Stewart and Douglas Family History

Family history is very much an on and off affair over the years for me. I find that it’s largely made up of short bursts of activity when some new information source becomes available or I hear some snippet by chance.

Thus only a few weeks ago I had a major breakthrough when I found that the 1901 census was finally online.

I hadn’t expected this to add an awful lot of information to my records as the 1911 census did. That one filled in a lot of detail about branches of the family and completed locations for me. I wasn’t expecting much from this one as everyone on the 1911 census would be on the 1901 census and I’d locations nailed down at 1896 so wasn’t expecting any big changes there.

However, there was one key thing on it: the family weren’t in the same house in 1901 as they were in 1896 and 1906. This has quite a big impact as my grandfather was born in 1899 which means that I can now get his birth certificate when previously it wasn’t found on the traces (because of the incorrect address).

Interestingly, it also confirms that my grandmothers name was Jane and not Jean/Jeannie as everyone thought. That difference seems to be down to the Ulster Scots pronunciation: she was always “ginnie” which younger folk in the family took to mean Jeannie when in fact it was the familiar form in Ulster Scots of Jane.

Finally, I’ve confirmation that the family, or at least the Youngs, did come from Scotland with my great-grandfather John Young recorded as being born in Scotland (I think near Ayr but that’s only from hearsay). His wife Catherine was born in Northern Ireland as were all their children so he appears to have come over here sometime in his 20s.

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Family history is something of an on and off hobby for me as it can sometimes be several years before more information becomes available.

In between times, it’s often worthwhile looking again at the information already to hand as there are often hidden gems amongst it. For example, the original family bible from William Stewart who was born way back on June 28th 1835 though it probably dates from September 6th 1858 when he married Eliza Dalrymple. He kept that up to date throughout his life as did his children although there are gaps both in later and earlier generations.

Those gaps can largely be filled in though. One very simple thing was realising that there was a very consistent habit of naming the first born boy and girl after the father and mother. Thus, when the “first” born wasn’t that meant that there was either a stillborn child or, more likely (because stillborn children didn’t get named), a child who died quite young. That such children existed has been confirmed in all cases where I’ve had later information about the family so, for example, the 1911 census confirmed several of these children in various branches of the family.

Other bits of information can sometimes need more thought. It was puzzling as to why David J Tannihill of Market Square Lisburn paid for the grave of my great grandfather Andrew. However, later on I found that when he died he was living in 155 Mayo Street, Belfast so if his family had bought the grave they’d have had to pay the non-resident rate for the grave. Who David Tannihill was remains, for the moment, a mystery as indeed does the reason why he wasn’t buried in Belfast instead.

I’ve suspected for a while that some of the location information I have for various people isn’t quite right as we tried to get some birth and marriage certificates where they were recorded as living at the time but found that the information just wasn’t there. So, the plan was to get the certificates from known locations and work backwards from there. That was a problem though as I didn’t know for sure where my grandfather was born. Or, rather, I didn’t realise that I really did know. That information came from his older sister Mary who died when she was 2 in Killymackel, Derriaghy (near Lisburn) of bronchitis. Thus I know that the family lived there in 1896 but in Mayo Street by 1906.

Interestingly, Derriaghy is where my Dad continued to go to the Masonic Lodge so presumably they would have some information about everyone from him back to my great grandfather and perhaps even the generation before that. Also, some years back I went round the nearby Presbyterian churchyard which seemed to have a number of Stewarts buried although at the time I hadn’t linked that with my lot (another visit is called for to recheck that information).

Finally, there’s my latest flash of inspiration. Whilst I’ve known for a while that my grandfather was in the first world war and that there should therefore be a service record for him, what didn’t occur to me is that there would be a corresponding service record from his time in the police so that’s something else to look into.

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You’d think that as we’ve been back in the UK over a year now that we’d have really made some headway with the family history but in reality we’ve hardly done any work on it at all. What’s happened is that it’s taken us a whole lot longer than expected to get settled back into life here and that task still isn’t complete.

As luck would have it, 2009 was the very year that a cousin in America finally got back in contact with me regarding his own researches but unfortunately our own situation just didn’t allow us to get going on what would probably be a very effective collaboration. Ironically, we’d have have made loads of progress had he not been so busy in the couple of previous years. Oh well.

Well, I say that we’ve not done anything but in fact we’ve been to a couple of funerals over that time which have re-established links with some cousins both near and far who we’ve not spoken to in a number of years and did pick up some useful snippets of information along the way which should aid future researches. Perhaps the most significant is that the family definitely did come to Northern Ireland from Scotland in the late 1800s although I haven’t confirmed if that was only the Youngs or if it was the Stewarts too (the Douglas, or rather, Montgomery side came from Kings County [now County Offaly] around the same time).

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