Hello Agneshlll,
Many thanks for responding to my thread. All input is most welcome.
As with most family historians I have the quandary of finding the origins of an 80 year old man in the 1851 Old Monkland, Lanarkshire census who states he was born in Urray. (the 1841 census didn't record his birthplace) The quandary being there's no marriage record anywhere for him and his wife, Ann M'kenzie, dau of Donald McK and Janet Cameron (all four people noted on a grave headstone in Tollcross Cemetery, Old Monkland, Airdrie/Coatbridge and according to archivists this headstone does not exist lol
Luckily the Urray ancestor Donald M'Kenzie had offspring living with him in the 1841 census otherwise my research would have been more difficult because their Old Monkland's baptism records haven't survived either.
I have seen on the Urray baptism records and on freecen website that there were other Donald M'kenzies born around the same time as my Donald. However, whereas my Donald had sons living with him in 1841 there was no similar indication on the other census that I found.
In desperation I once asked a psychic the origins of my father family.
Immediately she said, "I have a large man here who's laughing and dropping a trail of crumbs on the ground".
I admitted that I had been following my father's "Crum" family but I was asking for information on his grandmother.
"Oh I can tell you that" she responded "They're from the land of the old monks".
She must have been reading my mind because I already knew she was born in Old Monkland.
She went on to say "I can see a family who have four farms" and she poked the air as though marking four corners.
"There's a connection to Cumberland". (Duke of Cumberland?)
Then she said; "I can see a signpost pointing the way saying "Killing"
She then described walking down a hill with an old quarry on one side, until she eventually came to a little white church.
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All very vague, no names, etc. and I am none the wiser.
Was "killing" referring to the Jacobites, Duke of Cumberland at Culloden?
Or, because of mention of a church, was she describing a walk to church at some place named Killin/Killen?
Thanks once again.
Rena. (My mother refused to name me after my father's mother Agnes but agreed to give me the same name that my father's oldest sister Jeanie had given her daughter. I asked my older cousin up in Aberdeen why her late mother gave her the name Rena. Apparently "because she liked it", which is what my mother told me. Roll forward several decades and I discovered from an old census that when my aunt Jeanie was a child in Glasgow there was a little playmate living a few doors away called Rena who had an Italian mother .. Italian "Reina" as in the ship "Reina Del Mar" (Queen of the sea) lol
