Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Scottish Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 57

This list of deaths in a family bible came to the Crowley family from their aunt Sissy, who in turn had it from a Margaret Hunt Conquer, who died without close family in 1953. The list was intriguing because Hunt was a middle name in the Crowley family too, from Sissy’s paternal grandmother Ellen Hunt, wife of James Crowley, who had married in Ireland in 1851 before the potato famine drove them to migrate to Scotland.

We used the list to look up the death records, which rapidly turned the list into a family tree. Margaret’s death record gave her parents as Robert Conquer and Catherine Adelaide Hunt. Catherine Adelaide Hunt’s death listed her parents as John Hunt and Catherine Kelly, proving she was a sister of Ellen Crowley, née Hunt.

It’s always worth following up any new leads you find in family history, so I investigated Catherine further, finding her marriage to Robert Conquer in 1868 and her appearance in the 1881 census with a hitherto unknown sister, Charlotte. Investigating Charlotte produced a real surprise, for in the 1861 census she was living in Edinburgh with her Irish-born parents, John and Catherine: before then, we had no idea that they had come over from Ireland too.

When Charlotte married in 1868, John and Catherine were both alive, but neither were found in the 1871 census. This narrowed down the period when they must have died, and we found Catherine’s death reported in 1869. This listed her parents, Hubert Kelly, a crofter, and Ellen, née Denny. These were Sissy’s great-great-grandparents, and would have been born in the late 1700s: they had probably never set foot in Scotland, and most likely don’t appear in any Irish records either – yet through this piece of lateral genealogy their names have been found again.

The 1861 census entry revealing the unexpected presence in Scotland of the Irish-born John and Catherine Hunt.

Margaret Hunt Conquer