Renewed Greetings,
I've finally returned after an extended absence. My attention to my genealogical studies had been badly distracted by some of the vagaries of life. But now I'm able to get back to them. It's been a while so I'm in the process of re-familiarizing myself with where I left off. I unfortunately lost some of my recent tree work too and need to do some more digging to reformulate it.
I'm still seeking my Beggs and Crawford lineages in Ballycor and adjacent parishes. My focus of attention here has been David Beggs and Sarah Crawford, and their offspring. David is still much of a puzzle. He is traceable in some documents, but I can find no birth or baptismal records even though the 1901 Census of Ireland records his birthplace as County Antrim. And more disconcerting or maybe more intriguing, is that his birth year is so inconsistently reported. In his marriage registration, he is said to be of Full Age on the day of the marriage, 12 June, 1874. This indicates he was born prior to 12 June, 1853. In the Census of Ireland of 1901 he reports his age to be 50 implying a birth year of 1851. While in the 1911 Census of Ireland he says his age is 63 implying a birth year of 1848. His civil registration of death estimates his birth year to be about 1850. The first record of his birth I encountered was in his Family Group Record (which included his wife Sarah and most of his daughters) at familysearch.org when I first started searching for him in 2007. There his birth year was recorded as 1856 and I'd basically adopted this year in my own records and puzzled about the others.
What all this seems to suggest is that since he appears to not have had his birth officially recorded in the civil records by his family, and that he was not baptized, his mother may have been unmarried at the time and living a home with her farm family, and they chose not to publically acknowledge a birth out of wedlock. And then in subsequent years his purported birth date was fudged to make it fit in with his mother's subsequent marriage date.
There are indications that his mother was the Janet Robinson of Ballyalbana who married James Beggs on 27 November, 1854 at the Ballyeaston First Presbyterian Church. They went on to have four children: Agnes Beggs, born 1855; Jane Murdoch Beggs, born 1859; William Beggs, born 1861 and; James Beggs, born 1864. These dates are all derived from the Baptismal Records of the Ballyeaston First Presbyterian Church. Being that Agnes was born about 10 months after the marriage and there is a three year plus gap before the next child, Jane, is born, there is a convenient gap to place David's birth. Hence the familysearch.org family-reported birthdate of 1856. This may have been the family's traditional birthdate for him but David may have lapsed by the time of the census of 1911 to a more accurate 1848 when he reported his birth year on that year's census form.
I realize that I'm doing a lot of speculating here on the basis of circumstantial evidence, but I'm wondering if anyone has any information that can confirm, correct or elaborate the scenario I've pictured here. Is it plausible, is it likely, can it be confirmed or disconfirmed? Any thoughts?
Regards,
Bill
“You never know what worse luck your bad luck has saved you from.” Cormac McCarthy
