Author Topic: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland  (Read 3625 times)

Offline Mitch1957

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James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« on: Wednesday 18 January 17 23:07 GMT (UK) »
Hello everyone..I am a direct descendant of James Mitchell born 1609..( Mark Anthony Mitchell born 1957 from Tasmania, Australia)
I have his birth certificate stating his father, James Mitchell..needing to find out if his mother was Jonet ?my one lead is James Mitchell born 1584 from Dunfermline... married to Jonet mitchell ( could be nee Crawfurd or Lawsone etc from Pencaitland or Stirling) in Pencaitland Jan 1609..they would of travelled to Elgin from Pencaitland arriving in time for James birth 27th June 1609..I do have parish baptism copies..any help would be grateful..cheers to all

Online Forfarian

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #1 on: Thursday 19 January 17 10:55 GMT (UK) »
I am sorry that I am going to sound like a wet blanket, but can you actually prove the relationships for every successive generation back to 1609 using evidence other than the registers of baptisms and marriages?
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline Mitch1957

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #2 on: Thursday 19 January 17 21:25 GMT (UK) »
Hi Forfarian..Nice to hear from you again..attached is my brief of mitchell's I have been researching..I am basing all by ancestry sites other than my father, grandfather and great granfather..I have all Baptism records purchased from "Scotlands people" web site from 1564 till myself in 1957..
I know nothing is 100 percent.. thats why I am asking questions..see attached

Offline GR2

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #3 on: Thursday 19 January 17 23:07 GMT (UK) »
I second Forfarian's comment. It would be a shame to expend a great deal of effort tracing unrelated families. Being able to trace a family that far back in Scotland is usually the result of their having owned land and having detailed relationships recorded in sasines.

Only a proportion of births and marriages were recorded and not all of those survive. You cannot assume that someone mentioned in Fife is the same man who appears in a later record in Moray. Anyone moving that distance at that time would probably leave traces in documents other than parish registers.


Offline Mitch1957

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #4 on: Friday 20 January 17 00:12 GMT (UK) »
Thanks GR2 and Forfarian...Okay so now the Sasines searching I go...Still, anyone with some Mitchell background please contact me or point me in the right direction..Cheers

Offline DonM

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #5 on: Friday 20 January 17 02:19 GMT (UK) »
Mitch,

NRS http://catalogue.nrscotland.gov.uk/nrsonlinecatalogue/welcome.aspx select search type in the name, years and the records you seek begin with GD.  I see nothing to suggest your family held land.  But, if they were farmers they may have been portioners.  That being said, there are a lot of these records and records found within the superior that are not indexed and may require a researcher to access.

Btw...your Robert son of David 1784-1864 is incorrect this was the son of Robert and lived his entire life in Blackford (Perth).

And, the 1609 document you enquired about is a Baptism not a Birth Certificate and I believe the mother is identified, granted it is a bit hard for my old eyes to read.

Don
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Offline Mitch1957

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #6 on: Friday 20 January 17 03:04 GMT (UK) »
Hello Don..Thanks for your interest..I will say that sometimes Mitchell is spelt as Mitchel..
I have David Mitchell 1699- Montrose married to Jean Burnet. They had John Mitchell 1728 in Montrose. He married Jean Stephanson..They had David Mitchel in 1752 Bap records show Mitchel..He married Jean Myre/Myer in 1775 in Dun. Marriage cert showing Mitchell..They had 7 children of which Robert Mitchel born 1784 in Montrose.. He married Helen Christison in Edzell in 1807 Marriage record shows Mitchel...So Mitchell, Mitchel even Mitchill is confusing....Yes

Offline Mitch1957

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #7 on: Friday 20 January 17 04:51 GMT (UK) »
Hi again..
First..I have attached extract partial copy marriage record .James Mitchell's marriage details I have show a Jonet Mitchell married 1609 Pencaitland..
Second... Robert Mitchell/Mitchel 1784 I have attached a few of his siblings to show spelling..
Thanks

Online Forfarian

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Re: James Mitchell born 1609 Elgin, Morayshire, Scotland
« Reply #8 on: Friday 20 January 17 09:30 GMT (UK) »
I don't doubt that you have all these original documents, and I agree that the dates match neatly and that spelling is irrelevant - I've also seen other variants beside the ones you have found.

What worries me is how you can be sure, for instance, that the James Mitchell who was born in 1584 in Dunfermline is the one who fathered James in Elgin in 1609? Or how to be sure that every one of the Mitchells who fathered a son in Montrose in the 1700s was born in Montrose and not a different person who had moved in from another parish? That's why you need to find independent evidence to prove that they were who they were.

Mitchell, incidentally, was the 19th commonest surname in Scotland when the Registrar General did a survey in 1990. This makes it much more difficult to be confident of each succeeding generation

As GR2 has said, the further back you go, the fewer people are actually in the records. This means that unless you have some independent proof, from sasines or wills or some other source, you cannot assume that a likely candidate is the right one.

When I started out with my tree, I found someone with exactly the right name to be my 2ggmother, born in exactly the right parish in exactly the right year, so I assumed she was my 2ggm and spent a lot of time working on her family. Then I got the death certificate of my 2ggm and discovered that she was an entirely different person whose baptism record had not survived.

I happen to know, because I looked it up for a similar discussion quite recently, that just over a fifth of people in my tree born in Scotland between 1780 and 1800 have no surviving baptism record. By the time you get back to 1600, there are many parishes with no surviving records at all. See https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/old-parish-registers/list-of-old-parish-registers#List%20of%20OPRs for details of coverage by parish.

If you look at Elgin, you will see that there is a gap in the baptism records between 1679 and 1705. So it is perfectly possible that the father of James, born in Elgin in 1609, was born in Elgin between 1679 and 1705 and is unrecorded.

As I say, I am sorry to be a wet blanket, but baptism and marriage records alone are not sufficient to prove a line of descent.

I take it you have the Tasmanian death certificate for Robert (1809-1880) naming his parents as Robert Mitchell and Helen Christison?
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.