Searching for Daniel St Clair & his parents

[ElleJae]

Hi. I'm searching for my ancestor Daniel St Clair who was born somewhere in Scotland on March 17, 1759. He emigrated to America in 1771 at the age of 12, ending up in Pennsylvania where he married Isabella Auchmuty in 1795. He died in Northumberland, Pennsylvania, USA in 1835.

I can find no mention of his parents or any siblings. I can't even tell if he made the journey to America by himself or if any family came with him. If anyone can help me trace Daniel to a particular county in Scotland or anything else that could help me narrow my search, I would deeply appreciate it.

[tidybooks]

Hi ElleJae,

I searched on LDS site, saw 2 submitted records for Daniel St Clair withount any other info. Searched on SP for Daniel St Clair & Daniel Sinclair and did not get any born 1759.

Where did you get the name and DOB from, any certificates? Did he emigrate with family, a bit young at 12 to travel alone.

Tom

[ElleJae]

Hi Tom. Thank you for your reply. The name and DOB come from other family trees on Ancestry.com, along with cemetery records and family bible references that my cousin has. There are also records from the Revolutionary War where he served as a drum major losing an eye and part of his left hand. He received a pension for this service.

There is one record I found where he is listed as "David" but I assumed someone just mis-read the handwriting. But I know one should never assume.

The more I look, the more I find others who have been searching for Daniel for some years without success. I'm beginning to wonder if he changed his name for some reason along the way.

As I find no mention of family I have no idea who they were or if they came over with him. He just seems to appear out of thin air!

Thanks for taking time to look. What is SP??

LJ

[sancti]

SP is www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk which is a pay per search/view site

I did a wildcard search for s*cl*r* and got these results

07/01/1750 SINCLAIR DANIEL son of DANIEL SINCLAIR and BEATRIX MCMARTIN at Alloa (Clackmannan

13/10/1754 SINCLAR DANIEL son of PETTER SINCLAR at Glassford LANARK

16/11/1752 SYNCLAIR DAN son of JNO. SYNCLAIR and SARAH SYNCLAIR at Glasgow

These are baptism records of the Established Church of Scotland only and the records on SP will not contain any baptism records of other breakaway churches

[tidybooks]

Hi LJ,

SP is Scotland People genealogy website, http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

This is a pay website for BDM in Scotland, you buy 30 credits for £6 sterling, it costs 1 credit to see result of a search and 5 credits to download result, but any after birth 1908, death 1958 are going to cost £10 each. You can search and alter input to get a result without downloading, this helps keeps costs down.

The Daniel St Clair looks a bit of a mystery, the more common spelling was Sinclair in Scotland although there were St Clairs, also. Some connected to Roslynn Chapel and knights templar in the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown. So we know St Clairs existed but cannot pinpoint young Daniel, would need more info. Sancti has given 3 examples around your dates but would need extra info to make a choice.

Tom

[CrazyCatLady48]

I am also searching for the same Daniel St. Clair.  The only additional thing I found that he was born in Thurso, Highland, Scotland.  I would be interested in anything new that you found.  Hard to believe that no where does it mention his parents.

Thanks, Bonnie

[Forfarian]

There are several possible explanations of the difficulty of finding his parents.

1. The relevant records, if they ever existed, have not survived. This is by far and away the most likely explanation.

2. His baptism was recorded as Sinclair or another variant, not St Clair.

3. The names Donald and Daniel are used interchangeably in Scotland.

4. Whoever said he was born in 1759 was guessing based on the date of his marriage.

Never trust anything you find online, and especially family trees and other information submitted by members of the public to commercial web sites, unless it's an image of an original certificate, and even then be aware that mistakes can and do happen.

[tidybooks]

I am also searching for the same Daniel St. Clair.  The only additional thing I found that he was born in Thurso, Highland, Scotland. 

Hi CCL48,

Where and what information did you find? Hopefully this will help to break this wall down.

Tom

[trish1120]

FreeREG has Thurso, Caithness records, no Daniel but a Davids Bapt 1744/1761/1768
www.freereg.org.uk