This 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.

Mar 2010

13th: Couldn't resist also updating the front end to my RUNCIMAN families as a result of yesterday's findings.
William of Crail has been included as well as a descendant chart of some of his family (by no means complete).

12th: An interesting day
Life is still interfering far too much and stopping me from indulging in my genealogy obsession, but today I couldn't resist any longer. A full set of new RUNCIMAN DNA results were available, with a 12/12 match to the next set due - which was fully expected, given the paper trails, but always a relief to have confirmed, with no blips down the generations.
However, the real excitement of this was that this family line has vindicated the effort I put into helping a group of researchers from the line of William of Crail, even though I didn't really think there was any connection to my lot (the weavers of Earlston, and farmers of Wanton Walls). They have turned out to be an excellent match - so farmers and fisher folk DO sometimes mix and match after all, despite my quite long held theory over several family lines and many generations.
The icing on this particular cake will be to finally find a willing representative amongst the descendants of Thomas and Alison (GRIEVE) RUNCIMAN to (dis)prove my current theory that William of Crail is Thomas' brother. Any takers? There must be some out there somewhere willing to help.

And then to cap all of that, I also noticed that partial results were in for the confirmed representative for the line of Archibald and Alison (CROSSER) FAIRBAIRN, and again, thankfully, it looks like there have been no blips down the generations AND they are showing a good match so far, as expected to Lineage 1 "clump 1".

5th: In the absence of substantial research
Been too busy with real life of late but felt I had to pass on this interestingly odd snippet from one of our esteemed newspapers.

We have an Arts Festival on at the moment, one of the Fringe items is based on a family book of Scottish songs c 1800s, with the artist reported as having a connection with Scotland because her great grandparents were cotton farmers there.
My idea of the Scottish climate has just altered dramatically!!

Feb 2010

19th: Long time coming
It's been a while, but every time I set too checking my updates were ready for the web, I got sidetracked, so next time there were even more to check.
The task got too big.
Now, however, three months later, it is done.
The recent changes index shows the people affected who actually have a page of their own, but the descendancy charts will also include whichever people I've found since the last update, back in mid November. Most will have been mentioned in passing here on this blog, but not necessarily.

The latest contact has been from another descendant of the William McADIE who married Sarah ABBOTT trying to convince me that this William is the William of an age and birthplace, son of George McADIE and Elizabeth ROSIE.
I'm not altogether sure why I'm resisting this quite so strenuously as it does seem a likely match BUT there are still at least two other William's not yet sufficiently ruled out of contention, the naming pattern doesn't quite "fit", and if we've all found the only 1851 census contender for the chap marrying Sarah (or the son of George and Elizabeth for that matter), his occupation doesn't gel with the rest of the family and his own later occupation.
Whichever way it goes, I've ended up putting what I know about both of them on the web. Check out William and William.

16th: Long overdue updates
I normally manage to update my WorldConnect database LornaHenderson about once a month, but things just keep rolling in, so the update slipped out to two months.
There now.
Checking of the related updates for my own family tree web pages however, has taken a backseat as I'm having too much fun with the Fairbairn DNA project and the Runciman One Name Study (ONS) (and some real life intervening).

11th: Foulden, Berwickshire
Gave up on trying to find an Andrew RUNCIMAN on ancestry's 1841 census transcripts the other day.
He had to be somewhere, but I could NOT find him.
Went to Scotlands People, and yes, there was a chap of the right age in Foulden, Berwickshire in the search results.
Even armed with this new info, I still couldn't find him on ancestry, so paid out my shillings for the SPeople copy.
Out of curiousity and armed with all the people on the page, back to ancestry.
Spot checks, nary a one of them anywhere, and Foulden didn't appear in the list of parishes available.
So I logged it with ancestry.
Some year, it may arrive, their response:
---------
Thank you for bringing this to our attention. This databases should be complete, so it appears that this parish may be missing from our records. I have reported this to our content team to look into and correct when possible. Feedback from you, our valued customer, helps us correct errors and improve the website. Your patience and efforts to assist us in this matter are appreciated.

Please understand that fixes to errors on Ancestry are posted firstly in the order of those which affect the greatest number of users, and thereafter in the order in which they are reported. For this reason, fixes for some errors may take longer than others to be posted. We appreciate your patience.
--------

7th: From bigamy to ... make up your own mind
What an innocuous start to a conversation.
---
Hello Lorna

Could we talk about Oswald?
I can't find him on your Lornahen website Regards from Veronika
---
As he was on the far reaches of my WINES, all I knew about him was that he existed, hence my reply:
---
Hi Veronika,

You can't find him on LornaHen for two reasons, one I only write up and publish people on that site that I know something about and I don't know anything about him other than he existed, and two, the other place he may appear there would be in a descendant chart but I've never done one for the WINES, they're just too prolific!

Are you related to Oswald? Can you remedy the fact that I know little about him and his branch of the tree?
---

Which led to:
---
Subject: Re: Oswald Dixon ancestry

Hello Lorna

Sure can...

Oswald Henry Dixon, born 1884 Gundagai in 1913, married my Marguerite Alice Wakeford, born 1885, Newtown, NSW died 22 Jun 1917, The Rock, NSW Her parents :
George Wakeford and Ellen/Eleanor Smyth

I'm led to believe that they had one daughter, before...

The Sydney Morning Herald... Saturday 30 June 1917, page 14 ALLEGED WIFE MURDER. WAGGA, Friday.

----
I've not yet dragged myself away from the RUNICMAN One Name Study, and latest set of FAIRBAIRN DNA results, but here's a link to one of the articles for those interested in the spicier side of family history to be going on with.

Veronika's summary:
He prepared the capsule purporting to contain liquorice powder, and gave it to his wife
And he is reported as having an affair with a young girl who works in the Bank

And at the end of it all, he got his wife's inheritance
He got rewarded for poisoning her!

5th: What's the word for a serial bigamist?
(other than cad and bounder and several other stronger terms I suppose).

The answer appears to be two words, you call him "Robert FAIRBAIRN".
Sue (of Clapham nurserymen fame) and I have strayed onto a cooper Robert instead of her nurserymen FAIRBAIRNs for a while, having found this chap in passing:
There's a Robert born abt 1817 in St Giles, London.
We’ve figured out that his first wife Elizabeth Stedman OSBORN(E) had died in 1849 and that he had remarried a Frances YELVERTON nee HUBBARD in 1852.
I may or may not have mentioned the trail for an Elizabeth aged 3 with what looked like a sister Elizabeth aged 6 that I eventually rationalised as being the Alexina who was baptised as such with her sister Elizabeth on the same day, but born in the right timeframes to identify the 3 yr old as Alexina.
I figured the enumerator had been told she was Lexie, heard it as Lizzie, and wrote Elizabeth (by 1871 she’s Alesandra, and the only likely matching birth reg. we can find is indexed as Alexander)
Anyway, by 1861 she is recorded in the census as Angelina, living with step mum Frances and older sister Elizabeth, with Robert nowhere to be found (yet), and Frances giving her occupation as “supported by husband”, and showing as married.
Frances continues thru 1871 as “married” with both (step) dtrs with her, and by 1881 is an imbecile, widowed, in the infirmary workhouse. Then in 1881 up pops a cooper Robert of the right age and birth place, married to a much younger Jane, with three children, Louisa, Frank and Eliza, aged 13, 4 and 1
But none of them anywhere to be found in 1871. (and we cannot find Jane/Louisa with or without a FAIRBAIRN surname in 1871)
Two people researching this latter tree believed their Robert and Jane had indeed been married before, but to an Elizabeth CASTLE, which neither Sue nor I can corroborate.
We thought we were onto the trail of a bigamist, or at least a two-timer, as we could not find a marriage to Jane.

Sue thought she'd cracked it, sending me a simple email saying:
“could be why we can’t find him in 1871”, with a link.
The link was to the criminal registers, with the source showing a Robert FAIRBAIRN, imprisoned for 3 mos for bigamy days before the 1871 census.
On the surface, case solved.
(The Old Bailey Proceedings actually call him Robert FAIRBURN).
Far from it and what an interesting journey that turned out to be and all.
I went to the newspapers. The 19th Century British newspaper collection came up trumps with two separate reports.
One going on about a Richard Fairbairn and bigamy sentences saying it was right that he got the lighter sentence of the two bigamists tried that day as his “wife” knowingly married him, whereas the other chap had deceived his wife.
I could identify that the bigamous marriage was likely the marriage of a Robert to Ann Jane MOORE, the other pair of that marriage page being identified elsewhere, in qtr 1 of 1871. Turns out it was complete coincidence that I found the right one, as I was specifically looking for a Robert/Jane marriage.
The report said he first married in 1864 – which would fit a date for an 1868ish Louisa born to Jane and our cooper. BUT, the 1864 marriage turns out to be a Richard Robert FAIRBAIRN marrying Mary Elizabeth DOYLE, which you’ve probably guessed by now, was “known to us”.
She was the first wife of father of Richard Robert FAIRBAIRN, the Worcester politician of the 1890s, and one of the lines of the Clapham nurserymen.
Full circle I think you can call that.
But wait, there’s more.
This chap was a lighterman, and obviously a budding politician in his own right, as earlier in the year newspaper reports show an R FAIRBAIRN representing 8000 lighterman pushing for the Admiralty to get some law thru parliament. But that little bit of history aside, this newly proven bigamist was already identified as a bigamist as I’d much earlier found his marriage in Canada in 1875 when he says he’s a widower.
He brings the Canadian wife back to London between 1876, birth of first dtr Ann Jane Agnes FAIRBAIRN in Toronto, and 1881 when first wife divorces him, and he’s living with the rest of his new family in Bermondsey.
If I’d found the other newspaper report first, a Lloyd’s Weekly Register report of the Old Bailey trials which gave dates and first wife’s forenames, the journey may have been shorter, but I suspect I’d have missed a step or two of discovery along the way. So, there’s such a thing as serial bigamy!
Fancy calling your first child by your second bigamist marriage the name of your 1st bigamist wife!!
We still haven’t proved that the Robert / Jane that started this lot is definitely one and the same cooper Robert we're looking for.


4th: When is an exact search not an exact search?
A friend was trying to direct me to something she had found on ancestry, and I simply could not see what she was seeing. Given I believed she wasn't telling me porkies, we went through our respective settings.
I nearly always use the "exact matches only" setting, with wild cards if need be, she didn't.
I don't see that it should have mattered as I had typed, accurately, and later rechecked by doing a copy/paste of the exact name from the results, but still, the chap only came up when "exact matches only" was unticked!

3rd: Non conformists
Been reading a bit about the Non Conformists of late, given that so many of the Scots who moved south can be found in their records.
Some links:
Dr William's Library
The Surman Index
Some indexes to registers are available for free searching at BMDRegisters.co.uk (but pay to view images - thanks Sue, for pointing me to this one).

Adam SCOTT appears in the Surman index, so I had a bit of an update for his family.
I knew he'd died between 1901 and 1924, and now also that Marion was a widow in 1911, but hadn't bothered tracking down his death given his name is a bit too common. The Surman index gives his date of death as 14 Sep 1908, so I thought it likely that he was the 1908 registration indexed in the District of Blackburn - but that chap is indexed as 39.
At the moment, I'm assuming it's a mistranscription for 59, even though the image of the index does show 39.
Can't yet figure out what happened to children Sydney and Margaret E after 1901. One day.
1911 did add another descendant into the tree, a dtr Jean Evelyn for Bertram & Christian Pettigrew WAGSTAFF in Ealing.

2nd: FAIRBAIRN approved
The FAIRBAIRN One Name Study has now also been registered to me with the Guild (See the Guild of One Name Studies aka GOONS, for what this entails).

A set of basic introductory web pages are now in existence, and probably bear a remarkable similarity, apart from content obviously, to those for RUNCIMAN.

Links to both have been added to the list of web sites on the lhs of this blog.
Both have their related project diaries, so if you think I've been a bit dilatory posting anything here, simply look around my other projects/blogs, chances are extremely high that I have not been neglecting genealogy.

Jan 2010

31st: In for a penny, in for a pound
Given where my research has been leading over the last couple of years or so with the dna projects, I've decided to bite the bullet and try to get a bit more methodical, probably an impossible task for someone as easily distracted as I am by the next shiny email that arrives in my inbox.
Anyway, I have applied for, and been granted, registration of the RUNCIMAN surname as an official One Name Study (See the Guild of One Name Studies aka GOONS, for what this entails).
Discussions are in train with the existing registered owner for FAIRBAIRN, as she currently has it as variant on her FAIRBURN, but there's no doubt ample scope for both of us. Only one person can be registered for a surname, so it firstly has to be removed as an alias from her study to be able to be registered to me.

Off to a grand start for RUNCIMAN as a set of basic introductory web pages are now in existence.
All of this was primarily prompted by Ros popping out of the woodwork again linking up her Fife/East Lothian RUNCIMAN family tree to the latest recruit (back in December) in the DNA project, thus reviving her interest in RUNCIMAN research as well.

The activities required for the DNA projects, and for One Name Studies are very complementary, so let's hope I can stay focused, but not completely neglect my own family, which is already well overdue a replublish of my web pages, and Rootsweb databases.

26th: Interesting reading
Some interesting sites brought to my attention (from a list of Unusual Websites" included with Ancestors Magazine): Oh well, back to my own version of reality...

25th: Rounding up Runcimans
An excited Ros emailed me after a long hiatus today, long term RUNCIMAN friends had turned out to be related, and thought that their brother was "doing something with DNA and was into family history". So she quickly sent the brother info I had previously sent her on the RUNCIMAN dna project, and an email to me to let me know, hoping I could get him into the project.
Been there, done that, awaiting the t-shirt (kit results), he was R-7 of the RUNCIMAN blog back in December.
Downstream effect however is a break from researching London FAIRBAIRNs and a quick peek at their respective RUNCIMAN trees to see how they were connected, and whether there was any possibility they'd connect with my Earlston lot. Looks unlikely on the surface, but who knows what may happen in this world of genealogical happenstance.
As part of my digging I could see that there was a connection to Crail in Fife, and of course, cousin Harry is an expert on such things, so I thought he'd have the actual headstone transcription being referred to.
Sure enough, and after much digging in several old boxes of research, also unearthed several other interesting bits of data he'd extracted back in the 1980s when he came across an unexpected RUNCIMAN family in Crail, RUNCIMAN being one of our shared ancestral names. Ros is delighted, Harry exhausted, Lorna in catch up mode, but a summary of the family will eventually make it to the RUNCIMAN DNA Patriarchs page.

23rd: Foundlings
Reading the Prologue to Stella Tillyard's "Aristocrats" made me chuckle about the poor genealogists descended from those first admissions to the Foundling Hospital in Hatton Garden in 1741 (assuming of course any of them survived, both physically and in recorded history).
They were all apparently baptised in the names of assorted sponsors and their families, eg Caroline Lennox, daughter of the Duke of Richmond.
Could cause some hopefully very momentary confusion if the names were recognised.

21st: SUTHERLAND Treasure Trove
My "Originals" sub site has been updated to include the beginnings of the publication of a treasure trove of family memorabilia received courtesy of a very kind lady in Melbourne.
She had been clearing a relative's house and found a large number of items belonging to a family she did not recognise as hers. Having determined that they really were no connection to her, she did some web searching for anyone researching the family, that of Alexander Bain SUTHERLAND and his sister Jessie.
(It is believed that her relative was a friend of Sandy's and that he had helped clear his house after his death, and Sandy had obviously done the same for his sister Jessie).
Her search found my web pages. So I now have a wonderful box full of family bits and pieces that most certainly bring the family of John and Jane (McKENZIE) SUTHERLAND to life rather more than previously.
I had already benefitted in my research on this family by having a friendly genealogist in the Shetlands contacting people who may have known, or known of them, so I was already one step ahead of the bare names, dates and places, but this is magic.
Heaps of postcards, some letters, some official documents, many photos (of course, most unnamed, but several look identifiable).
With only a very few of the documents scanned and examined for clues, I have already been able to pinpoint which of the many Jessie SUTHERLANDs heading for Australia she was (having her passport certainly helped, although I'm not so sure Jessie SUTHERLAND would have approved of the use of her passport photo, I know that I would hate to have mine published!), found the death of Jessie's uncle, John McKENZIE, son of James & Janet (BAIN) McKENZIE), identified the wife of Matthew Williamson SUTHERLAND, and finally determined which of them was the schoolteacher.
The Shetlands memory banks were sure that one of the family was a teacher, and assorted people assigned this occupation to different siblings.
It was Jamie, there's a letter from him to Sandy dated Nov 1947, from the Mertoun Schoolhouse, St Boswells, Roxburghshire. It will all take quite some time to sort through.
Many of the postcards are from all over the place. Looks like Jessie collected them, and people obliged by sending one from wherever they were.
I've already spotted one of Cockingford, down in Devon, which can hardly have had a connection to this family, but most certainly does connect to my Dawe family!
And one of a train stuck in a huge snow drift in Thurso - wonder if the current winter is similar?

20th: Some people make genealogy hard
I do so hate it when I cannot find someone who has to exist.
Last sightings were a marriage in Ontario, Canada in Peterborough 1893, followed by the births of two daughters, Edith and Gertrude, and death of wife Sarah (1899).
His name was supposedly Harry FAIRBAIRN, and he (they) should have appeared in either the Ontario deaths, or 1901 and subsequent 1911 census records.
No joy. Casting the net wider to outside Ontario, and even into the States still didn't come up with any likely candidates.
So I worked backwards to figure out which FAIRBAIRN family he belonged too, and quickly found that he was more usually known to his family as James Henry, and enumerated variously as Jas H, or James H with the surname as FAIRBAIRN or FAIRBURN. This latter is easily overcome by doing exact searches using wildcards, eg FAIRB*, but the forename variants are a little harder to cope with.
For the 1901 Ontario census I eventually resorted to simply leaving the name blank but putting in a birth year with +/- 5 years, and the township where I thought he would be, and scanning the entire 400 names for anything that could conceivably be a mis-indexed FAIRBAIRN. Still no joy.
By now I'd found that he had remarried (1899), as James Henry, to a widow Amelia COUTTS nee HUNTER, so it really seemed unlikely that he would be missing from both the 1901 and the Ontario deaths. But nothing anywhere in Canada to an Amelia with husband James or Jas or Henry or Harry, nor in the States.
I don't give up easily, so decided to try the known children. Gertrude had died at age 1, so it had to be Edith.
She did eventually provide the missing link I required. At age 17, in 1911, she had married in Renfrew Co, Ontario, "with parental consent", and gave her place of residence as Port Huron, Michigan, and her parents as Harry FAIRBAIRN and (incorrectly) Amelia HUNTER. Working from the known to the unknown, always a good maxim, 1910 Michigan census finally provided what I'd been looking for, but even then only by putting in Edith with father Harry born Canada in the right timeframe, no surname. They were indexed as RAIBOURN. By 1920 Harry is indexed as "H FOUNTAIN", but as they still had son Percival aka Percy who was with them in 1910, with them in 1920, they were more easily found.

Even son Percival/Percy, supposedly born Ontario, I had missed in the birth registers first time through. His mother had been indexed as Ammelin, and father recorded as Henry J. And was he Percival? No, John P.
Those we chase around the records don't make it easy for us, nor do the transcribers.
How many forename variations? Jas, James, Henry, Harry, H, Henry J Coupled with FAIRBAIRN, FAIRBOURN, RAIBOURN, FOUNTAIN, FAIRBURN as indexed surnames, which makes strking the right combination of both names a bit of a challenge.
And after all that I probably still wont find a dna candidate for the line of Andrew FAIRBAIRN and Elizabeth HAGERMAN in the FAIRBAIRN Surname DNA project, but it sure wont be from lack of trying!

18th: if they can't get it right...
I was browsing the Scotlands People feature on Famous Scots and noticed it had the will of Sir William Fairbairn.
Wrong.
Yes it was the will of a William Fairbairn who died about the same time (1873), but that of the Edinburgh surveyor, married to Agnes Hamilton DODDS, and brother of the Free Church Minister of Allanton, and most definitely not that of Sir William, engineer, born Kelso 1789, living in Surrey at the time he died in 1874.

Check out the Fairbairn DNA project for the outline pedigrees of the people mentioned.

11th: Where things lead
One of the Message Alerts that Rootsweb sends out for message boards I have registered an interest in mentioned an IVISON.
I thought that name sounded a bit familiar, and given it is also a little unusual, I went searching in my database to see why I thought I had someone of that name.
Well, only one.
Last year I had pieced together a theoretical family for one of my WIGHTs based on one of the children being Isabella Ivison WIGHT, as I'd found a possible marriage for John Adam Thomas WIGHT to an Elizabeth PERCIVAL, whose mother was an Isabel IVISON. (see blog filtered for IVISON)
I later confirmed they were indeed the right family.
Spurred on by this more recent reminder of the name, and with more information now available, I spent a while checking the ancestry indexes for births, deaths, and marriages 1916 thru 2005 and have updated the family a bit more.
Couldn't find them anywhere in England in 1911 however under any search criteria I could think of. Which was a little surprising as they do seem to have stayed around Northumberland.
Next WorldConnect update will have a few more twigs on that part of the WIGHT tree.

8th: WARE branch updated
Thanks to Nick providing an outline descendant chart for Gertrude TURNER (dtr of William TURNER and Mary Ann WARE), I spent a happy time checking it off and adding dates and places, where I could. Surnames added into that branch of the tree include: SHARRATT, NORTON, PEPPER, HIGGINBOTHAM, BRASNETT, McCAUSLAND, LOVELESS, ATKINSON, ASHMAN and HOPE, none of which feature elsewhere, so no new inter-connections for this Devon family that moved to London.

The results of our endeavours will appear on WorldConnect in due course, and are already in my ancestry tree LornaHen, included there as I found the source records.

4th: Gateshead to Manitoba, DODDS reviewed
Although I've not renewed my sub to MyHeritage (well it was free for five years from the old GenCircles and now will cost), the tree is still sitting there, searchable.
A side effect of this is that people may still send me emails about matches, but I wont be able to reply (unless they include an email address).
One such arrived today, a Katie asking about her 3*great grandparents William DODDS and Agnes Robertson DAVIDSON of Gateshead.
Up to now I'd not advanced all the family as far as 1901, but spurred on by the knowledge that at least one branch must have produced several more generations, I had another look today.
Still don't know where Katie fits, but do appear to have found that dtr Rosina Hunter DODDS married an ELLIOTT, a descendant of whom has a tree on ancestry; and that the John (who had married a Sarah someone by 1901) and family had all hopped off to Manitoba by 1903.
I've also resurrected father William, he can't be the one of the right age in the death index in 1902 as he's a widower in the 1911 census with son James.
So, Katie, I hope you find this eventually, and contact me from my website as I'd love to know where you do fit into the family.

1st: PURDIE mystery solved
I'd previously given up trying to find Margaret PURDIE nee FAIRBAIRN and family in 1841, although I had eventually found hubby Charles gamekeeping in Buckinghamshire.
Got a bit more stubborn today, having found that in the 1871 census daughter Cecilia thought she was born in Ipswich, Suffolk, so thought they might be there.
No wonder I was having trouble. The Wherstead Suffolk census shows Margaret saying she was 40 instead of 48, and they had been indexed as PURDUE born Ireland, instead of Scotland, even Cecilia, who was shown as Acilia, 5 born Scotland, not England.
It did add a daughter Elizabeth into the family, but didn't solve the mystery of the Williams in the family.

If you're wondering where the rest of the research log went, I've archived off the last 6 months of the 2009 log into a new menu item at left - 2009: Jul - Dec

 

one name study pages:


surname pages: