Rothesay records

[Rosinish]

I wonder if maybe Charles had said "Rothie" which may have been Rothiesholm & it could have been mistaken as Rothesay.

I'm sure I've read & contributed to a post here on RC previously with someone looking for an absent father in Rothesay of a child born in Orkney...which now makes me wonder?


Annie

[Skoosh]

Campbell & MacKirdy are both Bute names.


Skoosh.

[EdinKath]

Thanks everyone for your thoughts and suggestions.

Annie: Catherine Sinclair was around 37 when Charles junior was born. If Charles senior was from Rothiesholm then I think there would be some other evidence of him existing in Orkney at some point. Campbell's not an Orkney name, and there aren't a lot of them. There are only 3 Campbell baptisms on Stronsay listed on Walt Cursiter's site (has all OPR indexes for Orkney), none named Charles and baptism records go back to 1745. The only Charles Campbell on Orkney census records is the son.
I don't know for sure where the Charles who was born in 1816 and married in 1839 was in 1841. Freecen has a Charles Campbell, Cooper of the right age to be born in 1816 with a Margaret Campbell in Greenock but they're listed as born Renfrewshire. So that's either a mistake or it's different people. In 1851 in Greenock there's a Charles Campbell, general labourer, wife Margaret, both born Bute, Rothesay.
Interesting you think you saw another post about a child in Orkney with an absent father from Rothesay. Maybe the arrival of the herring industry resulted in a rush of illegitimate births every year!

Don: I spent a lot of time looking into the possibility that Charles Campbell sr was a cousin or some other relative of Catherine Sinclair's mother Catherine Campbell and couldn't find any connections. That was before I found (last summer) the baptism record that mentioned Rothesay (the baptism on Scotland's people is different. There seems to be a book of baptisms from the Kirkwall Free Church that's only in the library in Kirkwall and hasn't been put onto Scotland's people or the IGI). One of the trees you saw on the OFHS is very probably one I did.
On the 1841 census Nancy and Betsy Sinclair are actually the neighbouring household. They still could be related though.

Skoosh, interesting that coopers moved with the herring fleet. Do you know if there are any records which show which years herring were scarce in the Clyde and people moved to different areas?

[Rosinish]

Just thoughts/ideas but I will see if I can find the post I mentioned although I may be mistaken but it does ring a bell.

"the baptism record that mentioned Rothesay (the baptism on Scotland's people is different"

Now I'm curious as to what's different?

Annie

[EdinKath]

Hi Annie,
The baptism record on Scotland's People is on a page with 5 other baptisms (lawful and illegitimate) between 1833 and 1857 and they aren't in date order. It reads:
"Campbell, 1842, Charles, illegitimate son of Charles Campbell and Catherine Sinclair was born 15th May 1842 and baptized by the Rev William Sinclair. Witnesses, the congregation"

Around 10 years ago I posted about that record on an Orkney mailing list and the consensus was that the record was part of a "register of neglected entries" compiled in 1854 of baptisms that hadn't been recorded at the time. People on that list also told me that Rev William Sinclair was minister of the Free Church and arrived in Orkney at the end of 1844 so the baptism must have happened after that. They suggested that the 1842 date was a mistake because Charles appears on the 1841 census as Charles Sinclair and that Charles Campbell probably recognized his son later and he was baptized Charles Campbell sometime after 1844. (The link I had to the archive of the message thread on rootsweb doesn't work anymore or I'd post it.)

Last summer I was in Orkney and thought I'd see if I could find anything in the Kirk Session records of the Free Church but there was no mention of Catherine Sinclair and her illegitimate son. But there was also a book of baptism records which I looked through and was very surprised to find Charles in there. That was the entry in my original post that mentioned Rothesay. The book in the Orkney archives starts from when the church was established after the disruption and all the baptisms are in date order. I have no idea why it isn't part of the record on Scotland's People.

[Skoosh]

Kath, don't know the Fishery up's & down's but if you read Neil Gunn's "The Silver Darling's!" you will get a grasp of the herring boom & a great read also!

Skoosh.

[Forfarian]

The book in the Orkney archives starts from when the church was established after the disruption and all the baptisms are in date order. I have no idea why it isn't part of the record on Scotland's People.

Probably because the book is in the care of the Orkney archives so SP don't have access to it to digitise and index it.