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

Crossing the Pond

In my first post about the McPherson branch, I explained that I had traced back several generations to find the ones who had first come to the US from Scotland:  John P and Mary McPherson, with children James F and Mary.  Since these are such common names, though, I expected I'd need to know more to find the correct records of them over here, specifically what town they came from.

Since I was at the archive looking into my Lithuanian-Scottish roots already, though, I thought I'd just have a quick look.  My suspicion was right.  A search of the 1851 census for "John McPherson" born between 1819 and 1821 must have returned something like 100 results!  Many of them were married to women named Mary.  There just isn't enough information on the census to be sure any of them was the right one.  Unfortunately James and Mary were born just after that census, or else I might have been able to narrow things down with the 4 of them listed.

One advantage I had, however, was that I knew they were Catholic.  Before 1855, the government wasn't the one that kept the records, the church did.  Two (or more?) independent sets of records were kept for Protestants and Catholics.  This meant I could rule out quite a few possibilities by searching exclusively in the Catholic registers.  The Catholic Church kept records of Baptisms, Banns, and Burials, roughly equivalent to the present day records of Births, Marriages, and Deaths.

Since I didn't know when exactly they had married, I searched first for a record of a James born to a John and Mary in 1851.  To my surprise, not many actually came up (maybe it was even just one)!

Birth:  James McPherson, 1851

I did the same for Mary born in 1853, and found a match!  The two records show that (mother) Mary's maiden name was Johnston on both, and that they were in St. Mirin's parish (it is called a "parish", right?) in Paisley, just west of Glasgow south of the Clyde.  Given how common these names were, I have to treat all of this with uncertainty, but it's hard to have a better match:  four correct names and two correct dates.

Birth:  Mary McPherson, 1853

Now that I was confident they were right ones, I searched for a marriage record using the maiden name "Johnston" and the location of Paisley.  And got a match!  It was earlier than I would have expected, in 1847, but infant mortality was high in those days.

Marriage:  John McPherson and Mary Johnston, 1847

I'm not sure why I didn't, at that point, go back and look for a census record, but I guess I was too excited about what I had found.  Eventually, I'll go back.  In the meantime, it would be nice to find some other evidence to corroborate what I've found (eg. a US death record for Mary would show her maiden name).

Archive Visit

I took another trip to the Scotland's People archive yesterday.  This time I went in prepared (because it's so dang expensive!).  And it paid off.  For 7 hours straight, I was finding new records to expand the tree.  They had to ask me to leave at closing time!  By the end I was just downloading records of people that might be related, so I could review them later.

I've got updates to post about the Flanagan branch of the Raulinitis line, I did some more digging into the Rolwich's descended from Eric Rolwich, I have a stack of Kisielius records to sort through, and I'm pretty sure I was able to jump back to this side of the Atlantic with the McPherson line.

I'll work to get updates posted here.