Week 3: Out of Place #52Ancestorsin52weeks

Sometimes you are lucky when you research and find the people you are looking for are where you expect them to be. Sometimes they are not,  and you have to ask yourself where, logically, they can be.  My great grandfather John McAra was ‘out of place’ twice. But first, a bit of background.

John McAra (GGF) died in 1910. His death certificate gave the name of his father as John McAra and that of his mother as Jean Gregory, both deceased.  His birth notification in the parish records for New Monklands in February 1827, confirmed the name of his parents, but also stated “illegitimate”. What was also strange was that his baptism took place six months after he was born. So were his parents not married by this stage? 

                      (Source: OPR records on Scotlands People)

When I looked for a marriage certificate for his parents, there appeared to be none at all, either around the time of his birth or subsequently. What I did find was a marriage for his father (2XGGF) to someone else six months previous in the November of 1826!!

Then I find his new wife gives birth to a daughter in May 1827!!  Oh how I’d love to know the full story behind all of that!  John McAra (my great great grandfather) had two women pregnant at the same time! We can be very judgmental when we don’t know the details of what happened, but one thing in John’s favour at the time is that he was recognised as the father. I have come across many birth records where the father is written as ‘unknown’. John (2XGGF) went on to have eight children with his wife, and Jean Gregory herself got married when John (GGF) was nine years old and she went on to have four more children.

So what of young John, my great grandfather? I turned to census records, expecting to find him with his mother and her new family in 1841. But he wasn’t there. I looked for him in the 1851 census and there he was  (John Macara) in the local area with his wife, Mary Boag, my great grandmother and  their baby daughter. They had married in 1847, when John was 20 – unfortunately before the advent of marriage certificates – and Parish records only indicated they were both of Shotts Parish. He wasn’t with his father’s family prior to his marriage either. Perhaps he was with his mother’s parents?

A search for the Gregorys revealed young John (GGF)  was indeed living with Joseph and Margaret Gregory in nearby Chapelhall. He’d been difficult to pin down, as, although McAra is an unusual name, this time it had been spelt McArra. So it looks as though young John was brought up by his maternal grandparents until he got married.

                                                (Source: 1841 census from Scotlands People)

But he didn’t stay put! He disappeared again! Between 1851 and the birth of my grandfather (yet another John McAra!) in Lanarkshire in 1864, he was nowhere to be found in Scotland. Where could he have gone and why?

England seemed the obvious place and given that he was an iron worker, it was possible he’d moved in search of work. Sure enough, the 1861 England census records him in lodgings in Durham, recorded as married and working as an iron puddler.  His wife was not with him at that time – she may have been back in Scotland visiting her family, but he did have two daughters born in Durham, before they returned back home to Lanarkshire. 

                                        ( Source : 1871 census from Scotlands People)

Why Durham? Further research showed that his grandfather, Joseph Gregory, who had brought him up, had been born in England and still had family there.

So John (GGF)  who had been ‘out of place’ twice had been found twice, ‘hiding’ in quite logical places.