Lorna's research logs and linksThis is an attempt to let interested people know what is likely to have changed in my web pages and assorted online databases, eg at WorldConnect (LornaHenderson and LornaPotential ).
A copy of this in blog format, where you may add comments, corrections etc can be found in the GenBlog link above (and is more often updated, this version is in catch-up mode). An advantage of that format is also the ability to filter by "labels" ie the surname and place keywords I try to remember to put under each post, and also that I get notified if a comment is posted, unlike the guestbook.
I make no pretence of this log being a complete list of changes, just the points I remember to update these pages with. Items listed most recent first, and also exist on my GenBlog, which can be subscribed to as a feed, and filtered for topics of interest.
Love to hear about any relations, additions or corrections.
Aug 2010
18th: Archie older than thoughtWith all this HENDERSON activity at the moment I took the opportunity to pop a bit more of the family onto my ancestry tree as I checked for some records.
And up popped some of those wonderful hints.
Found someone with Archie, son of William & Marion (AITKEN) HENDERSON in their tree. No wonder I could never verify his birth around 1920, he didn't belong to William's second marriage after all, being born in 1905 instead. Lisa is thrilled to bits to find she has a heap of NZ cousins, and we will no doubt swap more info in due course.
16th: Short commons
So far, descendants of the newfound John HENDERSON appear to be in short supply.
The tree now includes these surnames: GIBSON, BINNIE, SCHOTTIN, VROMAN, KOWLITZ, BARROWS, CLEGHORN, HIGGINSON and REID, with only the SCHOTTIN currently looking like it might make it down to living descendants able to provide memories of these families.
Places include: Galt (Waterloo Co, ONT); Hamilton (Wentworth Co, ONT); Dundas (Wentworth Co, ONT); Buffalo (Erie Co, NY).
Some families I simply cannot currently find, eg Isabella, widow of Robert GIBSON and dtr of John and Isabella (BERRY) HENDERSON. The three children I know about were born in the States, probably Buffalo, but by 1891 they were back in Hamilton, Ontario, and van
ish after 1901. So if anyone knows what happened to Annie and her children Annie, Archibald and Robert GIBSON I'd love to hear from you.
My WorldConnect db LornaHenderson has had a long overdue update so now includes these families, and my web pages updated with John's new information.
15th: FOUND HIM!!
OK, so the William HENDERSON blacksmith I followed around Ontario and back to Scotland the other day was a red herring.
Today made up for that.
The mysterious Isabella HENDERSON, whom I nearly entirely overlooked because the HENDERSON wasn't very clearly written, living with her (as I now know) cousin William McGREGOR in Galt, Ontario, has solved a genealogical life-long mystery for me, some 30 years on.
What happened to my great great grandfather's brother John (or William for that matter)?
Their sister Margaret was found back in 2006, and redoubled efforts back then failed to find John or William.
However, the answer is that he high tailed it to Ontario from Cadder, Lanarkshire about 1855 with, it appears, most of his family, and followed the family blacksmithing trade.
And I only found his daughter Isabella by complete accident, she is enumerated twice, once with William, and once at home with her parents, also in Galt in 1861.
I've updated the HENDERSON descendant chart with the family I've managed to add to the tree in the last few hours.
Interesting to note that John and Isabella also had a set of twins.
I don't yet know what wife Isabella's surname was as they appear not to have favoured the established church for baptisms, or Tillicoultry, Clackmananshire isn't on the IGI, nor in the OPRs, yet in Canada they are always enumerated as Presbyterian.
Those with ancestry access can follow my trail of source documents for John, including both his 31 March 1901 death cert, AND his entry with his daughter in the 24 Apr 1901 census - didn't he do well.
14th: Back to the FAIRBAIRNs
Given the recent DNA results show that the family of James & Agnes (LINDSAY) FAIRBAIRN belongs in Lineage 1 (as does my Archibald FAIRBAIRN), and their closeness to the modal for all of the matching FAIRBAIRNs, the neverending story has been updated to include an overview of their family tree, and a few links for those wishing to follow this story through.
14th: Who is Sylvia (Isabella)?
After I thought I'd done enough for the day on bringing William McGREGOR's family a bit more up to date, I remembered that I'd spotted a William HENDERSON, blacksmith, living nearby in one of the Waterloo, Ontario censuses.
Unfortunately, he wasn't a wonderful lead into a hitherto unresearched branch of my blacksmith HENDERSONs from the Bridge of Allan (unresearched because to date other than my James, and William's Margaret, they are resisting attempts at being found). His parents turned out to be Hugh HENDERSON, shoemaker, and Marion GILLIES, of Kilmarnock, Ayrshire. But in finding which census it was, and rechecking it, I also resolved a little niggle at the back of my mind in that William's household was enumerated as 1 male and 1 female, and I'd not noted the female member of the household, other than noting whoever she was, she wasn't a McGREGOR.
Closer inspection of the squiggle made her an Isabella HENDERSON, aged 18, unmarried, born Scotland, and living in Galt, Waterloo Co, Ontario in 1861.
So she is the next mission.
I've reloaded William McGREGOR's page, to show her in the household.
13th: Not so Black Friday
It really is the time for the McGREGOR branch of the HENDERSONs to be updated.
Must be something in the air. Three contacts in as many weeks on different twigs of Margaret HENDERSON's descendants.
The latest appears to be a descendant of Charlotte BETT.
In checking where I'd got to for this line, I noticed that William, son of Margaret HENDERSON, who had emigrated to Canada in the 1850s, could probably have more information found for him these days.
And so it proved.
I thought I was merely going to be adding a census or two and ended up finding and documenting a first wife, two children, and some descendants as well. Check out William's updated page. (William, son of William married a Helen DRONE, their dtr Charlotte Jean married a James Elsner CRONIN, but as yet I've not figured out what happened to William's sister Mary, nor Jean's sister Elizabeth Swinton McGREGOR).
In addition to all the above, the RUNCIMAN DNA project has turned up trumps. The preliminary results mentioned back on the 6th did indeed end up being an excellent match at 67 markers as well.
On the strength of that I've updated my RUNCIMAN surname page to include some of the descendants of Thomas and Alison (GRIEVE) RUNCIMAN as well.
By no means all, just some I've documented in passing.
All I need now is for my computer to be fixed! I'm somewhat hampered at the moment as I was silly enough to download a supposedly 'critical' microsoft security patch, KB2286198.
More fool me. My desktop went into a boot loop which I'm still fighting.
There's always a silver lining though, as a result I was forced to resolve a couple of things I'd not bothered about on my laptop, and at the end of the fix, I will end up with a backup server on a spare older slow machine, which task has been on the to-do list for rather too long.
11th: G(ee) Whiz
The FAMILTON dna results for the descendant of Robert and Mary (McDOUGALL) FAMILTON are indeed for a predicted haplogroup of G.
Would be really good to get a direct male line descendant of a FAMILTON or HAMILTON from William and Bessie (WILSON) FAMILTON.
Any takers?
8th: FAMILTON/HAMILTON
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.
7th: WATTs where?
If you are patient enough things turn up eventually.
Back about 4 years Linda pointed me to a post on a Black Watch web site that was about one of our HENDERSON/McGREGOR descendants. However as the post was dated 1998, it was likely that the email was inactive, and so it proved.
Today however, the poster found my WorldConnect db LornaHenderson and left a post-it against his father's entry, and sent me an email.
Contact has been made.
With the hints received so far, further digging has added a few more dates and confirmed birth places to the family of James WATT and Jane D JOHNSON of Dunfermline, then Montreal, and their immigration records have been found.
6th: RUNCIMANs & FAIRBAIRNs
DNA results are beginning to filter in from the activity generated by the last Family Tree DNA sale, and with excellent results.
The two RUNCIMAN participants have both turned out as a match to my RUNCIMAN line (somewhere! it is too early to tell how closely at only 25 markers so far).
Likewise the recruited FAIRBAIRN has also, thankfully, matched the rest of the Scottish Borders Lineage 1.
See the Supplmentary pages for these projects for further information.
July 2010
27th: The ELLIOTTs and FAIRBAIRNsWith yet another ELLIOTT match popping up in the FAIRBAIRN DNA project, it was time to explore further.
No conclusions have been reached, but anyone interested in whether or not these ELLIOTT families from mid/late 1700s Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina are actually FAIRBAIRNs, or vice versa, may be interested in the new link exploring this that has been added to the FAIRBAIRN Surname DNA project supplementary pages.
Anyone with data to aid solving this puzzle is welcome to contact me!
16th: 2/7d for a death cert.
No, don't all rush for the bargain, I am talking of a claim in a military service record for the amount owing to a chap producing a requested death certificate for the army back in 1921.
Measuring Worth calculates for me that the equivalent today is anything from L4.25 (using the retail price index) through to L36.70 (using the share of GDB), and L18.60 using average earnings between 1921 and 2009.
So on the retail price index version, the current L9 per certificate would appear to be rather exorbitant (however grateful I am to be able to order them up from the far side of the world), but a bargain on the average earnings calculations.
13th: FamilyTree pages updated
Over the last few days several contacts have spurred me into action on further updates to my own tree (as opposed to dna and one name study projects, the former mostly currently awaiting results from the latest sale).
Marion rang to see whether or not I'd made any progress on tracking down living descendants of Thomas Storror HULL and Ada Trimble DAVEY, one of our ROWE descendants. Checking on where I'd got to (the last lead was a possibe son for their daughter Ada Nora HULL and Leonard RAY - but that came to naught), I noticed that since then, the 1911 census is more readily available.
That resulted in a couple more children for Thomas and Ada, and a marriage for one of them, Donovan Sydney HULL, but no children immediately obvious in the English indexes, so yet another dead end.
That led me to checking a few more of Ada's siblings in 1911. None of them look like they've any living descendants, although we would love to be proven wrong.
Then Linda popped up with another researcher of one of our Margaret HENDERSON's descendants, Susan JONES nee HUTTON. Bit hard tracking JONES in Wales without help.
This led me to having another go at identifying and tracing more of (one of) the William Meikle WATTs. Good to confirm from the 1911 census that I'd got two of this one's sons correct - and have now added a daughter Margaret into the mix, and identified which of the two brides on the same Prestwich marriage register page in 1903 was his - Eliza HALL, obligingly living at home with her father and her three children (as the expected widow, William Meikle WATT having died 1910). They now show up on the HENDERSON chart.
End result: updated family tree pages, and it must be about time I put some time into re-publishing my WorldConnect database, LornaHenderson.
But in the meantime I've been having fun linking up my tree on the NZGDB to several of the other Taranaki families represented there.
Check out the combined chart that results - registration is free.
Site may be subject to some teething problems, eg the charts I refer to are under development, work fine on my laptop but have a few problems on my desktop. Robert is investigating.
The principal is similar to One Great Family, a combined tree, but for the latter, the combination is automatic, but on NZGDB reloads of updates of your own data automatically update your data, but you have to manually link to other's trees - eg several of the "marry-ins" in my Taranaki data appear in several trees, one of which is considered an authority, so I consciously did not upload the parents with my data, and have now started checking for duplications and linking the people concerned to the other tree.
NZGDB also allows you to grant update permission to fellow researchers or relations so that you are all working on the one set of data.
9th: FUGE to Illinois
A FUGE of Cornwall researcher popped out of the woodwork this week with a post in my Guestbook re two of my lot she had found in Illinois. This does rather explain my abortive attempts at finding them in England beyond 1871.
I'd obviously not tried very hard, although my notes do say I'd tried Australia.
Samuel, and his brother John Edwin both pop up in Chicago. As a result, given I appear not to have looked at this extended Bere Ferrers family (descendants of Hugh HAMLEY and Elizabeth, daughter of Matthias ROWE and Sarah DUNKIN, via their dtr Mary Elizabeth HAMLEY who married William FUGE) since before the 1911 became more readily available, next update my WorldConnect db LornaHenderson will have rather more details on the CORROCK family.
8th: From Meikle Pinkerton to East Barns
My post the other day re Meikle Pinkerton elicited a prompt response from one of my RUNCIMAN cousins, chiding me for not simply asking him where it was!
I've prompted teenage memories of cycling from Edinburgh to visit his Uncle Bob (RICHARDSON) at East Barns, nearby to the Pinkertons. Which led me to checking what I knew about East Barns, and sure enough, that was also the haunt of several (apparently different) families of RUNCIMANs over time.
One set were descendants of the Meikle Pinkerton RUNCIMAN family and living at East Barns in 1871, another the RUNCIMAN family that have a heap of descendants in New Zealand and were there in 1861.
The farm is reported as having been swallowed up by a cement works these days.
5th: Meikle Pinkerton
With my research on yet another branch of RUNCIMANs from Dunbar, that of Alexander RUNCIMAN and Janet HENDRIE and family, the place Mi(c)kle Pinkerton popped up in the OPRs.
My very preliminary attempts at finding such a wonderful placename didn't led me to it, and I put that thought to one side.
Reading the WDYTYA mag popped up several sites useful for place names and I decided to try again, just using Pinkerton.
The Scottish place-Name Society didn't help, but looked interesting.
However, Scotland's Places came up trumps, and armed with a more modern spelling of Meikle Pinkerton, Geograph did as well.
There's a wonderful old Doocot there, and on google street view, views of the farm and area that you can pan around, complete with a couple in the parking area waving to the camera.
1st: Just noticed on FamilySearch
Noticed recently that Family Search Record Search Pilot now has Scottish Births and Baptisms 1564-1950
Much better than the IGI with its mixture of extracted and submitted data, and stopping at 1875 for extractions.
I've no idea how complete the data is, but I've successfully found some 1880s data I was looking for.
If you're wondering where the rest of the research log went, I've archived off the first 6 months of the 2010 log into a new menu item at left - 2010: Jan - Jun