Hi Harry (hdw), you say "Being a mason, he might have been related to James Haggart, stone mason, who was married to Catherine Duncan. I know their names from the death-certificate of their daughter Agnes Haggart who was married to David Spence, vintner at Kingsbarns in Fife. She died in 1874 aged 76. The census of 1871 gives her birthplace as Strathkinness in Fife."
This Spence-Haggart couple and their decendants are in my current research, so anyone related do please get in touch. Their grandson John Daniel Spence is a notable figure in our family - a builder in St. Andrews.
When I've researched a branch of my family-tree I often write a little article which I keep on the computer for future reference. A few years ago I wrote something about my Spence of Kingsbarns researches. This extract may be of interest -
"David W. Lyle’s “Shadows of St. Andrews Past” (John Donald, 1989) has a photo on page 81 of Jock SPENCE’s steam traction engine in 1909 pulling part of the former Catholic church that stood on the Scores to James Street, where it was to become La Scala, St. Andrews’ first permanent cinema. On page 82 Jock and his workers can be seen taking a break from erecting the cinema.
The 1901 census of St. Andrews shows only one John SPENCE, living at 7 Melbourne Place with his widowed mother Jessie. John is 26, single, a mason, and an employer, born in Kingsbarns. He was in fact born there in 1875 to James SPENCE, mariner, and Jessie Stuart, who was from Spittalfield in Perthshire.
In the 1881 census James and Jessie SPENCE are living in Cottage Row, Kingsbarns with their six children, including John, 6. James is 50, and is obviously the James aged 11 in the 1841 census, living in Cottage Row with his parents David SPENCE and Agnes Haggart (see above).
David SPENCE was born in 1790 to Alexander SPENCE and Magdalene Davidson, Alexander being a brother of my 5 x great-grandfather George SPENCE (Ramsay). So Jock SPENCE the mason and steam traction engine owner would have been a 3rd cousin of my 2 x great-grandfather James Peebles and his brother Robert, who emigrated to Tasmania together."
Harry