Honeyman Old

Honeyman Old is the reason I became involved in this Family History research.  When George Insill said he couldn't find the birth record for Honeyman I reckoned it should be easy enough with a unique name like that.  I was wrong of course but it got me started.

As stated elsewhere, Honeyman was the founding father of all the Olds in the area through the children he had with Elder Samuel (there is word of some recent infiltrators from the Cornish or Yorkshire Old families though). They married and lived in Leith where Honeyman worked as a cooper, presumably at the docks where many commodities would have been barrelled to make them easier to roll onto the ships.  He died some time between the 1841 and 1851 censuses but there is no death record to be found anywhere nor any gravestone. His wife was noted as a pauper afterwords so there wouldn't have been any money for one presumably.

His birth proved elusive due to the census record stating he was born in the county, which he wasn't, and due to the fact that his real surname was Oal.  This surname was spelled Oal, Oall and Ole, probably because it was only spoken and no-one really knew how to spell it.  A fellow researcher, Dr Iain Old of Lausanne, suggested Honyman Oal could be our man and when I saw the birth date, that the father's name was David and that Honyman Oal's sisters were named exactly the same as Honeyman Old's daughters I felt the evidence was compelling.  The name Oal and its variants seems to have disappeared as it transformed into Old or Auld over the generations, depending on which branch is followed.

The name Honeyman seems to have been a doffing of the cap to the local landowner as there was a Euphy Honnyman living at Thura in the 1770s (Honeyman's father David lived at Thura at the time of his marriage in 1772) and she was a cousin of Sir William Honeyman, Lord Armadale, who was one of the first to prefer sheep to humans on his estate.  Most of his estate seems to have been on the north coast around Armadale but the presence of family in Thura suggests influence at least.  We would therefore be a happy result of The Clearances if indeed Honeyman was forced to seek his fortune down in Leith as a consequence of the action.