Abernethy from Portsoy to British Columbia

[J.J.]

He was born Scotland? Should've just changed the surname to Mc Khewn then    hehe

http://www.islandnet.com/cgi-bin/ms2/rsd/search
Had we looked, we'd have found her under Elsie Jane Abernethy (might have confused us more) as well as Kuhn

[paddwadd]

Once again you have all exceeded in your research. Puzzled about parent's names, John Abernethy (Abernathy) O.K. but E. McColesth ?

John's wife (my grandfather's mother) was Elspeth nee Galashan (or Glashan). Could Elsie Jane perhaps been an illegitimate child of John and brought up by him and his wife? 

Alternatively, after seeing how often writing on official forms, census etc. was misinterpreted - had a hard time finding my grandparents in a census at one point as she had been listed as Clementire (Clementine) Abernathy (Abernethy) -  could this again be a case of bad handwriting?

[LemonMallie]

Hi Paddwadd,

The details on the registration are based on what the informant knows.  My first thought was that he was trying to recall the name and the best he came up with was McColesth.  It certainly isn't a name I have ever heard of so he was probably trying to spell it out phonetically.  A hard "c" and a hard "g" are often hard to distinguish so I suppose it isn't that far off - especially when you add in a Scottish accent!  A lot of registrations simply list the parent's names as "unknown" so it certainly isn't unusual.  And with the family so far away, the topic of the mother's maiden name probably never came up.

I think if you can place her with John and Elspeth as parents, you can safely ignore the mistake in the mother's maiden name and put it down to a husband who didn't pay attention to the details! 

Lynwen

[J.J.]

The registration for her brother William was as Abernathy, 1854 Free Church, Portsoy, Banff...
so it happens...I was also going to write to say not everyone remembers names all that well..
and if they were globetrotters who never saw much of the inlaws, it could happen if the name
never came up much...Don't know if my husband would always remember my mom's maiden name....
just as long as he remembers mine...
 
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funny thing from the IGI just now... is that I had to poke right in to the batch file to get William to come up, so that
was weird, actually as siblings Elsie & John come up as both Abernethy & Abernathy searches, but not William...
when searching under parents only search...
and your others, James, Alexander, Isabella & Ann only come up if you spell the name as Galashan...man,
when did the LDS site become so much less intuitive...You once only had to be close...??