Matilda Clouston Irving

[hoganmel]

Thank you, @whiteout for your information!
Are you related or just helping out?

Matilda Irving won't show up in the later censuses b/c her family emigrated to Ontario
when she was a child (early 1840s). I never really paid much attention to that and always wondered how a Shelton from north of London hooked up with a maid from Orkney, which as remote as you can get. Well, they met in Canada!

I cannot wait for our 2024 trip to the UK. Easy tour to plan by myself and hopefully hit some "this is where my ancestors lived" spots on the way.

Thank you to others with the paid sites who have found the actual images to back everything up. I can still see the name Irvine/Irving in Orkney today, but it isn't common. I would think there are more Irvings/Irvines near where the Clan Castle is? (was reading up more about it this past week).

[Forfarian]

Clouston shows up as a last name in baptismal records that I bought from Sandwick last night. I also wonder if it is a Confirmation type middle name?

Not if they belonged to the Church of Scotland; in the C of S you don't get confirmed and there is no tradition of adding middle names on the occasion of a non-existent event. I believe, but am willing to be corrected, that the same applies to all the dissenting presbyterian denominations in Scotland.

It is very common for people to acquire in later life a middle name that doesn't appear on their baptism record. I have read that this is because the Kirk did not recognise middle names as significant, but I have not seen any definitive statement that this is or was the case.

[hoganmel]

You know—my brain didn’t register the parish wasn’t Catholic. I have so many Catholic ancestors in Protestant nations...good point!!!!!