, if they have family, lifespan dates (mth/year only) now show.
Big Brother has therefore had a full refresh. If I've missed some links somewhere, please let me know.

Apart from a general tidy-up the main changes that I can remember are:

• Archibald FAIRBAIRN (marr. to Janet SCOTT) has had a revamp,


• John FAIRBAIRN (marr. to Elisabeth MILLER) of New York has been brought in from the cold and been incorporated into my FAIRBAIRN family and will now show up in the FAIRBAIRN descendant charts in due course (he's not yet online and linked)


• the neverending story
.

I see that there's a clutch of "Recent changes" shown for the LOCKIE/RUNCIMAN family, but they can be ignored, I was simply attaching a source document and tidying up some source citations, no new information involved.

What have I been up to?

Not really sure what all I've changed since the last posting. Looking at the "Recent Changes" index from a rebuild of my Big Brother website I can see a clutch of Henderson updates, most of which aren't really visible changes, apart from Archibald, whose baptism entry gave me a new place to play with, Craigmill, which is now included on the map of Hatch Match and Despatch Events on the Henderson page.
As I say in his blurb, I'd noted in the past that there was a Robert HENDERSON, Smith at Craigmill, which may or may not be significant as to Archibald's grandfather's forbears. The two Craigmill HENDERSON smiths are rather separated by time however.

Reasonably sure that the changes shown for 31 Jan and 5 Feb were cosmetic rather than real, but those shown for 7th & 8th Feb are real updates.

Behind the scenes Bobby has provided some updates to the BAIN family which are being investigated and will be reflected in WorldConnect db LornaHenderson updates in due course.

The FAIRBAIRN page has had a minor tweak or two, including the descendant chart of James and Mary Bell/Mabel (THOMSON) FAIRBAIRN being brought onto this site instead of pointing off to my WorldConnect db LornaPotential, in the hope that one day (soon?) we may be able to prove a relationship between James and my family of Archibald and Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN, given that both were involved with the Gateshaw Secession Church at Morebattle and lived for at time in Eckford Parish.

Sep 29, 2007: Cor(ry), lots of updates

LornaHenderson db on World Connect updated with the latest HENDERSON findings and whatever other updates have been found in the recent past, including the CORRY bits below.

If anyone knows what happened to Robert JACK after 1910 I'd like to know. Thought I'd found him dying in Massachusets, married to a Catherine, but that chap, although born Scotland at the right time, he turns out to have emigrated 1926 (instead of 1908), was born Greenock and had a brother David, so didn't fit.

Decided to also clear out any backlog of unchecked web updates, so big brother has also been fully updated. Ignore the recent changes shown under 14th and 21st September, they were behind the scenes stuff.

Francis Douglas SINTON has been promised for a while, and John CORRY is a new addition prompted by the arrival of his will today, with lots of relationships spelled out in it. So that meant the Fauld place information also had a bit of a tweak. Still to get round to the Thomas SCOTT page I want to ouptut (his mother is the Margaret SCOTT nee CORRY referred to under John CORRY).

The other main change is to the Hendersons Galore page. I've included an extra generation on the descendant chart so more of the modern day HENDERSON descendants can spot where they fit. No dates or links for anyone not already included on the rest of the site. If anyone is uncomfortable with this I will reduce it back a generation again.

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.

Aug 9th-10th, 2007

9th-10th: I believe that all the web sites are now in place. Please let me know if I've mucked up any links in the process of shifting everything around:
This should take you in to the main pages with the necessary links to the most current pages, and this should take you to the slightly smaller version of the site more suited to non broadband users, or anyone wanting a left hand index of names to keep track of whilst browsing.

All the old Rootsweb sites are still in place and should have some links pointing off to the above two new versions.

Checked out the will/probate file for a John RICHARDSON who died at Wanganui in 1902 aged 68. Left everything to his 3rd son Martin, with proviso that eldest dtr Ellen and wife Bridget were allowed to continue living in the house they all currently lived in. No mention of the blacksmith son John (married to Annie Elizabeth TURCICH) whose 1915 dth cert. shows father John as a blacksmith, not a farmer. I'm beginning to wonder if there were two John & Bridget RICHARDSONs around at the same time/place, or was the father just versatile. John & Bridget's intentions to marry showed them as resident in Wanganui for 8 & 9 years respectively but I don't yet know where John comes from. Watch this space. It was the presence of a RICHARDSON blacksmith lviing around the same area as the newfound RICHARDSON relations that made me start on this family.