How It Can All Go Wrong
Early on in my research I found a family tree which someone else had compiled and this helped me fill in an area which had caused me problems to that point. It gave me the parents of someone in my wife's tree and that allowed me to to go much further back in an expanding series of branches using the Mormons database. It was only when I checked up the original entry for the given birth in the Scottish Church Records that I saw that although the names and dates were appropriate we had a shepherd whose father was a barrister. As soon as I saw that I knew I was in trouble. Not only had I the wrong father but all of the ancestors were wrong as well and I had to scrap that whole area of the tree.
The lesson learned was to take care at each stage and check all the available evidence before committing the entry to the database. Back to 1855 there is a good paper trail through the Scottish Records Office but beyond that we rely on interpretation of the Scottish Church Records which differ in quality of reporting, some giving nothing but the names and others providing a wealth of information.
One of my wife's ancestors is Margaret Ross who was born in Tain. I know that her parents were William Ross and Ann Ross. This was Ann's maiden name as well as her married name. I was therefore looking for a birth and a marriage of Rosses in Ross-shire. A look at the records tells you that Ross was a very common name in the area. Add to that the popularity of the names Margaret, William and Ann and you have a real problem identifying the correct records. In fact, there were so many marriages of William Ross to Ann Ross in the correct period and location that I simply couldn't identify the correct one. Guessing isn't an option otherwise you could have the situation outlined above.
Honeyman Old had been a dead-end in the research for years. His birth just couldn't be found. The 1841 census said he was born in the county, which meant Midlothian, but there was just a chance that this could be wrong. Also, there was a chance that Honeyman, a pretty unusual first name, could just have been a nickname which stuck. I began to suspect that his birth name could have been David, going by the traditional naming conventions. One day, while exploring wills and testaments in the records I came across one to a William Old, cooper in Coldstream. The association of the name Old and the occupation of cooper, the same as both Honeyman and his son David, made me sit up and take notice. William was a family name as well. I investigated Olds in Coldstream and discovered a David born in 1778, pretty much Honeyman's predicted date of birth. He was illegitimate but born to Ann Knox and Old i.e. father not named but known. Even although I couldn't quite tie everything together nicely there were circumstantial links which suggested that the aforementioned William could be the grandfather and another David could be the father of this illegitimate child. It wouldn't be too much of a supposition to suggest that this fatherless child could have made his way to Leith to take on the trade he had seen his Grandad plying and to use a nickname which stuck.
Except that it was all wrong. A fellow researcher, Dr Iain Old from Geneva, suggested that there might be a possibility that a Honyman Oal in Caithness could be our man. When I saw the evidence it was compelling and I had no option but to dismiss my Coldstream theory. The background to the Caithness Honeyman is written elsewhere but it shows that I was right not to absolutely believe my supposition and commit it to the database.
Mary Finlayson's parents were John Finlayson and Mary Kidd. It says so in her marriage record and her death record. The death record only gives the mother's first name but census and other records confirm the identity of that Mary. There is even a birth record confirming the parents. Why then do I doubt it?
Well, firstly she was not with her parents in the 1841 census even although they had married earlier that year. It seems that she was staying with her paternal grandparents under the name Margaret. Why? She was illegitimate and born a full five years before the marriage and it might have seemed appropriate to keep her out of the way of the newly-married couple. She had returned to them by the next census though and acknowledged as their daughter.
So what about the birth record? Does it not confirm the parentage? It does, but careful examination reveals that it was registered in a page of retrospective entries in the Church registers and could have been up to twenty years after the event. To my mind this casts severe doubts over the authenticity of the parentage. Would the couple have had a child when they were young, too young to marry, and wait until they were older to tie the knot whilst waiting until then to have any further children? It's certainly possible. However, there is also a strong possibility that Mary Kidd had an unregistered illegitimate child by an unknown father and when she met John Finlayson that child was an encumbrance to be farmed out to her in-laws (her own parents seem to have been much older and maybe even no longer around). Only when time had passed did it seem right to re-unite the child with her mother with a retrospective face-saving entry concocted for the church records. That's my reading of it anyway. It was this closer reading of the records which made me doubt the authenticity of the birth record and consequently I haven't spent any time on writing up the parental side even although I've left it in the records as the official line.