Friday 30 September 2011

More twigs

Republished the WIGHT descendant chart to incorporate a few more of the twigs Harry has been feeding me in the last few days.
Also revamped the charts on the RUNCIMAN page as they were not yet in the new more interactive format.
This latter activity was prompted by some RUNCIMAN research where I stumbled across a family in Liverpool who tracked back to the line of William of Crail, and may, or may not, explain the mysterious Richard buried in Buenos Aires.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Up to July on OGF

OneGreatFamily updates now complete to end July, and yes, I mean 2011, so catching up.
Click here for an explanation of what this entails and why I do this.

Tuesday 27 September 2011

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.

Friday 23 September 2011

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!

Thursday 22 September 2011

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.

Monday 19 September 2011

Expanding circle

The THOMSON/RUNCIMAN connections posted on the 14th, have led Harry and I into rechecking our assorted past trawls through the Maxton records, and others.
The most fascinating find was in Harry's old notebooks, where he noted that the Cautioner for the marriage of Thomas THOMSON and Mary LOCKIE (Maxton 1762) wasn't yet another THOMSON, but a Robert PATERSON.
Which Robert seemed rather likely to be the Robert found marrying one Elisabeth RUNCHEMAN in 1768, also in Maxton, with the wonderful note "The Bride's Father declard all her relations and himself were well pleased with the Marriage and became caut. for his Daughter".
Harry and I concur that this is highly likely to be Elisabeth, sister to our shared x greats grandmother Margaret RUNCHAMAN, who herself married in Maxton, in 1771 (to Robert RICHARDSON, smith at Whitelaw).

Sunday 18 September 2011

Contact made

Hope my research is solid. I think I've finally made contact with a descendant, in Arizona, of my 2greats grandad's mysterious brother John.
HENDERSON chart has been updated with a few BINNIE twigs as a result, hopefully more to follow.

The other change in the recent changes index, Margaret King CREBER, is because a descendant has confirmed that the London death I'd found was indeed her, as daughter Sarah Creber LONGLEY nee WARE was living there around that time.

As I'd only just done an update to my database LornaHenderson on RootsWeb's WorldConnect, these changes will appear next time.

Wednesday 14 September 2011

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.

Sunday 11 September 2011

RICHARDSON/ANDERSON

Confirmed that James RICHARDSON did indeed marry Frances/Fanny ANDERSON, 1891, Glendale. Findmypast has a wonderful feature that you can tick so that name variants are searched for. Fanny appears not to be a recognised variant for Frances. Sure enough, as Susan has pointed out to me, James and Fanny did marry - in 1891, District of Glendale. Many thanks.

Wednesday 7 September 2011

RICHARDSON twig confirmed

Ralph's facebook activity prompted me to take a look at some of the unconfirmed RICHARDSON descendants in my database which led me to James RICHARDSON, son of Adam & Margaret (CRANSTON) RICHARDSON. For quite some time I'd had him pegged as the unmarried shepherd in Northumberland in 1881, 1891, and the one in 1901 married to a Frances with a dtr Sarah. I'm now happy that he is the right James as in 1911 (at Cornhill on Tweed) he states that he was born Oxnam Row, Roxburghshire, instead of the less informative Scotland or Roxburghshire, Scotland in the other censuses. Bit confused about his wife's surname though. Two ancestry trees have her as Frances/Fanny ANDERSON but I can, as yet, only spot a marriage in the right timeframe (1911 census) to a Frances Louise HODGSON, and also as yet, no obvious marriage of a Frances ANDERSON to a HODGSON to account for that, nor any earlier sightings of a Frances HODGSON of the right age/birthplace.