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Archiver > Scotch-Irish > 2011-01 > 1295822193


From: "Edward Andrews" <>
Subject: Re: [S-I] From Belfast to Linlithgow- McCormick
Date: Sun, 23 Jan 2011 22:36:50 -0000
References: <1740474126.1923506.1295789590204.JavaMail.root@sz0165a.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net><496752.48952.qm@web27304.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>
In-Reply-To: <496752.48952.qm@web27304.mail.ukl.yahoo.com>


This is getting onto Scottish records which are very different to Irish.
The note may represent that there was a Fatal Accident Enquiry, there aren't
inquests in Scotland the same way that there are no coroners. A FAE is held
before the Sheriff. I can't remember when they were introduced. The note has
a specific name which I can't remember either.
Edward Andrews

> -----Original Message-----
> From:
> [mailto:] On Behalf Of jackie wing
> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 10:25 PM
> To:
> Subject: Re: [S-I] From Belfast to Linlithgow- McCormick
>
> Thanks Linda.
> Still searching. It certainly was not uncle James Fettes who
> was the culprit and committed suicide as I've found his
> death, which was from heart failure at the age of 82! He
> outlived his wife and remarried. Therefore, if the story is
> true, there must have been an  Irish uncle McCormick living
> in Scotland...yet to be found although I have found another
> John McCormick in Linlithgow, also a gardener as was
> Wilhelmina's father. He died from fracturing the base of his
> skull causing compression of his brain. Mmmm. Says nothing
> about suicide although sounds like he may have landed on his
> head in a fall...not being a doctor. There is something
> written along the side of the registration saying to refer to
> a registration giving page/ volume no, dated a month after
> this statutory registration.  Could this mean there would
> have been an inquest? Of course, there is a very strong
> possibility he is absolutely nothing to do with my McCormicks!
> Jackie
>
> --- On Sun, 23/1/11, <> wrote:
>
> From: <>
> Subject: Re: [S-I] From Belfast to Linlithgow- McCormick
> To:
> Date: Sunday, 23 January, 2011, 13:33
>
> Hi Jackie,
>
> I have searched for many hours (customer paying, me feeling
> .... incompetent!) for a single certificate. Sometimes you
> find and sometimes you don't. Sometimes you can learn why you
> can't find it and sometimes not.
>
> What's key to these hard cases is working it up methodically
> and doing analysis, like a detective solving a mystery. We've
> all watched TV shows. Generally these things are cyclical:
> you gather some data, you interview, you follow up on leads,
> you gather more data, you re-interview, you re-analyze, etc
> etc, cyclically.
>
> In your case you've got a lot of 'data points', though what
> exactly they are I don't know. Probably they came from the
> family lore. You should also find the family in as many
> censuses as you can and note carefully everything that was
> recorded there. In every census. Sometimes we tend to ignore
> the information that doesn't conform with our current theory,
> for example. You construct a chart with this information and
> analyze it.
>
> The analysis (do for each person, each child) will give you
> boundaries for the birth time and place of each child. You
> may be able to see that they moved, or, working with an
> American immigrant family, you can see when they arrived,
> approximately. Whatever the data in your censuses, you need
> it all and you need to analyze it.
>
> Then you have specifics: you can deduce when the marriage was
> (before the first child). Of course there could have been
> miscarriages before that child. Or they got married after the
> child's arrival. But you do have some parameters for
> searching for each child. This is particularly important when
> dealing with common surnames. There may be 20 John Browns
> living in Ballyfungus, Ireland in 1880, but only ONE (or two
> or three <grin>) of the right age. It narrows the field.
>
> You also need to study the certificates you may already have
> and get some more for obvious people like your parents or
> grandparents. We often are surprised at what is there. I'd go
> beyond certificates, which have been copied twice: the
> indexes were one copy and also the info was copied from the
> original pages, held locally, and sent off to London. Third
> copy was to make your certificate. If possible try to get
> local ones. My ancestors are in Durham, England -- you can
> get certificates from the county. Moving back in time,
> there's Bishops Transcripts - also very helpful.
>
> Inevitably you learn something through this process that you
> over looked. Or you learn the boundaries of what you're
> looking for a lot better. Then you can find at least one
> event. When you do, analyze it as well. Move slowly, not
> fast. You tried the crapshoot method and it didn't work. I do
> this initially too, and then sigh and get down to business.....
>
> I don't believe in the 1880s it was possible for a British
> family to totally hide itself in Britain. You should see,
> like the top of the iceberg, at least one event that you find
> in the crapshoot phase <grin>. So something's wrong. Donno
> what it is. Maybe they lied. I have seen this. If you're
> dealing with Ulster families, (pardon, everyone), they are
> more likely to lie, if they emigrated. In the USA there was
> great dislike of the Irish, which meant "Irish Catholic".
> People claimed to be from Scotland if Ulster Scots. Then
> perhaps they were still immigrants, but Protestant ones.
>
> The spelling of the name may be different. One way to check
> this is use various sites with different search engines, as
> well as trying spelling variants.
>
> If you don't make headway, you broaden the search. Ie, search
> Scotland. Search England too.
>
> In one case I worked on we could not find the man in Ireland,
> using information from US censuses, a Catholic marriage in
> the US (more info than Protestant ones), and naturalization
> info. I couldn't find his parents either. Conclusion,
> finally, after hours of work: he lied. Luckily his wife was
> far easier to find in Ireland. Now waiting to get Irish
> citizenship based on her. Someone was after grandpa. I'd bet
> he was from the county he gave because the surname is
> indiginous there, but finding him would take a lot of
> sleuthing work. DNA would probably be needed to prove it.
>
> Few are this hard. Grandpa disappeared, but it's far harder
> to make an entire family, consisting of many events, to
> entirely disappear. I don't know if they have a witness
> protection program in the UK!
>
> Another possibility comes from his occupation and the
> possibility they were born in the colonies. You can look for
> them in those registers as well.
>
> Also, keep careful records of what you searched so that if
> you have to hire an expert, you can show the expert what you
> have done and save yourself the cost of him/her repeating it
> all slowly. Ie maybe the expert can see some 'holes' in your
> work and focus on those.
>
> Yup, see you said 'navy' below. It could be they were born
> outside the UK. Heres some info on foreign birth registers:
> http://www.britishislesdna.com/Ireland/IR_civil.htm
>
> However notice that Ireland hasn't had a navy in centuries.
> Irish serve in the British navy. So search British sources.
>
> See "Ancestral Trails" for the details. I don't remember
> them. I'd have to look up the details. If you are unfamiliar
> with this work, let me know. It's in a local library, though.
>
> I also know a researcher in London who does this kind of work
> and who purports to know Irish genealogy. (I've not worked
> with him in this regard, which I suspect is not an Irish
> problem at all but a British one). He's the only reason I got
> English ancestors. Finding their certificates was very difficult.
>
> Linda Merle
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jackie wing" <>
> To:
> Sent: Sunday, January 23, 2011 7:12:55 AM
> Subject: Re: [S-I] From Belfast to Linlithgow- McCormick
>
> Hi LindaI have searched familysearch where there is nothing
> listed, and also Emerald Ancestors, where I only found the
> marriage of Florence Hind McCormick's parents. Their deaths
> are not listed on the site, nor can I find any other entries
> for them. I have even trawled through Griffiths valuation and
> the 1851 census for Ballemacarrett where Robert's parents
> married. However, with so many Robert and John McCormicks in
> the area, it is hard to establish which was them.
> Interestingly, Robert McCormick was an engineer in the
> merchant navy, so this may explain why it is hard to find
> him. There is no birth entry for Florence nor her aunt
> Wilhelmina either. Through family stories, it appears that
> Robert and Sarah McCormick died of consumption and both were
> deceased sometime around 1899/1900 when Florence was around
> 11 years old and she was brought up by her aunt in Scotland.
> She obviously had an inheritance as when she reached
> adulthood, her uncle stole her money and shot himself as he
> couldn't face imprisonment. All good stuff!!
>
> I will keep searching. Thank you for all your suggestions.
>
> Jackie
>
> --- On Sun, 23/1/11, <> wrote:
>
> From: <>
> Subject: Re: [S-I] From Belfast to Linlithgow- McCormick
> To:
> Date: Sunday, 23 January, 2011, 3:18
>
> Hi Jackie,
>
> You aren't specific as to how (or where) you looked for the
> births of the children (etc). There's a couple places you can
> check on line. THe most obvious (because it's free!) is
> www.familysearch.org. Another place to check is
> http://www.emeraldancestors.com/index.asp . Not free but very
> very useful.
>
> To quickly come up to speed on what is available for Irish
> genealogy see http://www.genuki.co.uk/ .
>
> Generally speaking, it is far easier to find people in
> Scotland than Ireland, but by the late 1800s, things tend to
> even out. Consider that they returned to Scotland. Like ---
> you can see the one island from the other. People with ties
> in both places (and most in Ulster have ties in both places),
> go back and forth. So check Scotland.
>
> How to do that? Well, IGI is the no brainer. There are also
> indexes to Scottish civil registration and censuses. I
> suggest you spend five or ten minutes googling on the
> Internet -- new websites are always cropping up. The
> traditional places to check are here:
> http://www.genuki.co.uk/big/sct/Civil.html And of course
> family search. But I often find new places, some free. My
> first place to check would be Ancestry as it has a lot of
> stuff nowadays. It changes all the time. I always check
> around. You can pay big dollars for a record you can get for
> free or almost free from LDS.
>
> I recall one case where, after immigration to America in the
> late 1800s, the family always said they were Scots. However,
> in a reverse of your situation, couldn't find them in
> Scotland. Unless they were dwelling on an extremely remote
> island, which they were not -- they were clearly lowlanders,
> they were not in Scotland. I knew this because I had the
> Scottish censuses and indexes to all the births and
> marriages. So I assumed they were in Ireland. We had a couple
> unique clues, like, from both the US census and family
> history, a strange birthplace for the wife's mother (a
> channel island). Being a pain in the ass, I insisted on
> driving to the county where they lived and looking for the
> death record of the wife (and a few other things). The client
> had ordered a death certificate for the wife from the county.
> It had dutifully copied the data from the county record that
> the nice printed certificate had holes for. I consulted
> microfilm of the original journal recording. BINGO!!! It!
> gave her maiden name and place of birth (Ireland), the names
> of her parents, and the county in Ireland where she was born.
> This was probably the ONLY place in the world where this data
> was recorded.
>
> With that I found the family in County Down in the Tithe
> Applotments. They were not there in Griffiths. I guessed that
> the father died and the mother returned to Scotland. I
> checked the Scottish census and found the mother (could do
> this now with the names of the wife's parents), and the
> unmarried daughter living with her. Furthermore, the Scottish
> census indicated the mother was born on the same channel
> island. All this was important as the surname was rather
> common but the birthplace of the mother did peg the family
> well (only one other person born on that island in that
> Scottish county census -- probably a sib of the mother). No
> marriage for the daughter in Scotland; thus married in
> Ireland probably to a neighbor of her father's farm. If one
> searched all the records in County Down, you'd find the
> births of the children. However the real estate market
> crashed and that was the end of it.
>
> It's also possible they lived in England. No walls between
> these countries, just lots of ferry boats! It's not hard to
> find them using censuses -- usually. You just got to settle
> on a place to get access to the censuses. There's now several
> ways to go about it. Always check the free ones first.
>
> Indexes for civil registration are renown for errors.
> Sometimes collections of parish records can bypass them. See
> http://www.rootsireland.ie/ for free indexes to church
> records. May or may not help you out.
>
> If you need more help with Scottish records, consult another
> list. Our area of expertise is Ireland -- Protestant records
> (ethnic group called in America "Scotch Irish". The list
> isn't "maybe Scottish or maybe Irish". Scottish genealogy is
> very different from Irish and the experts aren't here. In
> Scotland you have sasines and in Ireland Tithe Applotments
> and Griffiths. Different things. Need to take different
> classes or read different books to master genealogy in these
> two places. Almost everything is easier (genealogically) in
> Scotland, so if they returned, rejoice.
>
> Please don't go to Ireland to do this research. It's easier
> from afar - usually.
>
> Good luck!
>
> Linda Merle
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "jackie wing" <>
> To:
> Sent: Saturday, January 22, 2011 6:27:55 PM
> Subject: [S-I] From Belfast to Linlithgow- McCormick
>
> Irish research is new to me and I'm hoping someone on the
> list is able to guide me in the right direction.
> Florence
> Hind McCormick was born around 1886 in Ireland. Her marriage
> certificate in 1914 gives the name of her father as Robert
> McCormick (deceased) and her mother as Sarah Campbell
> (deceased). I have found their marriage in Shankhill, Belfast
> for 1880 and have ordered the marriage certificate.
> It appears that Florence arrived in Linlithgow, Scotland
> somewhere between 1891 and 1901. She was living with her aunt
> Wilhelmina (nee McCormick) and uncle James Fettes. Wilhelmina
> was born in 1864 in Banbridge, so I presume that Florence's
> father Robert, was born in the same area of Ireland as would
> be other siblings. Robert and Wilhelmina's parents were John
> McCormick and Mary Hayden.
> However, I have not been able to find births for any children
> of these marriages in Ireland, nor the deaths of Robert/Sarah
> McCormick or his parents John/Mary. Please could someone with
> knowledge in Irish research tell me where I should look. I do
> not live in Ireland so visiting Records Offices is out of the
> question.
> Florence was obviously brought up by her aunt and uncle in
> Scotland as she named her own first child Wilhelmina Fettes.
> I have no idea how she got to Scotland - if alone or
> collected by her aunt.
> Any help with this family would be wonderful.
> Jackie
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
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