Issues with Lamb family research - COMPLETED

[TunjiLees]

Just missed your last post breaky, and I see you came to the same conclusion as I did.
Don't worry you helped a lot, =).
Alexander Ross is almost certainly a relative and I will just have to find more about the origins of John Lamb in order to find out how.

[TunjiLees]

Here are the John Lambs:
16/02/1766 LAMB JOHN JNO. LAMB/ U Kirriemuir /ANGUS 299/ 0010 0204
10/04/1768 LAMB JOHN JAMES LAMB/ U Kirriemuir /ANGUS 299/ 0010 0216
13/10/1768 LAMB JOHN JAMES LAMB/ U Kirriemuir /ANGUS 299/ 0010 0219
01/03/1773 LAMB JOHN JNO. LAMB/ U Kirriemuir /ANGUS 299/ 0010 0245

I see no way to narrow it down though...

Also, there is no Marjory, Margory or May Lamb born in all of Angus between 1800 and 1815!! How can this be?

I try to clear things up and more problems turn up. Oh Well...

[Forfarian]

The conflicting censuses are really bugging me...
1851 census - 88 years old = 1763/1764 birth
1841 census - 70 years old = 1771/1772 birth
Perhaps the second 8 in '88' was in fact a 0? That would account for the discrepancy.

Don't worry about age discrepancies in the census. In 1841 all ages were rounded down to the nearest 5 years, and how were people to know reliably how old they were if theyhad no written record, and/or were unable to read, write and do arithmetic?

If you want to see the original and check for yourself what it says, you can view an image of the orginal at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

[Forfarian]

I wondered that too...a grandchild, maybe?  Annoying that relationships are not shown on the 1841.
Could be another child of Marjory's, or one of her siblings' children, perhaps.

He can't be Marjorie's because her son James was aged 6 in the 1841 census. More likely to be a sibling's child.

[Forfarian]

Also, there is no Marjory, Margory or May Lamb born in all of Angus between 1800 and 1815!! How can this be?

Well ....

Her parents neglected to have her baptised
They belonged to a denomination which didn't practise infant baptism
They had her baptised in a denomination other than the Church of Scotland
They couldn't or wouldn't pay the fee to have her baptism recorded in the register
The minister forgot to tell the parish clerk
The parish clerk forgot to write the entry in the register
The relevant page of the register is illegible
The register was damaged and the page is missing

.... or any one of dozens of other reasons.

There are an awful lot of people missing from the parish registers for one reason or another.

[Forfarian]

I found the parents of Alexander Ross on family search:
Helen Lamb, About 1807 Of, Meigle, Perth, Scotland
Alexander Ross, About 1803   Of, Meigle, Perth, Scotland

CAUTION! the fact that the parents are said to be 'Of' somewhere is an instant warning that the information is 'submitted' to the IGI, so just like 'Of Gleish' it must not be taken as reliable. It will be the usual LDS educated guess.

I couldn't find a date for their marriage.

Alexander Jr is the only child of this couple. You cannot find a marriage record. He is with his grandfather in 1841. I therefore surmise that he is illegitimate. Of the three IGI listings of his baptism, one is 'extracted', so you can look at the image of his baptism at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk - I bet it tells you he was born out of wedlock.

Then, somehow, before 1841, he ends up in Newtyle: a village of less than 1000 people, with a family of 'Lamb's.

Newtyle is the next-door parish to Meigle, even though they are in different counties. The villages are about 2 miles from one another. 

My conclusion is that he is probably a relative to my own Lamb ancestors, his mother's maiden name Lamb and his presence in another Lamb family is too much of a coincidence for him not to be. I will have to find out exactly how he is related though further research.

I agree, and I am sure that his mother Helen will turn out to be Marjory's sister.

To prove this you would have to hope that Alexander Jr either married or died in Scotland. If so, his marriage and/or death certificate ought to give his mother's name and with luck her married name (assuming that she did in fact marry). Then get her death certificate and see what is says her parents' names were.

Another possibility is that the Newtyle and/or Meigle Kirk Session took an interest in the birth of Alexander Jr and that the Kirk Session minutes say enough about his parents to let you identify his mother. The minute books (if they have survived) will be in the National Archives of Scotland www.nas.gov.uk but they are not (yet) online so you will need to get someone to look them up on your behalf.

[TunjiLees]

Thank you very much for all of your replies Forfarian, you have really helped to clear up a lot of things for me.

The Alexander Ross issue is certainly interesting but I prefer to spend my credits getting certificates of my own ancestors. I will wait to research his ancestry if I get round to going to the Edinburgh Registry Office.
Where would you suggest I head from here with my research of the Lambs?

[Forfarian]

The Alexander Ross issue is certainly interesting but I prefer to spend my credits getting certificates of my own ancestors.

If his marriage or death certificate says his mother was Helen Lamb, now married to Andrew Murray; and her death certificate says she was the daughter of John Lamb and Helen Sidy/Seydie/Siddy or however it got misspelt, it will help to prove who Marjory's parents were.

Unfortunately you are going to need a good helping of luck to get any further back. The Kirriemuir parish register doesn't give the names of the mothers of children baptised - only the fathers. Two of the four John Lambs you have found in the indexes had fathers named James, and two were sons of John. So you are probably at your brick wall with John Lamb.

[TunjiLees]

That sounds very unfortunate, but I won't give up =).