i been wondering if i shouild be looking at elgin not dallas,maybe they moved from elgin to Dallas where the children were born.
That's a possibility
.looking at Libinex site and i see robert gow and marget jean ,further research lds i see they have a john b dec 1749 ,that would make him 26 when married.but havnt made the connection..robert and jean have john, margaret,william,robert elspet.all similar names in family.
Again, it's possible, but just because these are the only candidates is along way from meaning that they are the right ones. The further back you go, the more likely it is that the piece of information you want is missing from the records.
The names Alexander, James, John, William, Ann/e, Elizabeth, Isabella, Jane/Jean and Margaret are so common that they are really not much use for establishing family connections.
So you need to get more evidence to link the son of Robert Gow and the husband of Margaret Cruickshank. If recorded, the witnesses to the baptisms of John Gow and Margaret Cruickshank's daughters might be enlightening. The later Dallas registers usually record the witnesses' names but I have not yet looked at any baptisms there in the 1770s or 1780s.
Bear in mind also that neither the LDS nor LIBINDX are primary sources. They are both
indexes and absolutely fantastic finding aids, but neither should be taken as definitive - always make sure to check the original records, for two reasons. First, there might be more detail in the original document than is contained in the index entry and second, the person who indexed the original information may have misread or mistranscribed something.
would elspet be named elizabeth today,like is that same name different spelling?
Not exactly. Elspet/h is originally the same as Elizabeth (and so is Isabella) but although I have seen cases of someone using any two of these three names during their lifetime, I have more often seen families with both an Elizabeth and an Elspet/Elsie, and occasionally with an Isabella as well, suggesting that people saw Elspet/h as a different name. It's not safe to assume anything from the name Elspet/h in this case.
(Digression: Betty/Betsy is a common abbreviation or pet name for Elizabeth. It's also used for Beatrix/ce. By a sort of reverse engineering you occasionally get someone referred to as both Beatrix/ce and Elizabeth at different times. That one really threw me the first time I came across it. Then there is also Beth, which sometimes develops into Bathia/Bethia/Bethea, which is used as a separate name ..... See
www.whatsinaname.net for more information.)
HTH
