John Phillips, Ships Master and Alison Miller, Dunbar Parish

[Karin_C]

I’m looking for information on John Phillips, Ships Master and his wife Alison Miller both from the Dunbar Parish, who were married on the 24th Nov 1800 in North Leith.  On Scotlands People there are two  marriage lines for the same date one in North Leith and one in Dunbar, looking closely they were married in North Leith and it was announced in Dunbar Parish.

Can anyone help with any information on John, i.e where he was born, etc. This is one brick wall I would love to break.
If I have the right Alison Miller she was born on Mar 8th Tranent to Andrew Miller and Alison Smith. If anyone knows different could you please correct me.

They had their sons John Phillips on July 1st 1802 in Dunbar and George Phillips on Aug 3rd 1804.

John Phillips 1802 married Beatrix Craig Dec 21st 1824 in Dunbar, They moved to St, Monance , Fife.
George Phillips 1804 married Agnes Punton Oct 30th 1831 in Dunbar.

Many Thanks.

[Forfarian]

On Scotlands People there are two  marriage lines for the same date one in North Leith and one in Dunbar, looking closely they were married in North Leith and it was announced in Dunbar Parish.

This is standard practice.

What is recorded in the parish register is the proclamation of banns, not necessarily the actual wedding. If the couple lived in different parishes, the banns had to be called in both parishes, with the result that you get two records of the same marriage.

You don't always get the date and place of the actual wedding.

[ColC]

Looks likely?
MILLER   ALISON   ANDREW MILLER/ALISON SMITH    17/03/1780   Tranent

Maybe?
PHILP   JOHN   JOHN PHILP/AGNES PATERSON    02/05/1777   Leith South

I wonder if this might be their deaths, sadly no ages.

PHILLIPS   JOHN   29/02/1828   Dunbar

PHILLIPS   ALISON   LIDGATE / GEO PHILLIPS   20/02/1834   Dunbar

Colin

[Forfarian]

If I have the right Alison Miller she was born on Mar 8th Tranent to Andrew Miller and Alison Smith. If anyone knows different could you please correct me.

She may or may not be the right one.

Just because there is only one likely-looking candidate in the surviving records doesn't mean that it has to be right one, because there are so many gaps in the records, so you can work on the hypothesis that she is your one, but you can't assume that she is with any certainty.

How do you know that your couple were both from Dunbar if the banns were called in Leith?

If she is yours, why did she not name one of her first two sons Andrew, as would have been traditional?

There are 17 indexed marriages of Alison Millers and at least 46 births to mothers named Alison Miller or variants, with at least 20 different surnames, between 1795 and 1830.

[hdw]

You mention the St. Monans connection, and in fact Wilhelmina Phillips, daughter of Thomas Craig Phillips, fish curer, and Elizabeth Smith, and granddaughter of John Phillips, cooper, and Beatrice Craig, married St. Monans boatbuilder James Niven Miller in Edinburgh in 1881.

Wilhelmina had a brother, John Phillips, and four sisters, and they can all be seen in a photo in Miller descendant Jenny Miller MacDonald's book "St.Monans: Cherished Memories of a Boatbuilding and Fishing Village in the East Neuk of Fife" (privately printed, no date). Jenny's father was William Phillips Miller.

The Miller family know that their Phillips ancestors came from Dunbar, but there is a family tradition that they were originally from Brittany and the name was Felipe. Apparently the family used to have a document from the 1600s in which the name Felipe was mentioned, but it was given to the minister of St. Monans church and seems to have disappeared.

The furthest back that I can trace the family is to John Phillips, ship-master in North Leith, and Alison Miller in Dunbar, who were married at North Leith in 1800.

Just a month ago I answered a query on Rootsweb from someone in Australia who was doing research for his brother-in-law, a Miller of St. Monans descendant.

Harry