Mourne

[chrislr58]

I have a 3xgreat-grandmother who is one of my most aggravating brick walls. This is the information I have on her:
Name: Maria Sophia Buchanan
DOB: June 4, 1829
Married Cyrus Albert Minor, and at some point she arrived in Illinois.
1870 US Federal Census says she was born in Scotland.
1880 US Federal Census says she was born in "Island Mourne" and both her parents were born in Scotland. The only Mourne I can find is the Mourne Mountains in Ireland, so I have wondered if it was written wrong on the census and they meant Ireland, not Island, but I really does look like they wrote the word Island on the image of the record.
I have not been able to find her in either the 1850 or 1860 census.
Her oldest child, my 2xgreat-grandfather was born 1850 in Illinois, so she had to have come to the US prior to that.
I have no idea what her parents names were.
She died in Belleville, Illinois, on January 16, 1882.
I am looking for suggestions on where to look for further information about her and her parents.

[Stanwix England]

I'm wondering if there was a struggle with her accent which affected what was written down? I've encountered mistakes like this twice, one with a surname where the H at the start was omitted and one where a place of birth was written as Nottingham, when it was actually somewhere else entirely that sounds like Notts. So it does happen.

It does seem odd that she would say she was born in Scotland twice, if really she was born in Ireland.

I had a look online for likely candidates and one I found was the Monarch Islands, which are part of Scotland. I know it's a stretch to get Mourne from Monarch, but who knows.

I looked at this list of places beginning with M in Scotland, and there are quite a few that if you squint might sound like Mourne.

https://www.townscountiespostcodes.co.uk/towns-in-scotland/letter/m/

Sorry, I know it's not the help you were hoping for but it's my best guess.

[chrislr58]

Please do not even apologise! Any help is appreciated, and I'm going to check out your suggestion. I will say that when they wrote the word Mourne, the letters are not clearcut, like they tried to correct what they had already written by writing on top of it, so it's hard to tell what all of the letters are supposed to be. And then I'm going on somebody else's transcription of it, and they guessed it as Mourne and I just went along with it because I can't do any better with it. I'm going to go back and look again and see if I can figure out something else based on the list of M names in Scotland. So thank you!!!

[Stanwix England]

Take the following with extreme caution, because I haven't followed up to see if this child lived or died, emigrated etc. So there is every chance it's a totally different person.

I did find a Mary Buchanan, who was baptised on 6 June 1929 in New Monkland, Lanark, Scotland.

It struck me that the baptism was two days after the birth date that you provided. That's not proof of course, baptisms didn't always have to be very soon after birth and could often be weeks or months afterwards.

I could imagine a scenario in which Monkland was misconstrued as Mourne Island, although it is a stretch.

[Kiltaglassan]

I did find a Mary Buchanan, who was baptised on 6 June 1929 in New Monkland, Lanark, Scotland.

It struck me that the baptism was two days after the birth date that you provided.

Do you mean 1829?

[Stanwix England]

Sorry Kiltaglassan, I did mean 1829.

[aghadowey]

1880 US Federal Census says she was born in "Island Mourne" and both her parents were born in Scotland. The only Mourne I can find is the Mourne Mountains in Ireland, so I have wondered if it was written wrong on the census and they meant Ireland, not Island, but I really does look like they wrote the word Island on the image of the record.

Possibly a place called Islandmore is Ireland? if that's the case there are quite a few but mostly one in Ulster (1 in Antrim, 1 in Down & 2 in Derry).
It wasn't uncommon for families to move back and forth between Scotland and Ulster so she might not have been sure exactly where she was born. Unfortunately civil registration of Births didn't start until 1864 and without the names of parents or a location it will be difficult to start searching in Ireland without more details from American records.

[chrislr58]

Thank you, I appreciate all of these suggestions! I'm especially intrigued with Islandmore. I don't think I would have ever made that kind of connection. This is all making me really want to visit Ireland. Scotland too. I believe I have roots in both, according to my DNA results. I have another line that wavered between New England and Nova Scotia, Saunders and Carty. I thought Carty would be Scotland, but from what I've seen it's actually Ireland? I haven't found that link yet. If anybody thinks of anything else, please let me know!