Is this possible on SP? Bain females born between about 1860 and 1867.

[Forfarian]

So, if I select the surname Bain and mother's maiden name McKinnon and "both" for gender any of these children ought to come up if they died in Scotland shouldn't they?  Unless the informant didn't know who their mother was.

Unfortunately this doesn't always work.

The good news is that you don't need to know a woman's married surname to find her death on SP.

However the original indexes only list the maiden name of the mother of a deceased person from about 1928-ish. So if they died before this putting the mother's maiden surname in the SP deaths index won't do any good.

They have started adding the mother's maiden surname to earlier deaths, but it is a very slow process indeed; they are still in the 1860s as far as I know.

You can put in just surname and mother's maiden name on SP. This produces 13 listings, none of which match yours.

Unfortunately using the year of birth in the SP search doesn't narrow the search enough to be useful. There is (in my opinion) a flaw in their algorithm and it returns far too many results.

Incidentally the IGI gives James' DoB as 12 June 1856 in Peterhead and Margaret's as 29 April 1859 in Arbroath. Mary Jane was born in Arbroath on 8 February 1862 and Helen in Old Machar, Aberdeen on 31 May 1867. There's also William, born 22 December 1864 in Arbroath.

[hurworth]

"Helen born on 31 May 1867 in Old Machar, and my last sighting of her is also the 1881 census"

Have you searched for a death between 1881 & 1967 with her maiden name using yrs of birth +/- 3 either side in last area noted or a marriage after 1881?

Annie

Not as systematicly as I should.  But using yrs of birth brings up people born 30 years before her.   I'm not sure what I am doing incorrectly.

[hurworth]

However the original indexes only list the maiden name of the mother of a deceased person from about 1928-ish. So if they died before this putting the mother's maiden surname in the SP deaths index won't do any good.

They have started adding the mother's maiden surname to earlier deaths, but it is a very slow process indeed; they are still in the 1860s as far as I know.

....

Incidentally the IGI gives James' DoB as 12 June 1856 in Peterhead and Margaret's as 29 April 1859 in Arbroath. Mary Jane was born in Arbroath on 8 February 1862 and Helen in Old Machar, Aberdeen on 31 May 1867. There's also William, born 22 December 1864 in Arbroath.

Thank you Forfarian.  So, if they died in Scotland they should eventually be found this way.  I hope they didn't die in England!

Thank you for the dates of birth.

[Forfarian]

But using yrs of birth brings up people born 30 years before her.   I'm not sure what I am doing incorrectly.

You're not doing anything incorrectly.

You are looking for Helen Main, born 1867, any time from 1881 to say 1967? So you put in year range 1881 to 1967, and birth year 1867 plus or minus 3 years?

Unfortunately the system then works something like this. If she was born in 1870 and was alive in 1881, she would have been 11. If she was born in 1864 she would have been 103 by 1967. So it lists all the Helen Mains who died between 1881 and 1967 and were aged from 11 to 103 when they died. As I said, in my opinion it's a flawed algorithm. It is certainly pretty useless unless you're looking for someone who has an uncommon surname and a middle name.

[hurworth]

I've found William on the next census.  He is single and his sister Mary Knox is living with him.  She has no living children.

So I can remove the questionmark next to William Knox.  I'd pencilled him in.

[hurworth]

Thanks Forfarian.  It's challenging enough when there were several Helen Bains born in Old Machar around that time.

I think I'm on a roll now.  I have Mary Jane's marriage to William Knox on 2nd Jan 1893 and the witnesses are James Bain (presumably her brother as the record says her father James Rettie Bain is deceased).   I don't know who Maggie Milne is.

I'm not that there are descendants.  James is single and living at Barony in Lanarkshire in 1891.