Scottish-Born McPhersons

At this point, I'm ready to say that I've located the right McPherson family in the Scottish records.  When I was at the Archive yesterday, I did a fairly thorough search to be sure I wasn't confusing them with the many other McPhersons in the record.  I even searched the Old Parish (Protestant) records, even though I was confident they'd be in the Catholic ones.

My strategy was to locate possible birth records for the children (James and Mary) and match the parents across them.  I had to find two records:  one for a James born to John and Mary and one for a Mary born to John and Mary.  However, since the US census records I found had been inconsistent in reporting ages, I had to search more broadly than just single years.  I chose a 5 year span for each.  If several matches existed, I would still be able to narrow things down because the age gap between the children had been consistent enough from census to census:  James was about 2 years older than Mary.

There turned out to be fewer matches than I expected -- only one for each of them to parents with the correct names.  Fortunately, the age gap matches so I'm can say with relative certainty, it's them.

Results for "James McPherson"

Results for "Mary McPherson"

So, as it turns out, the records I had found previously (in a somewhat less rigorous search) were in fact the correct ones.

I also decided to search for other children born to the couple, since they had married several years before James was born.  Sure enough, there was a match:  Jessie McPherson was born in 1849 (another Jessie in the family!).  She doesn't appear in any of the US records, so I also searched to see if there was a Scottish death record.  I only found a couple, but they weren't until 1905 and 1920.  If she didn't die as an infant, why didn't she go with them to America?  Or, maybe she did, but didn't survive the journey.

Jessie McPherson:  born 1849

The last thing to note is that I've started to question whether or not the census record I found earlier is actually them.  There are a lot of John and Mary McPhersons on the 1851 census, and without other family members listed, it's hard to be sure.

Kisielius / Valaitis

On my last visit the National Records, I found the first bit of evidence that there might still be a branch of the Kisielius line living here in Scotland.  Yesterday, I traced that a little bit farther and found that is indeed the case!  Marrie (Marijona), machute's first cousin, my first cousin twice removed, had one daughter with Juozas Valaitis named Anele.  She married Louis Tracy and had two sons.  Both of those families are still living.

Anele Valaitis, born 1926

Louis Tracy and Anele Valaitis, married 1952

It wasn't until I'd traced down through most of those families that something occurred to me.  The name that Chute initially gave me when she told me to look for the Scottish part of the family was "Helen Tracy Louis". I'm quite sure, now, that was her foggy memory trying to recall "Anele Tracy & Louis".  Which, I'm pretty sure, means that Chute has been in contact with Anele previously!  She'd be about 86 by now but, very hopefully, still living.  I'd really be interested in what she knows about her American cousins, particularly if she knows something more about the missing Kisielius brothers (still no trace of them remaining here).  Now I've just got to track down a current address.

Chute's Note

The previous post on Marrie showed that Juozas was her second husband.  As it turns out, they were both widows at the time that they married.  I searched but found no death record for her first husband, Konstantinas Adomaviczia, which makes me believe he was also deported under the 1917 Anglo-Russian Military Convention, but was not as fortunate as my great-grandfather Kazimiras.

Juozas Valaitis and Marijona Adomaviczia (Kisielius), married 1936

I did find, however, that they had one surviving son, Juozas Adomaviczia (later, Joseph Adams).  Unfortunately I ran out of time before I could search much further than that.  He could very well lead me to more living relatives, however.  Next time.

Juozas Adomaviczia, born 1915

Ona Adomaviczia, died as an infant, 1918

The Ives

I've made contact with more of the Raulinitis Clan!  I managed to track down a few from the Ives family.  They're a sub-group from the Flanagans, which branches off from Margaret Raulinitis, my great-grandmother's youngest sister.  Over the last day there's been a flurry of Facebook messages going between us.

Tracing through a female lineage can be tricky, as there are so many name changes, but luckily they've got contact will all the other Flanagan descendants, so it will make the job of getting to the others quite easy.  What's more is that they know something of what happened to Annie Raulinitis, my great-grandmother's other sister!  As I wrote previously, I managed to find record of her having been in the US, but nothing of much detail.  I suspected she had married and taken a new name, but without some clue of knowing what it was, finding her could be really difficult.  Fortunately, Jane Ives has told me that she thinks she married a sailor with the name Graham.  I'm confident we'll get more about her because, Jane tells me, her aunt Annie Flanagan, the niece of Annie Raulinitis, also emigrated to New York and was taken in by her.  Annie Flanagan apparently married someone named Raymond, but he died young, and she became a nun (I'm discovering an awful lot of nuns in the family!).  But she's still living, so she will certainly know more about her aunt.


I've also been messaging with Jane's brother Rob.  He had done a bit of genealogy work himself.  I'm really looking forward to hearing more about what he know of us, because he'd even gone to the extent of traveling to Lithuania in search of leads!  I'm not sure if he was looking for us (i.e. if he knew Zose and Kazimiras had returned there) or if he was looking for record of Motiejus and Eva's families.  But I told him he wouldn't find us there, being that Kazimiras Jr was killed by the Russians and the rest of the family fled to the US.


It's really great to make this contact and to find that they seem just as curious about us as we are about them.  I don't expect every one of them to care that much either way, but it's nice that I moved here with only Jessee and I've amassed more family than I ever knew I had!

Mary McCourt

Recently, I've been talking with my grandmother's cousin, my "first cousin, twice removed", on the McPherson side, Mary McCourt (born Mary Spencer).  I had my uncle David show her a copy of the McPherson tree I've reconstructed so far to see what she knew of it.  Of course she knew her aunts and uncles, all 8 of them!  But he had no idea that her grandfather was one of 8 as well!

She recalled meeting her great-uncle John McPherson (the one born in 1865) once when she was very young, but she didn't remember ever meeting any of the others.  As she remembered it, any of the others (she didn't know who or how many) had "gone west".  That is, "West", with a capital 'w', as in the Wild West!

That really got me interested, as they could have gone out there in the time of the Deadwood, Wild Bill Hickok, Calamity Jane, the frontier and all the rest!  Tracing their move out there won't be easy, but hopefully I can dig up something.  It would be fascinating to be connected to that history in some way.
From the census records, it looks like James, Mary, William, and Joseph disappear after 1880.  I'd be surprised if Mary would have gone out there on her own (not many women did that in those days, unless of course she became a prostitute! - unlikely in such a pious Catholic family), so I suspect she probably married and took a different name.  The three men, however, may well have gone.  The other four, Agnes, John, Alfred, and my great-great-grandfather Henry appear on the 1892 NY state census, but Alfred may have joined them later because he doesn't appear on the 1900 census.  I've been limiting my search to the City of Buffalo, thus far, so I'll need to extend things to get more information - it's always possible they just moved out of the city but stayed relatively local.  For now, I'd just like to believe that they were in the thick of the Old West, which is not improbable given the story relayed by Mary.

Mary also told me that a distant ancestor of ours was quite well regarded in the Buffalo (and wider) community for starting a school for the deaf.  She was a nun, Mother Mary Anne Burke, who Mary McCourt said was always a respected member of the family for her charity work.  Since Jessee's sister is a sign language interpreter in New York, I asked her if she'd ever heard of the school.  Apparently it's pretty well known in the deaf community, St. Mary's School for the Deaf (presumably named for the Virgin Mary, not my ancestor).  She pointed me to their website, which sure enough indicates that Mary Anne Burke was involved in it's early days!  She was sent to Philadelphia for deaf education training in 1861 and had become the principal of the school by 1863.

Mary also said we're related to "Cluny MacPherson", or rather Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, a significant figure in Scottish history.  He aided Bonnie Prince Charlie's (failed) attempt to reclaim the British Throne in the Jacobite Rising of 1745.  He was a fugitive for almost a decade after Prince Charlie was defeated and famously was paid a penny by his would-be captors for watching their horses, since they didn't recognize him.  Whether or not there is a direct blood relation to him, as Mary suggested, isn't clear, but it's unlikely.  The MacPherson Clan is massive and it's doubtful most members can be connected to his particular family unit.

Ewen Macpherson of Cluny, painting in the
Clan Macpherson  museum in Newtonmore.

Me.  Can you see the resemblance?

The last thing she told me was that Geraldine Swift, a relative from the Stanton/Burke line, did quite a bit of genealogy research years back.  According to Mary, she had discovered that one of the Burkes in the family was a murderer!  I immediately thought of William Burke, one of the infamous serial killer duo, Burke & Hare.  They notoriously killed vagrants and sold their bodies to the anatomy lecturers at the medical school of my very own University of Edinburgh.  Hare turned "King's Evidence" (i.e. he squealed) and Burke was publicly hanged in the Grassmarket of Edinburgh.  Burke's body was then dissected in the same anatomy lectures to which he had so faithfully supplied bodies.  In, what seems to me, the sickest turn of all, they then made a leather pocketbook out of his skin, which is still on display at the Surgeon's Hall Museum, just up the street from where I live!

As dark as this story is, I almost hope I'm connected in some way.  It might be my one chance at a claim to fame (or infamy, rather).  Again, I think it's improbable, but I'll certainly look into it.  Specifically, I'm going to try to track down who might have Geraldine's papers today - she has since passed away.  That could be a real gold mine of information, since she's several generations closer to those she would have been researching.

A "portrait" of William Burke,
housed in the Surgeon's Hall Museum, Edinburgh

UPDATE:  I wrote earlier that Mary was one of the children of John and Mary McPherson that disappears after the 1880 census and that I suspected that she had married and taken a different name (rather than move west and become a prostitute!).  I had forgotten that I'd already found a notice of her death in 1881.  That's a good reminder that I'll need to be sure the others were still living before I go on a big search for them in the West.

Death Notice for Mary McPherson (1853-1881)

Death Certificate

Recently, I wrote that I was pretty sure I'd located records of my McPherson ancestors in Scotland.  I found two birth records and a marriage record that fit the names and ages of the four that originally emigrated.  The records showed that Mary McPherson had been Mary Johnston before marriage and that they lived in Paisley.  Since all the names were so common, though, I wanted to locate a record to corroborate what I had found.  Mary's US death record, I suggested, would indicate her maiden name and confirm the connection.

I managed to track down a death record, but it was lacking the information I needed.  Apparently the person who reported the death did not know Mary's parents' names.

Death Record:  11 June 1887

This was quite disappointing because it can't confirm what I had hoped it would.  Of course, it doesn't refute it either.  In fact, there's nothing on the death record to know that is actually the correct Mary McPherson either (it's not signed by John or any of the children and the address isn't the one that shows up on the US census records, although it is just around the corner).  An obituary for the same date would have more information, but I haven't located one yet.  All I managed to find was a Report of Death that is rather unhelpful for such common names.

Report of Death:  11 June 1887

On further consideration of the Scottish birth and marriage records, however, I am fairly certain they are the correct ones.  The names and ages of 4 people match, which despite the common names would be rather unusual.  I'm confident it's them, so I'll pursue it further, but I'll still keep trying to find more evidence to support it.

As just a start, I've already found John and Mary on Scotland's 1851 census.  John was a "Draper's Assistant" and born in Linlithgow, not 20 miles from where I currently live in Edinburgh.  He must have moved to the Glasgow area and met Mary because the census puts them at 25 Gauze St in Paisley.

1851 Census