Author Topic: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland  (Read 2423 times)

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #9 on: Wednesday 07 August 19 19:28 BST (UK) »
Appreciate any info on possible other records to search -- I have even tried Scotland's People, but couldn't determine if she was on there.
See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline Throth

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #10 on: Wednesday 07 August 19 20:20 BST (UK) »
You can eliminate Jane 1832. She was illegitimate with both parties living at Fenderbridge.
Throth

Offline JEB54

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #11 on: Wednesday 07 August 19 20:52 BST (UK) »
Thank you, Forfarian.  I think what you are telling me is that there are no other places to find records for information on Cathrine Stewart's parents if a birth record for her is not found on Scotlands People?? 

Thank you, Throth, I didn't think that they were the same people!!!

Regards,

Jane

Offline Throth

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #12 on: Wednesday 07 August 19 22:38 BST (UK) »
ScotlandsPeople is providing information from a primary source and you are being urged to treat secondary and tertiary sources with a degree of caution.

Obviously there are other primary sources such as family bibles, estate papers, kirk session minutes and so on.  These are 95% reliable - yes, we have examples of where the registrar has written down an incorrect name - but the reliability of secondary sources such as family trees lacking the references to the primary sources can be extremely variable, and should not be taken at face value.

For example, a couple of years ago we saw a family tree with the surname of 'Dunlop' in Blair Atholl parish. Immediately we knew that something was wrong as there were no 'Dunlop' individuals in this parish. We traced this back to very scrawled census return for a family by the name of 'Douglas' which had the spelling 'Duglass'. Now a double 'ss' used to be written 'fs' with a long tail on the 'f'. Hence it had been misread as 'Dunlop', so anyone using this family tree (a secondary source) would be barking up the wrong tree.


Offline JEB54

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #13 on: Wednesday 07 August 19 23:19 BST (UK) »
Thank you.  I usually do treat them with caution and use them only as a guide mostly.  I have tried to find what source was used to determine that Cathrine's parents were Donald Stewart & Elizabeth Cumming -- 125 trees by relatives do not have any records to confirm Cathrine's birth, etc.  I was a bit surprised at that to say the least.  One relative said that she got the information from a book written about the Bezansons by a Bezanson but that doesn't necessarily mean that it is correct.  Some my search continues!!

Jane

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #14 on: Thursday 08 August 19 11:17 BST (UK) »
Thank you, Forfarian.  I think what you are telling me is that there are no other places to find records for information on Cathrine Stewart's parents if a birth record for her is not found on Scotlands People?? 
Very nearly but not quite. In practical terms yes, if there is no record on SP it's not going to be indexed or transcribed on any other web site.

However I have to leave a little wriggle room just in case some other researcher has seen and transcribed a record from one of the tiny number or sources that SP does not include.

These sources include the records of the Scottish Episcopal Church and of a handful of minority congregations who have not given permission for their records to be on SP, and private documents such as family bibles.

If you can't find a baptism, the overwhelming probability is that it's because no record has survived, not because it's not on SP.

With a name as common as Catherine Stewart, no definite information about exactly where and when she was born, and no reliable source of her parents' names, you're into the realms of guesswork.

Sadly, many people do not realise that so many early 19th century records are missing - I have seen estimates of 30% or even 50% missing - and they just pick someone who looks likely and add them to their tree. Then another 124 people copy that and hey presto! 125 trees say Catherine was the daughter of Donald Stewart and Elizabeth Cumming, so it must be true.

Never trust anything you find online unless it is an image of an original document, and even then be wary because errors in original documents are not unknown.

Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #15 on: Thursday 08 August 19 12:48 BST (UK) »
Wikitree has https://www.wikitree.com/wiki/Stewart-33235 which says that Catherine was the daughter of Donald Stewart and Elizabeth Cumming, and gives as its source "Bezansons from Nova Scotia", by Dorothy Evans, Halifax, Nova Scotia: Privately Published, 1986, revised 1991 (bezansons.com)

So it looks as if the parentage of Catherine is from this (secondary) source. You need to get hold of a copy of the book and see what the author's source is for saying that these were her parents.

However this is linked to another version saying she was born in Glasgow and that her father was born in Strathdon in 1778.

This version says that Donald Stewart, born 1778, husband of Elizabeth Cumming, was the son of Arthur Stewart and Beatrix Farquharson, and that he died in 1862. The son of Arthur Stewart and Betty Farquharson did indeed die in 1862 - on 26 April in Tornahaish, Strathdon. However his death certificate says he was married to Janet Downie - and as the informant was his son Arthur, one assumes that Arthur knew better who his own mother was than some careless researcher a century and a half after the event.

The 1861 census shows at Tornahaish, Strathdon, Donald Stewart, 83; wife Janet, 81; daughter Euphemia, 50 and son Arthur, 48, all born in Strathdon. So Euphemia would have been born in 1810/11 and Arthur in 1812/13, contemporary with the recorded children of Donald Stewart and Elizabeth Cumming.
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.

Offline JEB54

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #16 on: Thursday 08 August 19 14:19 BST (UK) »
Forfarian, thank you. I will check further into the book by Dorothy Evans regarding the source she used for the information on Cathrine Stewart.  I went back through old emails and I did happen to find the names of the parents of the Jean Stewart who married Donald Kennedy.  There is also a book written by a Sangster relative from Guysborough County, Nova Scotia, which is the "source" for Jean/Jane being Cathrine's sister.  I have never seen a copy of this book.

Jean Stewart b. 1816 to James Stewart/Stuart & wife Jean Anderson -- married 15 Jun 1806 Kettins, Angus, Scotland.  Definitely not Perthshire or Lanarkshire!! LOL!!

Regards,

Jane

Offline Forfarian

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Re: Cathrine Stewart b. 1822 Perthshire or Lanarkshire, Scotland
« Reply #17 on: Thursday 08 August 19 21:54 BST (UK) »
Jean Stewart b. 1816 to James Stewart/Stuart & wife Jean Anderson -- married 15 Jun 1806 Kettins, Angus, Scotland.  Definitely not Perthshire or Lanarkshire!!
No, but Kettins is right next to Coupar Angus which is in Perthshire.
Never trust anything you find online (especially submitted trees and transcriptions on Ancestry, MyHeritage, FindMyPast and other commercial web sites) unless it's an image of an original document - and even then be wary because errors can and do occur.