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This has been very interesting - at least I know a bit more about old Govan.  It’s pretty clear from the 1861 and 1871 censuses that Margaret Smith was in the business of taking in lodgers, so I have to conclude that Neil and Margaret must have been lodging at Smith’s Place.

Thanks to everyone who contributed.

Thank you for the maps. I was surprised to see just how undeveloped Govan was at the time. Smith’s place looks like an isolated building, not the tenement or close I was expecting.

I am still puzzled why Margaret Madden McInnes was there rather than at home in Greenock for the birth of two of her children. It’s possible that her husband Neil McInnes had work in the shipyards in Govan but both these birth certificates describe him as a ‘ship carpenter at sea’, which I think suggest that he was away at the time of the Smith's Place births. I have been working on the theory that she might have been staying with relatives, but so far as I can tell Neil’s family were all still in Greenock.  I have less information on the Maddens. Margaret had family living in Houston in 1861 but I can’t find any of them in the 1871 census, although her married sister turns up again in Greenock in 1881.

A bit of a mystery!

Hello

My GGG Grandfather Arthur Murphy of Drumsnat married Margaret Sherry at Tydavnet Co Monaghan on 14 February 1836.

Their daughter Susan and son Francis were baptised on 18 July 1839 and 7 November 1841 respectively, also at Tydavnet. I have managed to trace records for both Susan and Francis after they moved to Glasgow.

What's puzzling me is that their father's name is sometimes given as Arthur and other times as Archibald on the Scottish records. Are the names, or the diminutives Archie or Artie interchangeable? Is there a Gaelic version?

Thanks for any insights,

Betty

I was very grateful for the assistance I received on this post. I thought people might like to read where it took me.

I am quite satisfied that the John Mercer named in Thomas Dadd's will is the same as John Meecey who married Sarah Bing at Deal in 1783. The will provided good clues: Sarah's mother Elizabeth was Elizabeth Dyason, probably the sister of Sarah Dyason who married Thomas Dadd.

One of the witness to John and Sarah Meecey's marriage was Mary Allen, who later married Sarah's brother Joseph Bing named their first child Joseph Dison Meecy and their second Elizabeth Dyason Meecey; a later child was named Benjamin Mercey, presumably after the brother who was cut out of the will. In the meantime they have several other children baptised under the name of Masey

The evolution of the Macey name is quite interesting as it follows a pattern with the changes in presiding clerics or parish clerks. Joseph Dison Meecey marries in Deal under that name, but most of his children are baptised in Walmer under the name of Mercer. (Not all: but the clerics in Walmer seem to change quite frequently). This would have been around the time that Thomas Dadd was making his will, so I am making an assumption that the clerks doing the writing for him would have picked up on that form. By the time of the 1841 census the pattern is more fixed: family members living in Deal are known as Macey, and those in Walmer as Mercer.

As a by the way, I think the James Dadd referred to in one of the posts above is actually Thomas Dadd's brother, rather than his father. This makes the beneficiaries cited in Thomas' will as his 'cousins' his nephews, but I think this may just be an older usage of the term cousin.

I am, however, still struggling to pin down a precise birth for John Meecey. I am gradually eliminating people from the surrounding parishes with variants of the name. It is a long haul, and I still keep coming back to the Maceys of Wye.

Thanks everyone for your help.

Betty Macey