Advice please?

[DebsE]

Hi all,

I was hoping that someone with more knowledge of Scottish genealogy might be able to give me some advice on what to try next in my search for my Scottish ancestors.

I am trying to follow my SUTHERLAND family line but I haven't been able to make any progress beyond my 3x great grandfather Alexander William Sutherland.

He was born in Alloa, Clackmannonshire on the 27th Dec 1800 to Arthur Sutherland and Janet Bailie. I have this information from the IGI and also the official records from ScotlandsPeople. Unfortunately no other information is available.

The next record I found of him was when he enlisted in the army at Glasgow on the 22 September 1817 aged 18 years. I've seen a summary of his army papers but they don't provide any further clues to his family background. He then spent the next 24 years travelling around the world with the army, getting married in Ireland, and then emigrating to New Zealand as a fencible in 1847.

I have tried searching every source I can think of to find Alexander's parents but I haven't found anything. I don't know if Alex had any siblings or even if his parents were married when he was born. I've tried looking at ScotlandsPeople but all I achieved was quickly spending my money on finding the wrong people.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where I can try looking next? I'm based in New Zealand so any visits to local Scottish record offices is not an option but I really would love to extend my Scottish genealogy back to more than just the one ancestor.

If anyone can help I would love to hear from you.

Many thanks,

Debra
Hamilton, New Zealand