RootsChat.Com

No.

You need to look at one of the birth certificates to see what they tell you. They will tell you the name of the twins' mother. The father of an illegitimate child can only be recorded on the birth certificate if he accompanies the mother when she goes to register the birth, and signs the certificate along with her. However I don't think he did in this case because the twins' births are indexed only under Thomson, and if he had co-signed the certificate they would also be indexed under his surname.

It is possible, if Jemima knew who her father was, that she might have named him when she got married. Have you got her marriage certificates?

And don't waste your time looking in Ancestry. Scotland's People is the primary source of this information, and if it isn't there it isn't going to be on Ancestry either, because Ancestry just transcribes or indexes primary sources. See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0

BTW you need to ask a Moderator to move your part of this thread out of Orkney and into Aberdeenshire.

They'll be in the parish kirkyard, but if there's no gravestone there may not be any other records.

Unusually, there are some records of burials in the Arbuthnott parish register, but there don't seem to be any in the 1800s.

You could have a look at the parish accounts in the records of Arbuthnott Kirk Session and see if there are any payments for the mortcloth. This was a large cloth that was rented out for a fee and draped over the coffin during the funeral service.

ADDED - Also, the 1851 census I posted above is NOT correct.

Does that mean that the grandson of Peter S and Jean Coalier comes back into consideration?

- He's the right sort of age - 21 in 1851, so born 1829/1830
- He was born in the city (St Cuthbert's)

- Peter S and Jean Coalier had a son Alexander Ritchie Studman baptised in 1803.

Alexander Steedman, son of Peter S and Jean Collier, died in South Leith in 1878, aged 73. He married Isabella Dougall in 1841. Are the grandchildren living with Peter S and Jean C in 1841 his children by a previous marriage to Mary White?

Looks good, but inconveniently James Steedman, parents Alexander S and Anne Turnbull, married Mary or Margaret Robertson and died in Glasgow in 1898. So it's not him.

In the census after his marriage James S husband-of-Marion consistently says he was born in the city of Edinburgh*, not Lasswade or Glencorse etc.
* Greenside is in the city.

I have found both the marriage and death records. On the ancestry tree that these come from it states the parents as Alexander Steedman 1790-1912 and Mary White 1790-1912, would that make sense for them to be James's parents? All the other trees have his parents listed as Henry Steedman and Mary Patullo.

Well, I think I have made it clear that I am quite certain that "all the other trees" are wrong. Even without the primary evidence of the death certificate.

Sadly, this is all too common; one sloppy researcher uploads a tree with wrong information, and then along come umpteen other people, and just copy the dud information. Then, before you know it, you have dozens of trees with the same error, and then the next person comes along and thinks, "Ah! If all these people think that's right, it must be right", and they copy it all over again.

Never, ever, believe anything you find online, and especially not trees submitted to commercial web sites like Ancestry, FindMyPast, MyHeritage etc etc, unless it's an image of an original document, and even then bear in mind that errors can and do occur.

And I don't believe their dates - 1790-1912 would mean Alexander and Mary were both 122 years old when they died, which is arrant nonsense.

You have excellent evidence, provided by his son William, that James St*dman, husband of Marion Campbell, was the son of Alexander St*dman and Mary White.