John William Henry marriage 1824 ro Margaret McSeveny

[lmgnz]

However I cannot confirm either McSeveny or variant birth in Kirkoswald  from Scotlands People, so I will delete that note.

[Forfarian]

I have not found the fist Agnes in Ayrshire but haven't tried all the different version of Henry.

Use wild cards - search for h*n*r* - it will produce a lot of unwanted Hendersons but you can just disregard them.

Or to avoid the Hendersons do two searches - one for h*n*r*i* and one for h*n*r*y - that should pick up all variants of Hendry but not Henderson.

[lmgnz]

Thank you Forfarian.

I had guessed that was what you had done to search McSeveny and tried it for those two births but was not sure the negative results was because I did not get it right. So just looked for  all Johns born Kirkoswald in a narrow time period.  I don't mind the sifting.

It was getting a but lite for me by that time though, so I did not try the H*n*r* until this morning with as you predicted lots of Hendersons. Still no Agnes however.I did find Thomas Henry b 1826 with that search, so it worked. My best guess for the father of John William Henry would be the one other Shanrod Henry brother mentioned in the Nesbitt History. He was a Thomas Henry.

[Forfarian]

If Agnes the elder was born in 1824, she was clearly born before her parents' marriage and her baptism may not have been recorded.

I have looked at every baptism of an Agn*s or a Nan* in Kirkoswald or Maybole 1823-1825, and I have read through the minutes of the Kirk Sessions of both parishes, but I have not found any record of Agnes the elder either.

Of course if her parents were not members of the Church of Scotland they would not have been summoned for discipline by the Kirk Session.

Where did her date of birth come from? Is it from a later Australian record?

[lmgnz]

There are several hints that have that date of birth for Agnes as 29 Mar 1824 though one of them is for Geneanet Community trees and it has birth location as Castle Douglas, Kirkudbright. Another has a photo of the old Kirkoswald Chuch but gives the same location; castle Douglas.

The actual shipping record for Sep 1838 gives her age as 15 so I have stayed with a birth c 1823. ZAgnes' age is not stated  on her marriage record for 25 Mar 1840. Death index record for 1865 does not give her age.

[Forfarian]

Oh dear.

Never trust anything you find online unless it's an image of an original document (and even then be wary because even official documents can and do contain errors), and especially do not trust trees submitted to the likes of Ancestry, MyHeritage, Geni, Geneanet, FindMyPast, Wikitree and 1001 other commercial genealogy web sites out there.

If you find something of interest on one of these sites, follow it up until you find the original source from which the information came. I see, for instance, that there is a very detailed tree on Wikitree, so you could contact the owner of that tree and compare notes. (That tree also gives the date of marriage as 18 December 1824, which is at variance with the record on Scotland's People, so that too would need to be clarified.)

It does sound as if someone has been getting a bit mixed up with the geography! The fact that the 'sources' say 'Castle Douglas' is in itself curious, because Castle Douglas is in the parish of Kelton, county of Kirkcudbright, 52 miles by road from Kirkoswald in Ayrshire. In 19th century terms, when the only way to travel on land was by muscle power, that's about two days' travel. Any original record would come under Kelton, not Castle Douglas.

I've had a look at the Kirkcudbrightshire baptisms and there are no possible baptisms that could be your Agnes the elder, either in Kelton or anywhere else. So wherever that date of birth came from, either it almost certainly wasn't from the original Scottish records or it is the wrong person.

[lmgnz]

Hi Forfarian

Yes I agree it is very important to verify information from trees in Ancestry. I had not done this earlier as it is only more recently that I have been finding multiple DNA matches.

I do remember (and documented ) that the tree I had originally seen and thought quite reliable was a  McSeveny tree (by Oldcummock of Ayrshire Scotland). That tree had John William Henry's father as William Henry or Hendry but when I asked her, she could not verify a source.