John McConnochie

[fmather]

I'm looking for info. on the birth of John McConnochie in Portpatrick 9th October 1823 where his father was engaged on harbour works under Sir John Rennie.
Does anyone have any info. please?
Fiona M.

[snowwhite77]

What information is it you require? Do you already know his parents names?
You mention his father. Do you know anything more?

[fmather]

I have an obituary (one of several) of John McConnochie (an engineer) that gives the above facts but doesn't give the name of his father.
It is likely that his father was Robert McConnochie, my great great great  grandfather.
John McConnochie was Engineer to the Marquis of Bute and designed and built the Cardiff South Dock. He became Mayor of Cardiff.
He was a relation of my grandmother's and obituaries of him are among the papers of my father's family. My brothers were shown his very fine house in Park Place, Cardiff by my uncle when he was alive.
We think that he was probably a great uncle of my grand mother's.
Unfortunately none of my father's generation of the family, who would have been able to shed some light on this, is alive.
If his father was Robert, the father of my great great grandfather, Charles, who was born in Edinburgh in 1933 (the family moved around a bit) we would be getting somewhere.
Many thanks for your message.

[snowwhite77]

You have probably done this already, but when you put his name into google, it ocmes up with loads of different sites. Perhaps trawling through them may help.
Interestingly someone else posted about this same family only last month, not sure if you know them already, but it may be worth your while checking anyway. Could be someone else researching the same family

http://www.cardiff.gov.uk/capitaltimes/get.asp?cat=2446
This link is about the house you mentioned above,

http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php/topic,66765.0.html
This link takes you to the querie on this forum i mentioned.

Good Luck
Amanda

[fmather]

Thanks very much.
I hadn't seen the posting. It's from my newly discovered second cousin.
He's actually from my father's father's side of the family rather than my father's mothers but he's become interested in solving this one.
It's clear from the obits I have that John McConnochie was a highly respected and much loved man. It's just difficult researching the 1820s and 30s in Scotland from down here!

[snowwhite77]

Try putting his name into google! There were smoe quite fascinating stuff aobut him! I ended up reading quite a few of them! There is even a site showing where he took minutes at a meeting!!
Certainly seems to be an interesting member to be researching! This is the kind of thing we all hope we will find while researching our roots!

The link i posted earlier, referring to a Cardiff newspaper was all aobut an open day to go into the house you had mentioned which was purpose built for John!

Very interesting stuff!
Enjoy!

Regards
Amanda