Rennie-Mathie family, business & marital connections

[TropiConsul]

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,628529.msg4765988.html#msg4765988

The link above will take you to an earlier related topic.  I am trying to work through the details of the 25 page testament dative and inventory of Alexander Rennie (1752-1828) a farmer near Kilsyth.   Alexander left a bequest of £250 to his youngest son, James Mathie Rennie, who was my  3rd great grandfather.  Alexander states that James Mathie Rennie is living in his household (he was 19 years old) and the bequest was larger than the  £100 left to the older son, Robert Rennie, who is described as "flesher [butcher] in Glasgow".  Presumably Robert had already received a sum from the estate to set him up in business. The proceeding names James Mathie (1803-1881?), writer in Stirling and I have tentatively identified him as the son of William Mathie and Elizabeth Laing. 

The problem is that I think the namesake of James Mathie Rennie is the first husband of Isabella Auchincloss (1764-1837), a James Mathie (1758-1795) who was a Glasgow writer and Clerk of the Glasgow Trades House (1790-1795).  Isabella later married the Rev. Dr. Robert Rennie (1767-1820) who was author of "Essays on the Natural History and Origin of Peat Moss", for which he received recognition as follows: "  The Emperor of Russia lately sent Dr. Rennie a diamond ring, accompanied by a letter written at his command, expressive of his sense of the utility of Dr Rennie's speculations, and of his wish that the continuation of the work should be transmitted to Russia, to give hints for the improvement of its waste districts."  Don't you imagine that over the dining table Dr. Rennie was a scintillating wit with great funds of entertaining anecdote on his favored subject!!!

I have not been able to connect the James Mathie, writer in Stirling, with the James Mathie, writer in Glasgow.  I welcome any assistance.  The writer in Glasgow was succeeded by his brother Benjamin who held the post of Clerk of the Trades House of Glasgow from 1795-1831 and he was also part owner of the Glasgow Herald.    The father of James and Benjamin was David Mathie, Preses of the Grand Antiquity Society of Glasgow.

[TropiConsul]

It is possible that the father of James Mathie, writer in Stirling, was the William Mathie born in 1768 to David Mathie and Jean Holding.  I have not been able to confirm this.  The attachment provides the family information.

[retiredfrommath]

I am interested in possible Rennie-Mathie connections and am descended from David Rennie who died in 1823 in Glasgow, Scotland and partner in Stuart and Rennie, based in Greenock Scotland and St Johns Newfoundland.  He first as a merchant in St Johns Newfoundland in 1790, was in Scotland to settle the estate of his partner and marry a Newfoundland widow.  He owned a dock and financed and traded with the fishing captains in St Johns and bought 21,000 acres on Prince Edward Island and left for Newfoundland for Scotland in 1810 and after that his children were born in Glasgow.  He helped some of his wife's cousins invest in Newfoundland.  One of these cousins of his wife is named George Wright and is a merchant in Glasgow who was married in Glasgow in 1806 by a minister named Robert Rennie, minister of Kilsyth.  Three of George Wright's children were given Mathie middle names with Benjamin Mathie being one of the two listed birth witnesses for his first three children and one of the later children was named Benjamin Mathie.  Can you shed any light on this?

[TropiConsul]

I am researching your question.  The Mathie-Rennie connection in my family appears to derive from social and patronage connections that involve three or more generations and is not strictly genealogical, but I am more of an anthropologist than a genealogist.  I do have some comprehensive information on my Rennie line from a fourth cousin who resides on the Isle of Skye.  I know that this line of Rennies includes descendants in Canada, USA, New Zealand, and Australia.  This line has its origins in Kilsyth parish of Stirlingshire.  I will let you know what I can discover.   

[retiredfrommath]

I shared information with a variety of Rennie descendants from my line and have DNA confirmation of my connection to lines in the US, England, Scotland and Australia.  The Canadian descendants all left or died (the last death was not too many years ago).  There are South African descendants I am not in contact with.  David Rennie's ancestors are unknown.  I have a wide variety of bankruptcies and wills etc and know a reasonable amount  about David Rennie's wife's family.  I also have transcripts of letters from the factor for David Rennie's estate written to his eldest son

[TropiConsul]

Good to hear from you.  Can  you connect your Rennie line to Kilsyth?  That is the only Rennie line for which I have information. 

[retiredfrommath]

No -  I can't trace any relatives of David Rennie except his wife and children.  Only one of his children has descendants.  There is also a line of step-children through his wife but that's it.  There are candidate relatives on his bad debt list in his will, one of which named Robert Orr actually has an obituary referring to David Rennie as his brother but this person settled on Rennie land in Prince Edward Island and might just be a fraternal organization brother or something like that.  Another of people on his bad debt list is his known brother-in-law whose only descendant is an illegitimate child born to a black woman on Prince Edward Island.  David Rennie's valuation on his death was 13,000 pounds plus land and the evidence is that he helped at least some of his wife's cousins since they are discussed relative to a debt claimed against that backing in a letter from the factor for his estate.  One of the wife's cousins was successful (5000 pound estate if I recall correctly) and was a tailor who became a clothier in Edinburgh and frequently advertised in the paper there, one of which ads referred to his buying his product in London.  He died about the same time as David.

[TropiConsul]

I don't have your David Rennie in my database.  You say he died in 1823 in Glasgow.  Have you searched the Glasgow Herald for an obituary?  It seems likely that a person so prominent would have been the subject of a death notice.

[retiredfrommath]

Glasgow  Herald, 17 Jan 1823.
“         DIED
...
At Glasgow on the 7th instant, Mr David Rennie”

His wife had died two years earlier.  He had very prominent trustees to his estate and was buried in the Cathedral.
"High Church, New Burying Ground, Register of Lairs, No. 1, No. 38, David Rennie - DRIPING ISLE.

(From Alan McPherson)
I am just back from 2-and-a-half weeks in Scotland, and can report that I
was in Glasgow one day to visit the Mitchell Library.  I can confirm that
the reference to David Rennie's burial on the "Driping Isle" in the New
Burial Ground at the High Kirk (St Mungo's Cathedral) was correctly rendered
for other burials as the "Dripping Aisle".  I visited the site, opened in
1801, but the gravestones are all recumbent flat stones, most of them with
the inscriptions completely erased by feet and weather."
Alan McPherson is a retired professor from Newfoundland who hoped to cowrite another biography of David's stepson, William Eppes Cormack (explorer of the Newfoundland interior and founder of an Institute to study the Beothuck Indians)  but never finished it.