My genealogy research diary. What changed, where, sometimes even why.
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Sunday, 21 June 2009

21st: New addition

Not all new additions to the trees are dusty old ancestors, welcome to a new SINTON descendant, Eloise Mary Francine on the 20th.

Coincidentally, I also had some unexpected updates to a early branch of the SINTON tree in that a FAIRBAIRN certificate I pulled from Scotlands People, which wasn't the person I was looking for, had on the same page, the marriage of one William TURNBULL and Elizabeth WEATHERSTONE (1884 Jedburgh). William's parents were Thomas TURNBULL and Jessie ROBSON, Jessie being the daughter of Isabella SINTON. So that led me to track a few more of this family through a few more of the records. Updates will appear in my db LornaHenderson on WorldConnect in due course.

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Wednesday, 10 June 2009

10th: Turnbull twigs again

Confirmation received that Douglas Maes TURNBULL did indeed marry Madeline Hilda IZON in Hartford, Northwich, Chester, in 1914.
Didn't have a great deal of success with any subsequent sightings, other than a possibility of her being the Mrs Douglas TURNBULL arriving back into the UK from Montreal, with 3 yr old son Eric, UK address being Hempstead, Herts, future inteded residence "foreign".
Thought a name like IZON, father John Parnell IZON, might be reasonably easy to trace back a little way out of curiousity, but there are rather too many of the latter around for any certainty of identification.

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Saturday, 30 May 2009

30th: TURNBULL twigs

Prompted by Karen's STEPHENSON letters I realised I'd not looked for the more modern day twigs of the TURNBULL family in the 1911 census.
Only had partial success with that, but did obtain several sightings of Sir Robert's son Noel and wife Ivy Florence on assorted passenger lists travelling to/from Marseilles, Madiera and England over the years (and finally found Ivy's surname - Burborough).
Have not yet determined whether or not Robert's brother Walter Maes TURNBULL's family has any surviving descendants but should shortly know whether or not Walter's son Douglas Maes TURNBULL is the Douglas marrying a Madeline Hilda IZON in 1914 or not.

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Thursday, 28 May 2009

28th: Just like the buses

Nothing in the guestbook for a while, then 2 postings come along at once.
One from Karen drawing my attention to a book of memoirs of David Stephenson, '50 years on the London and North Western Railway' (McCorquodale & Co. Limited, Cardington St, Euston, N.W. 1891, ed Leopold Turner), which she had found on-line. Included in it are several letters to the Rev. Robert TURNBULL from David Stephenson, and also some mention of "Bob" the lodger with the Stephenson family in Nuneaton. That takes some family knowledge to translate!
"Bob" is the Rev. Robert TURNBULL's son Robert, later Sir Robert TURNBULL, Superintendent of the Line for the LNWR.
In the 1871 census he was indeed shown as a visitor (19 yr old railway clerk) in the household of David STEVENSON (49 yr old railway manager). David's family included a 6mth old daughter Edith, Karen's great grandmother. Small, inter-connected, world.
Thank you for bringing that to my attention Karen, look forward to hearing if there are more unpublished letters that may have survived between the STEPHENSONs and the TURNBULLs.
The other was from Karina in Winnipeg letting me know what had happened to a twig of the inter-connected ROWE/DAWE tree. Updates to the charts will appear next time I publish.

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Sunday, 21 December 2008

20th: Better late than never * 2

People are so much easier to find in the census with a bit more family knowledge.
I'd not been able to find Christopher TURNBULL in 1871 at all back in 2005. Armed with the newfound knowledge, thanks to contact (via GenesReunited) with a descendant of the James TURNBULL and Margaret JACKSON mentioned on the 19th , I found his sister Mary at last, under her married name (which I hadn't known) and living in Muggleswick. I had searched for likely Mary's of the right age and birthplace, but Mary had rather unhelpfully decided not to record anything at all about her birthplace for the 1871 census and inaccurate data thereafter. Lodging with them was one Chrisr TURNBULL, aged 15, also with no birth place information recorded. And ancestry had made the search even harder by indexing him as Chris FERNBALL.
This newfound cousin has a wonderful photo on GR of Mary with her two brothers Robert and Christopher that comes from a newspaper article on Mary's 90th birthday, saying their combined ages totalled 257.
The TURNBULL chart has been updated yet again.

There have been enough additions/updates to the database that a WorldConnect update to (database LornaHenderson is in train, should be in their indexes in a couple of days.

Had to laugh about the aptness of my comment yesterday about all it taking being time. Received a phone call this afternoon from a HENDERSON line cousin who lives in the next town to me. She was answering my 2003 email, but as she was promising photos and a visit including her mother, I'll forgive her the tardiness.

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Friday, 19 December 2008

19th: Time solves everything

Another of the English certs on order proved rather interesting. All it takes is time and happenstance for puzzles to be solved (I wish).
You can read about the series of recent coincidental happenings on the newly added page for James TURNBULL of Dykehead, but the start of that story is actually back in 2005 with this posting on GenForum re Robert, Christopher and Hannah, children of James TURNBULL of Nichol Forest, who now turns out to be the above James' son.
Beryl never did get back to me, so I hope someone can point her to the resolution of this as I would like to make contact, but that's rather hard without an address of any sort.

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Wednesday, 17 December 2008

16th: Still avoiding tax returns

Ordered the Canonbie MIs published by the Dumfries and Galloway FHS from the NZ Society library to check out any more TURNBULLs that might be obvious there.
Unfortunately the only TURNBULLs there were the ones I already knew about, Robert and family, so no new TURNBULL mysteries solved, BUT, I did of course check the index for other surnames of interest, and the one and only FAIRBURN aka FAIRBAIRN turned out to solve a mystery of the varying ages for one Margaret, d/o Walter FAIRBAIRN and Grace ARMSTRONG. Easily solved, there was, as suspected, an earlier Margaret who died.
A couple of English certs have turned up and confirmed my guesses as to which death registration might belong to Walter FAIRBAIRN (of Haltwhistle, son of the above Walter - talk about synchronicity!), and Robert SINTON of Castle Ward, NBL.

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Saturday, 6 December 2008

6th: Yet another coincidence

I always knew that coincidences abound in this genealogy lark.
The latest is with le place du jour, Dykehead.
One of my WIGHT cousins dropped by and read the entry for the 5th re Dykehead, and was moved to send me an email to say that he used to own Dkyehead, selling it in the early 1990s. He wasn't sure of the exact dates, but it seems likely that it was just before we met up with the then owners of the story on the 30th Nov!
A TURNBULL page has now been included, replacing the previous chart with a page of TURNBULL data, well at the moment, just the previous descendant chart, and a sparsely populated map showing where some of the TURNBULL BDM events occurred.

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5th: TURNBULLs (and excitement ) squared

What, December already? Doesn't time fly when you're having fun. Which I am.
Still working thru all the new Americans being added to the Devon TOZER branch (probably wont show up on the bottom end of the KING chart as mostly too recent).

And as if that isn't enough excitement for one week, but along comes a wonderful coincidence.
On the TMG Conference Cruise, I met up with Chaye from Sth Australia who was researching her mysterious OLIVER and TURNBULL couple who had the misfortune to die where death certs are not very informative.
I was very interested to note that one of the sets of parents she was investigating for her Elizabeth TURNBULL was a couple by the name of James and Agnes (ELLIOT) TURNBULL. They appear on the IGI as having children in the geographically challenging area of Dykehead, Kirkandrews, Canonbie, Dumfries.
Well, I suppose the submitter wanted to hedge their bets, and certainly the couple did too as they lived in Dykehead (which just happens to be the place of the comment "some more of those Americans dear" from the Nov 28th entry), in Kirkandrews Parish, Cumberland, but their children were baptised in Canonbie Parish, Dumfries, across the Border in Scotland.
Must be something about the air over there in this Turnbull family.
Anyway. I'd parked this as intriguing info to be investigated at some stage to see if there was any connection with my Robert TURNBULL, joiner of Dykehead, of about the same timeframes.
Today, that got raised up the priority list somewhat following receipt of an email from Robin in Canada asking about my Robert in Dykehead.
Yes, he was a descendant of said James and Agnes (ELLIOT) TURNBULL (but cannot solve Chaye's Elizabeth mystery, more's the pity).
We quickly decided that James and Robert could not be brothers. A 1764 baptism of a legitimate son to Walter and wife in Dykehead, just didn't fit with Walter, Robert's father, marrying as a bachelor in 1774.
However, James' likely mother was Betty also TURNBULL. Not that his baptism said so, but there were a string of Canonbie baptisms to Walter and Betty, several of which stated "in Dykehead", so it was an easy stretch to continue the string of children with the 3 "and wife in Dykehead".
That was James handily placed, but the connection to Robert still unsolved.
And then I examined a list of Canonbie baptisms Robin had downloaded from Scotland's People and noticed that I hadn't all the children of Walter and Betty (TURNBULL) TURNBULL after all. There were two sons I'd missed, a Robert and a Walter, which latter, got me quite interested in a hurry.
Sure enough, his baptism clearly showed he was the son of Walter TURNBULL and Betty TURNBULL in Dykehead, Parish of Kirkandrews. And what's more, a 1745 date dovetailed very nicely as a really good age to be marrying in 1774 and having children in Dykehead, to continue the family tradition.
No wonder I'd not been able to find a suitable baptism for him in England.
TURNBULL chart updated

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Saturday, 13 September 2008

9th: Dykehead TURNBULLs ++

Updated TURNBULL descendant chart in place to include a few more of the newfound branch of Dykehead TURNBULLs.
Haven't found out that much about the history of Dykehead, but Giles advised that, as I suspected, it was one of the many farms sold into private ownership from the Netherby Estate.
I found a mention in The Times of the sale of 21 of the 25 lots in July 1912, but none were mentioned by name.

The DNA Projects Portal has also had a complete update, so now should include all dna participants, and researchers, with lineages as appropriate, apart from the ROWE project, which is still very much at the early stages of being included. I now want to know about any missing links, incorrect info etc!
Should you want your DNA project mentioned on the Portal pages, just send me an email with the appropriate links.
Check out the respective lineage Wanted! pages, particularly if you are a male descendant of a line of SINTON, RUNCIMAN, FAIRBAIRN, DAWE families.

The above Wanted! lists are by no means complete, and will be added to over time.

Discounts available if you join and order a test via a surname project before 31 Dec.

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Thursday, 24 January 2008

Jan 23, 2008; There had to be an Alison

Having been found by the descendants of the newfound (to me) dtr Isabella, to Peter SINTON and Janet DONALDSON, and having done a lot of digging around to find as many of the descendants as wanted to be found, I then went digging to find other researchers of the new names added into the tree: ROBSON, MABON, HILSON, TURNBULL, BRODIE, THOMSON, INGLIS, SCOTT, MIDDLEMIST, GRAHAM, TAYLOR, RENWICK, HUNTER, WAUGH.
On the Borders FHS site, the Surname interests came up trumps for TURNBULL and MABON. At the time I found the TURNBULL researcher and looked at the web page, I wasn't sure it was the same family, but a bit more digging, and bingo. A couple of Isabella's great grdchildren had emigrated to Canada after WWI.
For MABON I picked one researcher for no better reason other than she had a NZ address. Such decisions can be fateful.
This evening, I received a pedigree chart from Amanda, and completely forgot about checking MABONs further, as she was a FAIRBAIRN relation of mine from a daughter I didn't have, for Walter FAIRBAIRN and Agnes ROBESON/ROBISON/ROBERTSON, but I knew had to exist somewhere. In a family with several sons and daughters I was missing a son named after the mother's father, and a dtr named after the father's mother, but am no longer missing the latter. The former may well still be the John in New York with father Walter of Roxburgh, SCT, but DNA participants are yet to be found to aid this conjecture.
Figured out who Mary BUCKHOLM is (but not what happened to her after 1871), but the rest of the grandchildren of Richard and Isabella ROBSON are yet to be "fitted in".

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Monday, 19 November 2007

Nov 18, 2007: Michigan RUNCIMeN ...

A couple of my USA phone calls have finally hit paydirt. Email received from a descendant of one of the Michigan RUNCIMeN (William's line), confirming my suppositions on who was related to whom in Stockbridge. Hope this also leads to descendants of the line of James, and to participation in the RUNCIMAN Surname DNA project for both lines.
Continued fishing around in TURNBULLs, but that sidetracked me back to FAIRBAIRNs as a couple of them married FAIRBAIRN brothers, or so it looked. Proven, but unfortunately, neither look like my families.
While chasing around census data for this lot I happened across a James FAIRBAIRN from Swinton, but lost him again.

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Saturday, 17 November 2007

Nov, 17 2007: Gone fishin' (for TURNBULLs)

Hunting around in some TURNBULLs I re-found the Joseph TURNBULL who married Isabella RANKIN (a WIGHT descendant) and realised there was more information available now. Found most of them in the assorted census records, and decided to check son William's death as I didn't have a place for it, only the date from the St Boswell's MIs. Found to my surprise that he was married, to a Theresa AINSLEY. He was a fishing rod maker by occupation; subsequently found them in census data in Northumberland, where he seems to have lived, even though he died in St Boswells).
The first DNA test has reached the lab, so in a few weeks there should be some information for the as yet empty FAIRBAIRN results page. Still hunting for willing participants on the trees I want to compare with, hint hint to anyone eligible or interested.

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Thursday, 18 October 2007

Oct 16, 2007: Kirklinton GRAHAMS & more METHERELL

Back to chasing TURNBULLs and GRAHAMs around England. Anne Marie (mentioned on the 8th Oct) has been back in touch.

I just knew my research on the family of John TURNBULL and Isabella/Easet GRAHAM wasn't wasted when I was investigating who their son Robert TURNBULL was a couple of years ago. At the time it looked like there was going to be a connection with my Walter and Robert TURNBULL, and there may well be but it is unlikely to be proven unless more records miraculously appear from somewhere.
I had John's wife Isabella (whom I thought was also called Easet as John appears on census data with firstly Isabella and then Easet and they are of an age with the same birthplace) as the dtr of William and Jane GRAHAM, with a possible id of Jane as Jane FERGUSON.
Anne Marie also believes so, but corrected me about Easet, pointing out that Isabella died relatively young and John went on to have yet more children with her sister Easet. Saves on in-laws I suppose.
Anyway, Anne Marie believes Isabella to be the dtr of William GRAHAM and Jane FERGUSON, and has William as son of the George GRAHAM who married Easet CARRUTHERS, then George as son of William married to Eleanor, this William believed to be the son of Edward and Dulcibella GRAHAM. Quite exciting that by combining info we appear to finally have made some connections between the GRAHAM families and I've found several researchers of those lines. Great synergy. Also tidies up my database somewhat as I hadn't identified many of them as being one and the person, so had many of them twice over, once with parents, t'other with their own family.

Another guestbook posting by Heather sounds like she may have some info that might finally sort out the Jane METHERELL mystery, ie how many were there and who did they both/all belong to?

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Tuesday, 28 August 2007

Aug 28, 2007: Crossing the styx (Border)

Small world territory. Bridget has helped me a lot with my Cumberland research, and had a query about information available about a possible relation of hers here in NZ. Turned out he has a monument erected to him on Mt Egmont. I found a picture of it, and it looks amazingly like the one I have a picture of me and my Grannie sitting at the base of, back when I was around 10.
Which was incidental to her reporting that the Canonbie MIs she was reading had my TURNBULL family in them. No wonder I couldn't find a grave for them in Nichol Forest, I was looking on the wrong side of the Border. They may well have lived their entire lives around Nichol Forest in Cumberland, but when their son Walter died aged 4 in 1826 it looks like they buried him in his mother's home ground instead of theirs, Canonbie in Scotland. Robert's page has therefore been updated and the two children added to the web pages.

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