My genealogy research diary. What changed, where, sometimes even why.
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Tuesday, 31 March 2009

30th: McDONALD sorted

Bobby asked if I thought the niece, Margaret McDONALD, shown living with William TAYLOR and Janet GRAY in 1841 and 1851 at Sibster, Halkirk might be the dtr of William McDONALD and Margaret GUNN.
That was indeed where I had also thought she might belong, but had never investigated further to see if there was any link to our Isabella McDONALD, first wife of said William TAYLOR.
So much more information is now more readily available, so I set off to solve the mystery.
We were both wrong, as were the census records. Niece indeed! She was William's grandchild, illegitimate dtr of Christina (housemaid) with a George McDONALD, (merchant). No wonder I'd not found her in subsequent census returns before this, she died aged 29 in 1859. Another mystery solved, and a bit of the database straightened out. That particular family have real trouble naming their relationships correctly!

Found a Sth African site that had some useful information on it (http://www.ancestry24.co.za). Didn't find anything on my FAIRBAIRNs, but did find a bit more out about the family of the newspaper FAIRBAIRN there. Some of the family are on OneGreatFamily
and show John as being born Ledgerwood, BEW 1794, which raised my interest a tad. Any male FAIRBAIRN descendants out there interested in joining the FAIRBAIRN dna project?

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Sunday, 10 August 2008

Aug 9, 2008: Back to Caithness

Amazing what an unexpected find does to spur on further research to fill gaps. Several more twigs on the James BAIN/Helen ANDREW portion of the BAIN tree. Most of the charts updated with work to date, more to come - the daughters turn out to have married: SUTHERLAND, FALCONER, MOWAT, GUNN

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Sunday, 14 October 2007

Oct 12 & 13th, 2007: Caithness connections

Mostly BAIN, and TAYLOR updates. Another two for the price of one job. With family info that a sister of George Manson Henderson BAIN was a unmarried postmistress of Thurso, I decided to eliminate the sisters by checking for marriages where I didn't already have one. Found Jane/Jean Henderson BAIN had married James GUNN (1919 Halkirk), then looked at the cert. above it, only to find it was another BAIN, one Daniel William BAIN. Who didn't initially ring bells but turned out to be from a different BAIN family (the Harpsdale BAINs, George the stonemason who married into my TAYLOR family). I'd not traced this family much beyond 1881 until now. I've now found that one son, stone mason David, moved from Halkirk to Edinburgh, and dtr Violet helped keep the family surnames at a minimum by marrying a James MANSON (1909 Halkirk), not that he immediately looks connected to my Watten MANSONs.

Back to the Manitoba BAINs: still can't find Donald, James and George's emigration to Canada, followed by Alexander, but I now know Alexander can't have gone till after his 1923 marriage to Jane ROSIE, and that Donald said 1909 in the 1911 census. If I've found the right James in 1911 he thinks he came to Canada in 1911, which conflicts with family info that they came together, but with a fairly illegible birth month and year on the census I've really only got a near enough age and an occupation including CPR to go on.

James attestation papers show he married a Ruth Anna sometime before 1915, but the marriage doesn't appear in the Manitoba records that I've found.

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