Further into the Past: Earlier Ancestors-confirmed and "maybes".

The main aim of this website is to record family  history which otherwise may be lost.  Thus, finding and recording lines going back further into the mists of time are secondary tasks, but still interesting and challenging ones. 

Compulsory birth, marriage and death records commenced in England in only mid 1837, and later in Scotland. Earlier, christenings (rather than births), marriages and deaths were recorded by the local church, often by an official not so familiar with the pronunciation or spellings of names of local people and places, and unable to be helped by an illiterate informant who could neither provide or check a spelling and had to "sign' their name with an X.   

Censuses at ten year intervals, with records for who slept at the same address on the same night, began in 1841, at first with only a street, a name and an often rounded age, but much more and better information as they improved, decade by decade. 

 No category has ever been "error-proof" because information providers, always dealing with an event not so common for them,  made mistakes. "Where did the (event) happen?" versus "What's your address?" or for the census  "Where do you/your spouse come from?" versus "where were you/they born?" often evoked different responses. And then there were the fabrications to cover social irregularities, and the tragedy when a mother wasn't sure of the father's details. 

Survival of the above  records for any period has been very hap-hazard, with  years of records not likely to be ever found, due to whatever human error you can think of. 

For times before births, deaths, marriages and other events became recorded as reliably as we hope they are, one of the traditions found useful by researchers has been that of  a widely used first-naming pattern - that of giving the first girl in the family the name of the mother's mother, the second girl the name of the father's mother, and the third girl, the name of the mother.  Similarly, giving the first boy in the family the name of the father's father, the second boy the name of the mother's  father, and the third boy the name of the father.  After that, names, both first and surnames of more distant family members,  were often used. 

However, there are severe limitations where at least one parent had stayed in the same urban cluster for a long period, so, for example, four sons could each have a son in the same age range in the same area named for their grandfather.  Add a marriage partner with a common name, and the couples aren't identifiable. 

Deaths can often be identified only as burials, with only an address, but no occupation or relationships recorded to help identify them. 

So, bearing all those possible limitations in mind, here's what the writer thinks MAY be relevant. 

Looking for the traditional naming pattern in James N. and Caroline Janet children's names. 

Daughter 1. Janet Caroline = mother Caroline Janet. 2. Caroline Agnes = mother and father's mother. - from then, with Evelyn Clara, Florence Amy, and Eliza Millicent, there seems to be no pattern.  For Adelaide Mary, should the parents have arrived at Adelaide, as some other McVicars did. For an unknown reason, she was known as Mary. 7. Agnes Janet = mother and father's mother.

 Son 1, James Neil = father and father's father, 2. Archibald Henry = ? but certainly Archibald was a very common name amongst the McVicars, and was given by him to his son, Archibald Alan, Alan being a common name for McVicar sons. 3. George William = brother of mother who drowned + mother's father and half brother 4. Alexander John = father's brother + middle name of mother's brother who drowned. 5. Angus John = Angus a very common McVicar first name + John = mother's brother again? 6. Neil = father's father. 

Confirmed & Possible Ancestors of James McVicar, bookbinder, miner & storekeeper.

You'll remember that in an earlier section, we noted that James' father was a Neil McVicar, not born in the County of Lanarkshire.  Neil/Niel, with perhaps Daniel as a variant, were extremely common names in the wider McVicar family, not least due to the use of the traditional naming pattern.

The record of Niel/Neil's marriage to "Agnes McVicar", his wife in the 1841 Census,  has now been found in Ancestry online, as "Niel Mcvicar, Marriage Date: 30 May 1813, Marriage Place: Barony, Lanarkshire,Scotland, Spouse: Agnes McKinlay, FHL Film Number 1041478". The name, the date, the place, and the first name of his wife all "fit' with the 1841 census.  Agnes was also "not born in the County of Lanarkshire".

 A check in FindMyPast, which is easier to search for "what's next," has eliminated the other possibilities for a bride "Agnes", but an 1813 marriage usually produced children earlier than the 1826. Perhaps they had been born and left before the 1841 Census.  Searching for children being baptised by a Niel/Neil and/or Agnes McVicar (various spellings 1813-1825) has so far brought several "close" matches, but so far not quite close enough.  

The birth details of Neil McVicar and Agnes Mckinlay have not been identified.  Therefore to find evidence of their families in earlier times, we must turn to other sources of information, which are  the known histories of people who DNA match, and their context in broader history. 

 For McVicar, I have 23 DNA matches who have at least one McVicar  in their trees. They in Texas USA, Canada, and New South Wales, Australia, particularly in the Carcoar, Trunkey areas, whose records of their pre-gold rushes, government sponsored emigration records have survived, and give details of their origins.  To be continued. 

Evidence of Possible Maternal Ancestors of  (Caroline) Janet McNab - draft of 10 Apr 2022

 Available are copies of

• the 14-28 March 1824 Banns records for the Marriage of  Sarah Davis, a spinster and   William McNab, a widower, at St.James Clerkenwell, the parish where Janet was born in 1834. 

• the marriage record for 29 March, 1824, showing that William was able to confidently write his own name, as did the witnesses, Thomas Davis and Mrs Ann Clarke. Sarah signed with a cross. A search for an Ann Davis who had married someone Clarke before 1825 revealed only an Arthur Clarke who had married an Ann Davis at Marylebone in 1821.

•  the records for the birth on 6 April1829 of George John McNab, the son of  William McNab and  Sarah, and on 17 July 1833  his christening at St. Sepulchre, London, the church where James and Janet married in 1853.  George  was listed in the 1841 census as aged 11, living with his widowed mother Sarah and sister Janet. He drowned in the Thames in 1843. He was buried on 21 June 1843 in the same burial ground as his father, which became St George's Gardens in Bloomsbury. See http://www.friendsofstgeorgesgardens.org.uk/   Janet named one of her sons George William, and others Alexander John and John Angus, most probably for this brother. Is there an ancestral clue in these names? 

No other siblings of Janet have been identified in the online church records.

A search of the online records for a Sarah Davis who was born c.1793 and christened at St. James, Westminster, (to match Sarah's given age in the 1841 and 1851 censuses, and her birth location in the latter) shows several possibilities, the most likely ones being 

• Sarah Davis, christened 3 February 1793 - parents John Davis and Ann.

• Sarah Davies, christened 28 July 1793

 This is a good example of how family trees usually can't be identified well before the commencement of compulsory records and censuses.

Enter DNA testing and results: As at 10 April, 2022, descendant A of Sarah Davis has DNA matches with three descendants, Z, Y & X of other Davis families in the Clerkenwell, London, area.  A's second cousin B has matches with W,  a cousin of Z, Y, & X.  The writer would like to hear from other Sarah Davis descendants who also find they have a near, or actual connection with other other Davis/Davies families in that area. 

Possible Paternal Ancestors of Janet McNab.

As mentioned above, Janet's father's marriage record states he was a widower.  This is congruent with the age of his oldest child, William Crawford McNab, whose baptism record has not been found, but whose trial and transportation record give him a c.1821 birth, and his death certificate, where the information was provided by the McVicars, gives him  c.1820.  

Janet's marriage certificate and the death certificate of her half-brother William,  both describe their father as William Mcnab, a baker. William snr was almost certainly the  William Mcnab, journeyman baker, who appeared as a witness for the prosecution at a trial at the Old Bailey, on 10 April 1828, when Thomas Gray  was found guilty of pickpocketing a silver watch, and sentenced to transportation for 7 years. 

See http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?path=sessionsPapers%2F18280410.xml for the trial transcript. 

Burial records for the parish of St George the Martyr, County of Middlesex, show that on 27 September 1840, the 58 year old William McNab of 23 Eagle Street, was buried in the burial ground there, with the curate officiating at the ceremony. This burial ground is now St George's Gardens, 62 Marchmont St., Bloomsbury.  

The date of  William's death possibly indicates two family tragedies.  William, son of the above William, who lived and died at Mountain Hut, Victoria, Australia, was almost certainly the “imperfectly instructed” (educated) William McNab, aged 18, (so born c.1821),  who was convicted at the Central Criminal Court on  11 May 1840 for house breaking and sentenced to 15 years transportation.  See http://www.oldbaileyonline.org/browse.jsp?id=t18400511-1346-offence-1&div=t18400511-1346#highlight

That William was transported to Van Diemen’s land on the David Clarke, along with 307 other convicts, where he was listed as being transported for "only" ten years.  After leaving an unspecified English ports, it departed Plymouth on 7 June 1841, and arrived Hobart 4 October 1841.  In the 1841 convict muster of Tasmania, William is recorded as Number 2114, arriving on the David Clarke and being allocated to the Bridgwater Party. Further research is needed to see if he can be definitely connected in records with the William McNab who lies in the Avoca Cemetery, and who had been in Victoria for 10 years when he died in 1861. An arrival in Victoria in 1851, usually meaning a departure from Europe or the Americas before the news of the gold rushes, is quite early for non-convicts, but certainly not impossible. If this William McNab is the son of the above William (Crawford) McNab, father of Caroline McVicar, the latter William's decision to suicide may have been influenced by the loss of his son to Australia. 

The transcript of the Amherst Hospital record of Janet's admission there in 1886, which states that her father was a William McMahon, is a mistake, one of many which occurred when people in pain and/or in fear of dying, were admitted to hospital and spellings weren't checked.