Alas

Alas, the trail of Jane Caldwell has become murky. What would you expect? There are Wallaces and Caldwells all over Pennsylvania, and the army of people trying to pin one of their ancestors on to one of the existing people serve to muddy the waters.

Jane Caldwell, I had thought, would be Robert and John's sister, born in Ireland sometime before John (1796), grew up in Cecil County Maryland for a spell (her father John was there from 1797 to 1810, when he allegedly died), and evidence in the western Pennsylvania area would make my case that she, John, Robert, and other siblings ended up up there after his death. Robert would enlist in the War of 1812 at the age of 16; John would marry a Pennsylvania woman and move to Ohio. What about other siblings? No proof of John's death has been found, or that of Geneva Jane, their mother - perhaps they went back to Ireland? Or she did, after he died?

So one Jane Wallace married a Robert Caldwell and settled in Armstrong County, east of Pittsburgh. He however was. from the Somerset area and several people pointed out that she was of the Somerset Wallaces, thus her father was John Joseph Wallace (also born 1750, but in PA) - mother Geneva Jane, excuse me, wrong John, I believe. But the Somerset Wallaces are numerous enough that there are lots of Janes, no problem. They are from Antrim, center of County Down, northern Ireland. But I'm curious if there could be crossover - as, for example, the Cecil County Wallaces could just come to Somerset because they are vaguely related or perhaps closer than I can find. Could our Jane have come up there and simply found this Robert Caldwell? Why not? But in the end I had to rely on the facts as birth and marriage records provide them, and here it's pretty murky. Let's just say there was a Jane Wallace who married a Robert Caldwell, and had at least one child.

Then there was a Jane Caldwell in New Castle, for years, with a couple of kids. New Castle is more like it because remember, Geneva Jane had a sister in Wallace Run (near there), and Uncle Hugh ended up there (it seems). With family connections you could expect Geneva Jane to bring young kids up there if John did indeed die in 1810 (though Robert, the youngest, would have been fourteen already) - but there is no trail of them, Jane, Mary, Adeline, or one other male - in Cecil County that we know. So I'm looking at New Castle carefully. But this Jane Caldwell seems to be Jane Courtney Caldwell, unrelated. Not a Wallace. Back to the drawing board.
There are Jane Wallace graves scattered around. And, Jane Wallaces of unknown origin, probably Irish, who married into various families. It's not surprising that a genealogist would snatch one and say, she's ours, she's the sister of Robert and John. We suspect that, anyway, but it makes me wonder if DNA will be the only conclusive result, or will provide it.

shadow of a sister

So my questions really are about Robert's family. Robert, born in 1796, in Ireland, youngest of seven, at least six of whom also born in Ireland, was with most of his family in Cecil County Maryland, where his father John and Geneva Jane Crawford Wallace brought the family in 1797. The famiy had connections in Pennsylvania; in fact, when John first came over he'd been in Carlisle, near Harrisburg, with his brothers and possibly a cousin who had been born there.

Pennsylvania was filling up with Wallaces and that's why, when the family moved up into Pennsylvania, it can be doubtful that it was really them. Robert, at the age of 16, enlisted in the War of 1812 but ended up in New Castle and Wallace Run, which is near there, in northwest PA. John married a PA woman and moved just across the border in Ohio where he farmed. Three sisters were just plain lost until yesterday, and the big question: what happened to John and Geneva Jane themselves? John is reported to have died in 1810, with no place given, Geneva Jane lived to a hundred (dying in 1844), no place given. They were already in their fifties when they came over. I try to do some geographical reasoning.

The sister I found, who could be the clue to everything, was Jane, who was born in 1786 in Ireland, would have been 13 when they arrived in Cecil County, and seems to have married a man, Robert Caldwell, and died in 1879. Robert Caldwell seems to have grown up in Washington County (southwest of Pittsburgh), but moved to Armstrong County (northeast of Pittsburgh) where they lived and died. They were farmers, and had one son, Samuel Smiley Caldwell, but that's very suspicious because that name belongs to other people in the area. I am not entirely sure of what I found.

Another suspicious thing is that Hopewell township, Wash County, was full of other Wallaces, which could either be a reason for Cecil County Wallaces to move there/visit there, or could have been a reason that this Jane is not ours. How do we prove that she is? If we just run with the possibilities, maybe we'll find more proof down the road.

The alleged child Samuel was born in 1831, which would have made her 45, and I find that suspicious too, though not impossible. Her father dies in 1810; they move up to Wash County or Wallace Run (where Geneva Jane had a sister); she meets this farmer and has a son but the farm is out east of the city a ways. I guess that's possible but I'm still looking.

Still to be found are Mary, Adeline, and one other brother, besides the oldest brother William, who seems to have been born in 1774 or 1772. There are many Williams who could have fit the bill. That William would have been at least 23 when they made the passage and may not have come at all, or may have been born here and already integrated into the Wallaces of the Carlisle area.

One thing I'll say is that it was pretty easy for a Jane Wallace or a Mary Wallace to be in Pennsylvania at that time, marry and fit into the woodwork, with no one really knowing where they came from or who their family was. Although the pioneers kept track themselves, some of what they knew never found its way onto Ancestry.com; some of what they knew is "private," which means I'll only get it, if at all, with more extensive digging. Still it's interesting to see these early settlers of the Pittsburgh area.

One feature of the pioneer era was that lots of people had no assurance of survival. For example, if John died in 1810, Geneva Jane, Mary, Jane, and Adeline were endangered. Robert too, at 13, was in trouble. One would expect them to find their relatives and join them, as they could be helpful but most of all would need help themselves. The cousin Hugh up in Pennsylvania, Carlisle or perhaps New Castle, where he may have died, was at least assured of survival, having a Revolutionary War pension. So one of my guesses is that the family went up there, with some staying with Hugh, and some perhaps staying in Wallace Run (where Geneva Jane's sister lived), or staying in one, ending up in the other. Another working theory is that they simply went back to Ireland, where Geneva Jane's familyl had a place and a consistent income from the sea. And where we would never know if there was an extra Jane, Mary or Adeline around. Some, with lack of any other trail, have said that John and Geneva Jane died in Cecil County, but I don't buy it. There would be a better trail for the kids if that had happened.

 

Taking a little break from fanatic checking of birth records of old Scotland, I am reflecting on what actually might have happened to John and his family in Cecil County Maryland.

They arrived there in 1797, apparently, when Robert was only one. There is some doubt about this but a Cecil County census shows him with a full house of kids in 1800; his oldest son William (who could be 1772 or 1774) would likely not even be included in this census.

One remarkable thing about his family is how thoroughly everyone disappeared, when in pioneer Maryland/Pennsylvania people actuallly kept pretty good track of deaths and burials. Really only John and Robert were well tracked after they grew up, John marrying a Pennsylvania woman and ending up in Ohio, while Robert married a New Castle woman, had ten children, and became a scion of Wallace Run. What happened to the rest?

We can start with John. Some say he died in 1808 in Butler, but that's the wrong John; another John Wallace was from Butler, and that was probably him. A family account says he died in 1810, probably in Cecil County, but there doesn't seem to be a record of it. The family seems to have broken up before then, because there's no record of any of those Wallaces in Cecil County after that 1800 census. I'm willing to buy that family account date of 1810 and then say that maybe he died in obscurity, either in Cecil County or up in Pennsylvania where he seemed to have relatives.

Then what came of Geneva Jane? Some say she lived until 1844, at which time she would have been 100, yet again there's no record of her death in Cecil County or anywhere else. A reasonable place too look would be Wallace Run, where her sister was, but I can find no Jane Wallaces up there who lived to 1844, or who died at any time in obscurity or otherwise.

I have a working theory on Geneva Jane: she died or went back to Donegal early, like 1805, or soon after John's death in 1810.

In that era she would have had to have a son working a farm successfully. We can assume she may have had unmarried daughters, as I have found no record of any of her three daughters marrying, but they would be less help in her surviving, especially from 1810-1844, if that were even possible. Both John and Robert end up up in Pennsylvania, Robert being the youngest, and I suspect he was living with his uncle when he joined the War of 1812 at the ripe age of 16. He was already in the uncle's hair, an extra mouth to feed. His father was dead. But what came of mom? She may have left him with her sister in Wallace. Run, or his uncle in. New Castle where he would meet Margaret Hendrickson. But all this wasn't playing out in Cecil County.

There were seven children altogether, with general agreement on John and Robert, and an older William, born either around 1772 (to an unknown, unnamed first wife) in Pennsylvania, or around 1774, after their marriage, in Londonderry or Donegal. When he went back, he. married Geneva Jane in Port Glasgow; as a fisherman's daughter, she perhaps visited there to sell her catch. But being attached to Donegal/Londonderry culture, perhaps she never quite liked Cecil County and simply came back with two or even three daughters, and perhaps another older son besides William; though there were six kids in the house in 1800 there's a possibility that one of the older brothers never came over at all, or returned before they could really marry or settle.

All three daughters seemed to fade into obscurity. No record of Adeline, Jane, or Mary and it seems somewhat speculative that they even existed. at all. Did they die in Cecil County as some have suggested? I think they were more likely to slip into the woodwork up in Pennyslvania where there were unknown Wallaces all over the place.

I am still mulling over the story of Michael and William, which has stuck in my craw for some reason. Michael Wallace was a guy in Sinking Valley, just up the road from Carlisle and Huntingdon, whose house burned down in 1806. People said he was from Maryland or somewhere. But here's the thing: his older brother William died as a result of the fire, trying to go in after some valuable property; the beams of the house fell in on him. Now Michael mooved after that fire, and came back to the area, but not to the town of Sinking Valley. He had a family and so has some descendants who have been looking into him. For them "from Maryland" is incredibly vague and "possibly Ireland" (where he would have een born) also not helpful. I think about him frankly because of William, and because I think a William (1774) could very well have been in the United States around 1806, and could have visited his brother, and died. We can call this the Sinking Valley theory - that these two boys are ours. And another thing, there is a grave for a John Wallace, otherwise unreadable, in Sinking Valley.

There is another grave, John Wallace only, no dates, back in Craigie, Ayr.

I write this all out to help clarify where and how I should be looking next. I'm beginning to suspect that Pennsylvania, with its deep hills and forests, may be a place where these particular Wallaces faded into obscurity.

update

Here is my thinking based on what I now know. Most of what I know comes from Ancestry.com or Geni and most other Wallace genealogists have been where I've been and made similar conclusions.

I do consider personal accounts strongly, but I notice from the way they contradict each other sometimes that wrong ideas get passed down through the generation as family lore. In Wallace Run they felt that John had married and had a child in Carlisle, but the other family account says he waited for William's second child before he went back. As if he was helping William and his wife? That William ended up in Goshen New York with a lively family, but the question is whether John had William in Pennsylvania or back in Northern Ireland after he returned and married Geneva Jane. I'm now betting that John's oldest child William was born in Northern Ireland. That's because the trail in Carlisle is so dead.

Some relatives have said that Hugh was born in Pennsylvania. I like that theory as it explains a lot. Hugh was well established in Cumberland County and ready to fight in the Cumberland County militia when the Revolution arrived, four or five years after the boys showed up. There is some disagreement about where this particular Hugh came from; I'd like to think he was a relative of our three boys William, James, and John. It would explain why they landed in Carlisle: people go where their relatives are, to stop over, get adjusted, and decide where they wanted to end up. I think they knew Hugh and came to Carllsle because he was there already.

The trail back from the Hugh Wallace of Carlisle is very muddy. He seemed to have a father, also Hugh, in the area, but I am not sure of that. I have also found a link, I believe, to Nathaniel in that it's been claimed that at least one Nathaniel in our picture is a brother to ne of the Hughs. I haven't pinned this down. Nathaniel would be important, though, and could even be the fourth boy to arrive in 1774. Nathaniel would end up out by New Castle (Fox, Ohio) and so wold be a reason for any of the boys or their kin, like Robert, to end up in New Castle.

It would help to get the actual passage record but I haven't found it yet. 1770? When? Also, John turned around and married Geneva Jane in Port Glasgow in 1773 - what's up with that?

There are claims about John's death - that he died in 1810 in Cecil County. Plausible but I wait for other evidence. And Geneva Jane - she lived to be 100? D don't think so, but if she did, it was in Cecil County probably, with no one but her two daughters to help her get old. They seem to have stayed single, and stayed there in Maryland, for all I can tell. Trail wears thin. Can't tell what really happened to John and Geneva Jane. I doubt she lived to a hundred though.

It turns out she was a little more obscure than I thought. Both boys named some Janes and Geneva Janes down among their descendants but that doesn't tell you how long she lived or where. She could have gone back. One relative knew she was a Crawford but not that she was Geneva Jane. If they had a reunion, she wasn't the life of it.

More digging is necessary for Nathaniel. There is some contradiction in portrayal of who he was, who his parents were, etc. It is possible I think that he was a cousin too, perhaps came over with John, James and William. And he ended up in Fox, OH, not far from New Castle. When you get reasons for Robert, or Hugh, to move to New Castle, investigate them. One more cousin won't overload the system.

 

Still reflecting on the personal account (see previous post) and its implications for my study of the four brothers. It came just in time, by the way.

First, it casts doubt on Charles' account that John actually married in Carlisle, and abandoned his oldest son William in Carlisle to be raised by his grandparents. In this account he was watching his brother William, and was around to meet both of William's new babies, but was back in Londonderry in time to have his own William, who would then be born after he married Geneva Jane, and would have Geneva Jane as a mother.

This is a relief in the sense that I have scoured Carlisle records for any sign of John marrying and having a child in that small window, 1770-1772, to no avail. There is no sign of him marrying before going back.

Second, it casts doubt on the idea of Hugh being one of the four brothers who arrived in 1770. People in Hugh's family claimed that he was born in Pennsylvania, yet some Hugh was born in Scotland to be considered one of the four brothers. Now this is a quite interesting mystery. In the years after the Revolutionary War the soldiers who were buried, like that Hugh 1742-1820, were all given special credit and noticed. People made a big deal out of his grave even though they couldn't quite read it clearly. Several lines of Wallaces claimed him including us, because we were looking for a Hugh based on family legend, and because he ended up in New Castle where Robert met his young bride Margaret Hendrickson. We would love it to be Uncle Hugh that introduced them, especially since we now suspect John and/or Geneva Jane were dead and/or gone.

That brings me to my last point, which is that this account is clearly the origin of the 1810 death date for John, and it also says that he died in Cecil Coounty. Fair enough, but there's no record. And what came of Geneva Jane? That mystery is still hanging in the air. This particular writer didn't even know her name.

Meanwhile I have been scouring Scotland for evidence 1) that there was a plausible Hugh character that could have been born there in 1742, in whatever family which I would then study to see if he had brothers (many families had a William, James, and John), or, a family with a nearby year, hopefully in Ayr, that he could have been born in. I'm not entirely convinced that all these boys came from a Cairnhill William Wallace although that seems to be the general consensus. But any combination such that a Hugh could be their cousin, even a distant one, would work. The Cairnhill Wallaces had more Hughs than most.

What about the last possibility, that he was born in Pennsylvania? If he was a relative, and ended up in New Castle, or gave them a reason to move to Cecil County, this could be because he knew the terrain, having lived here all along. In this scenario perhaps another brother or cousin, Thomas or Nathaniel, comes over on the fateful passage and history obscures it because 1) both Thomas and Nathaniel are more obscure by nature, having hidden out a bit, and/or 2) everyone loved Hugh, and knew him, and followed him to New Castle, and ultimately confused him with one of the brothers that was on the actual passage. This would have happened over time; they knew there were four; they knew James, William and John were among them; Hugh was a fourth brother or at least a cousin; eventually they put him on the passage instead of one they'd entirely forgot. In this country, it didn't take long before history had covered everyone's tracks.

Hugh did have descendants, though, and they kept pretty good track. They are more on top of it today than, say, William's descendants, though I could be wrong about that. We in the John camp are doing our best. Still no birth date, no place of birth (I'm still not entirely buying Craigie, though it's as good a guess as any), and though the 1810 date has just been given a boost in my book, there's no solid evidence for that either. Any old John Wallace grqves around Cecil County? And what happened to Geneva Jane?

One last idea. Based on records I've found, there was a Hugh around Carlisle and Cumberland County when the boys arrived in 1770. This Hugh would have been born in Pennsylvania but very likely could have been part of the family. What would be good about this theory is that it would give the boys a reason to show up in Carlisle, as opposed to any other place. I've always wondered how they could have picked Carlisle off the map and said, we'll start here, then fan out, or go back as the case may be. I think there's a good argument that that Hugh was there when they arrived, and stayed there quite a while (making the "Carlisle Wallaces?" until everyone recognized him as one of the brothers. If Nathaniel or Thomas were among them and disappeared, that would be understandable. Maybe not provable. And though almost every William back in Scotland had a son William, a James, and a John, only a few of them had Nathaniels, or Thomases. Maybe that's where the cousin thing came in. Six in total moved, I'm pretty sure.

Here is a personal. account, a little confusing. It appeared as "Notes on Hugh Wallace" in Ancestry.

 In the 1955 DAR magazine, it says John Wallace came from Ireland with three brothers. William settled in Goshen, New York, James settled in Philadelphia, Hugh in South Carolina, and John in Carlisle Penn. After the birth of William's son and daughter, John went to Londonderry, Ireland and married ? Crawford. When his youngest child, Robert was 6 years old, in 1798 they returned to Cecil County, Maryland where John died in 1810.
Hugh's application for the French and Indian War says he was born in Pennsylvania. Also his daughter, Elizabeth lived to be 100 and stated that both her parents were born in Pennsylvania.

Dorothea Wallace Silbert, a descendant visited his grave. The stone is now unreadable but a Revolutionary War marker was in place also. 

general musing

Excuse me for using this post to just muse about some of the stuff I've found in investigating mid-18th century Scotland.

It is said in the family that they were from Ayrshire, but there are several of these towns south and west of Glasgow that would do, and I'm not sure if the borders of Ayrshire are the same now as they were then. So I'm looking into towns like Eaglesham, Kilmarnock, Craigie (Ayr), but even Cambusnethan and a few others.

Obviously it would be best to find a family with all six: William, James, Hugh, John, Thomas and Nathaniel. If we find a family with two or three we can make the other ones cousins or we can say that Thomas and Nathaniel just appeared to be family, landed nearby, but perhaps were more distant cousins like the hundreds of other Wallaces landing in Pennsylvania at the time. I'm banking on the idea that they're picking places to settle (Cecil County Maryland, Carlisle, Wallace Run) based on whether they have family already there, and I'm trying to find that family; that's why I'm suspecting Thomas and Nathaniel's involvement. Plenty came over before them and plenty would follow.

It was said by more than one genealogist that John was from Craigie (Ayr). That's certainly plausible, but when I reconstruct a family, it's a little inadequate. It makes me wonder where they got their information. Was it something someone said, in the family? Was it a document? Craigie is plausible and there are various ways to make it work, but I'm curious about the source of someone's information. And I have no doubt that it was copied and recopied.

There are three stated possibilities for his death: 1808, 1810, and unknown. The 1808 date belongs to anoother John and is usuallly accompanied by Butler PA which is that same other John. Not ours. The 1810 one is like other information: one wonders where it came from. It's not accompanied by any proof or a gravestone. I have found two relatively unmarked gravestones that attract me and make me suspect it is our John. By unmarked I mean they say John Wallace, but don't have a birth date, or death date, or any information about who they were. One is in Sinking Valley PA. If you've been following this blog you'll know that that's where a William (who would be his son) died, saving things out of a house that was on fire, the house of his younger brother; perhaps the brother and father ended up back in Sinking Valley. But the other one is in Craigie. Perhaps he went home one more time, not to Northern Ireland, but to Scotland. Went home, died, and was buried, but the marking on the headstone was either too faint, or not there at all.

I like the Auchinleck family, if only because I like the name Auchinleck, but alas, that's not a good enough reason to stick with one family. I am finding myself doubting that any family would register five babies at the courthouse, and then simply neglect to register John. In otherwords, I'm leaning toward explanations where John was born later, but at lleast born and registered like two or three of his older brothers. Most of these families have another William, a James, a Robert, possibly a Thomas. Very few have Hughs. Very few have Nathaniels too. But plenty of Williams were having. babies all over Ayr/Glasgow at the time and we will have a significant number of choices. In rural Scotland at that time they didn't register the mother's name which means we can make assumptions. Mary, Margaret, Helen, or Mary Margaret Helen, it had to be one of them. We can assume that if we have six or seven kids born in seven or eight years, there we have a family. And our odds are going up.

I definitely have enough to write a boook.

In search of Hugh

Hugh is an interesting character. In the account of the four boys, he is one of the ones that lands in Carlisle, and goes to South Carolina. There is a Find-a-Grave of his grave in New Castle that says he was a Revolutionary War soldier in the Cumberland County regiment. Cumberland County is Carlisle, so that's a clue. Perhaps our Hugh landed in Carlisle, joined this regiment, and somehow ended up dying in New Castle, after spending some time in South Carolina.

It's his early life that is a mystery. The Find-a-Grave says 1742, Scotland, but going on birth records alone, it's a mystery. I'd like him to be the brother of one of the other five, but I'd settle for cousin. Maybe he came over as cousin of the three boys that I can prove are brothers? But no. None of the Hughs born in Scotland anywhere near 1742 can be tied to what we know.

There are Hugh Wallaces being born all over Scotland of course. In our particular family they are scarce although the Cairnhill Wallaces in general are known for one famous Hugh. William did not seem to name any of his kids Hugh and neither did any of his brothers. I may not be done looking though.

Everybody wants to claim that Find-a-Grave Hugh in New Castle. That's because, as a Revolutionary War soldier, he's a hero. But he also fits well into their plans, because of his vague birth and family situation. There are a lot of Hughs he could be. But our two reasons for claiming him are 1) Cumberland County and 2) New Castle.

There isn't much on the "Carlisle Wallaces" mentioned by the BCHS as being started by John's older son William. Nothing on him either. Trail is thin. So far this Hugh is the only even vague connection that I have that these four boys landed in Carlisle. And why would they pick Carlisle in the first place? No idea. Maybe there are all kinds of things I just haven't found.

Back to the Hughs that were born in Scotland. Hughs were born in Aldearn (1738), Glasgow (1739), Cambuslang (1751), Dundonald (1744), Glasgow (1774), and Galston (1740). The problem is that their fathers aren't directly brothers of William. Maybe their mothers are related to our boys' mother(s)? It would help if that were more solid.

Somewhere I'll find a Hugh with related parents, and I'll know he's ours.

Here's where it stands

I didn't do much digging today, on the family of William 1711, who may have spawned some or all of the six boys who bolted Scotland and came to the US between about 1760 and 1800, possibly four in a single voyage. I would like it if all six were brothers, but some may be half-brothers, or even cousins, as half-brothers and cousins were all over the place. The place (Scotland, Glasgow, Ayrshire) was swarming with Wallaces and there were even several William 1711s to choose from.

But the wedding that would be most useful to us would be between William and Margaret, in 1736, in Eaglesham, Renfrewshire. That's just southwest of Glasgow and more or less on the border of Ayrshire though don't quote me on that. On the Ayrshire side of Glasgow makes a lot of things possible and a 1736 date will make lots of other things possible. For one, he was 25 when he married, while she was a little younger. That's how these things work.

There is a family of William and Margaret Aiken that pops up in Cambusnethen (Lanarkshire?) that includes a Robert (1742), William (1744), John (1747), Thomas (1749), and another John (1754). Almost perfect! What's missing here would be a Nathaniel and a James, but I could very easily see making them half-brothers or cousins, even proving it possible, and going from there.

The reason I say this is that I really don't like saying that Mary and Margaret are the same, or that this mother goes by all three, Mary, Margaret and Helen depending on her mood when she walks into the courtrooom. If she was consistent, say born Margaret but using Mary all the time, ok, but I don't like using multiple names and implying that people just switched back and forth, or it was all the same people. No it probably wasn't. And some, like Mary Coke, are totally elusive. It's like one person attributed all these people to Mary Coke and then everyone copied that person. I am not finding Mary Coke in birth records/marriage records. Plain Marys, yes. Margarets, even a Helen or two. But I don't really think she was Mary Margaret Helen Muir Coke Wallace. That's a little too much.

So I'm going with the simplest explanation, which at this point involves Margarets and Cambusnethen. They could have lived anywhere in Lanarkshire, or Glasgow, or even Ayr (especially Ayr) and I'd buy it. Saying the family was from Ayrshire makes some sense and at least does not seem totally wrong, as it would be if they were born in Aberdeenshire or something. They were all born in roughly the same area.

Of the two Johns I'll say this: first, the best thing about this theory is that now we have at least one birthdate for John, which we've been looking for for a long time. But it's a mystery why we'd have two in the same family. Did one die early? If so, most likely the first, which would make the second one, John 1754, quite young in 1770. I can live with it. You could get on a boat at 16 in those days, especially if you had at least one older brother with you.

the building of profiles on Ancestry

This is why I don't get started changing and fixing my cousin's tree. I suspect she inherited most of the information on it and didn't do research on it as I have been doing. But all trees are like that, and it's possible that Ancestry itself, in its electronic wisdom, pulls profiles out of its files and links them. Thus you have a choice, if their profile has something you don't agree with: either I start a new profile for this person, or I link to it and accept it even knowing it has some flaws.

Her Mary Coke profile is interesting, but if you just read it, Mary is born in 1718, gets married in 1730, and starts having babies right around then. At 12! Somehow I doubt it. Also, she's married in Clerkenwell, Middlesex - doubt that too! Several other things I noticed while going through - One son, Thomas, was born in Chester PA - are we to believe that these two parents, who already had seven at that point, simply went over to Pennsylvania to have this one? I'm not criticizing my cousin here because I suspect, as I said above, that she either imported the information without reading, or, Ancestry did it for her. And, she's not the only one. I suspect her Mary Coke profile is similar to everyone else's just as her tree is similar to several others. It's only when I read it that I have a problem. Two Williams who both lived out full lives? It seems oone would have to be an imposter.

So I encountered this other tree, which I will refer to as the MR tree. She has a profile called Mary Muir Coke. Her Mary Muir Coke actually has a mom who married two different men, one Mungo Muir. No explanation of how she got that Coke name though. My first question here is, by putting two family names in her name, is MR asserting that Mary Coke & Mary Muir are the same person? Is she leaving us to guess where the Coke part came from? (just as an aside, though Coke could be read as Cooke, that doesn't give a person a million more choices - birth facts are very sparse for this Mary Coke, a little better for Mary Muir).

So MR has a little more & a little different info, but equally random things that also might appear as errors. She has the marriage in England in 1730 (to WW 1711) but also another one to WW 1711 on July 16, 1736. While this other marriage has a better location, Eaglesham Renfrewshire, and definitely better as a mental image (now she's 18, not twelve), it renders the first two of her 16 kids as before marriage. Four of those 16 kids are Williams, by the way, as opposed to only two on the Mary Coke profile - and two of those have the same birthdates, meaning they are only separate profiles for some other reason, some difference in claims. I look at putting a link on a profile as like a claim that they are linked, one you may not think about or even do deliberately, or even do at all, since Ancestry itself may be making these links. But in these cases I look at it as if MR is saying that these kids are kids of Mary Coke Muir.

Her Thomas is also born abroad, not right, as is her Robert. It's like she's claiming that Mary and WW 1711 went abroad to have these kids in randome towns in Pennsylvania. I don't think so. But she comes up with a few more people, people who were just born at some point in there and seemed to have Mary Coke Muir as a mother. OK. I'd like to say it's good that each of us has access to the work that everyone else has done. I am in fact grateful, just a little curious about how Ancestry throws it all together. I have more dates and possibilities to work from. And it seems very clear that WW 1711 and this Mary woman were kicking around Ayrshire for years, even if they were from the great Wallace clan of Cairnhill.

Scottish birth records

I took a little tour of Scottish birth records, for our six, James, William, Hugh, John, Thomas, and Nathaniel. Actually the more I looked into Thomas and Nathaniel, the more I doubted their involvement. Nathaniel had an interesting line; if his father William had four or five kids that would be good, but it looked doubtful. He may indeed have emigrated to PA/OH but his main connection to John was the claim that Mary Margaret Helen Muir was their mother - while that may be true, the other things about him were somewhat tenuous. With Thomas there was a Thomas in Cecil County MD but someone said his family had been there for a while, so he wouldn't then be a brother or even half brother of our four.

That leaves James, William, Hugh, and John, and there were several William-Wallace-Mary Margaret or Helen combinations, families living around interesting places.

One family lived in Auchinleck, Ayr. Cool, huh? This family had two Johns and a James, and also a Jane. The problem with having two Johns - one was 1754, the next 1763, is that it was probably the second who lived, and 1763 was too late to get passage in 1774 and marry that same year. Maybe the. first one lived? '54 we could work with, but then the 1763 would be an imposter. Also we'd still have to find a William and a Hugh. Still possible, though.

One family lived in Cambusnethen. That's not far from Cairnhill, but not really in Ayr (though I'm not sure). The Cambusnethen family had a William, Thomas, and a John. Once again there were two Johns, a 1747 and a 1754. In this case the second one would work; he'd be 20 at passage. Perfect! Their mother was Margaret Aiken, though. A stretch from Mary Margaret Helen Muir, or even from "Mary" as it is alleged his wife was.

There were possibilities in Coylton, Craigie, and Riccarton, all with good geography. See if you say their father is William Wallace and their mother could be Mary, Margaret, Helen or any combination of the above, you have a lot of choices. What we want is a James, William, Hugh, and John who coould all get impatient by 1770 & bail together. A Thomas or Nathaniel thrown in there would be icing on the cake so to speak.

Nathaniel Wallace (1745-1820)

Through some digging I have found some interesting information about Nathaniel, probable older brother of John.

I am working on the theory that both are sons of Mary Margaret Helen Muir Wallace, who married a William Wallace (1711) at some point that I haven't identified conclusively. Several people have attributed John and Nathaniel to her which could only mean that they are repeating each other's claims.

There are many Mary Muirs and many William Wallaces that they could have married. The William Wallace I am most interested in had a father Nathaniel (1692), who himself had a father Chancellor John Wallace (1659-1726) who seemed to go to America in that time, which would be very early. He was born in Lanarkshire (Glasgow) but died in Pennsylvania, in 1726, and it's unclear whether his wife was there, or any relatives, after he was gone. He would have been William (1711)'s grandfather, Nathaniel's great grandfather.

Nathaniel himself was born in 1745, in Glasgow, to Helen Muir and William Wallace, but there was a Nathaniel who lived in Somerset township, Washington County, PA, in 1797, and one who willed everything to a John Wallace, in Columbiana County (right near Beaver Falls) Ohio in 1820. This could be our John Wallace, who was in Cecil County Maryland in 1800, but disappeared from there shortly after that, and though some have given death dates of 1808 and 1810, I have seen no proof of this.

Back to Nathaniel. His great grandfather and possible relatives could have given him a reason to land in Washington County as opposed to thousands of other places, and that's what I'm looking for - why this whole group of brothers would somehow land around western Pennsylvania when it was in its early days and not the easiest place to live. We find Nathaniels in western Maryland (Allegany) also, so there are several Nathaniels (not to mention Johns) but I think I have a possible link here that would explain a lot.

Back in Scotland the line up from William (1711) through Nathaniel to Chancellor John (whoever that was) is clearly different from the line directly to the Wallaces of Cairnhill, so prolific, so powerful, so interrelated. Well sure there were lots of William Wallace (1711)s around. You can't blame someone for picking one and then saying, well I guess we are Wallaces of Cairnhill. But we may not be, or, if we are, much less directly.

reconciling possibilities

What I think happened is this. Genealogists such as myself took what they knew - that John was born in Craige, etc., and made assumptions. Perhaps they knew that his father was William Wallace (1711) of Cairnhill; perhaps he was. William was according to some sources married to Mary Coke. So you have his father and mother, and go from there; The trail leads up through William's father to Cairnhill, where the Wallaces were a large clan.

But part of the family lore is that they were from Ayrshire. Ayrshire it turns out is rural, near the sea, surrounding the town of Ayr. Now the family lore also includes the story of the boys and the pig, and I'll be the first to admit this could be changed by time or even by impressions, or somebody made an assumption based on how easy it was for them to get over to Northern Ireland. Who knows? I thought I'd set about trying to find out whether it was possible they were from Ayrshire.

It turns out that there were William Wallaces who married Marys all over the place, and dozens in Ayrshire, though mostly not at the right time. It is possible John and/or his brothers were from one of these Ayrshire William Wallace/Mary combinations, and were put into William and Mary Coke's tree based on assumptions or just based on what could be found at the time.

What set me onto a wider search was this: someone said the Wallace clan of Cairnhill was known to be involved in the slave trade. Sure enough, some of those cousins were involved in a plantation in Jamaica and some even died there. This didn't sound like the Wallaces I knew, but then again, they were about eight generations up, and they were cousins; it didn't seem to involve our William (1710), or his father or even his father. Their large estate, Cairnhill, was just east of Glasgow; they had in some cases eleven, or thirteen kids in a family; they had to keep the money coming in etc. etc. I would actually rather think of my ancestors as rural Ayrshire kids who just hopped on a random boat. But who knows, I'll face the truth however it pans out.

The next step obviously is to map out all the William Wallace/Mary combinations that it could be, and gather clues from the boys' lives to help us lead to which family to place them in. There are six boys altogether who seem to have ended up in America. They had connection to each other, in accounts of their own family, and geographically. In other words, because Thomas and Hugh lived in Cecil County Maryland, and John came there when he finally emigrated with his family, we can guess that Thomas and Hugh are of this family and were probably the reason John chose Cecil County. The problem is that the Hugh could be any one of a dozen Hughs who came from Scotland - both Cairnhill and Ayrshire - and same with Thomas. The trail is interesting but definitely not conclusive. Not yet anyway.

But I have to watch out that I'm not biased toward what I want to find. When I found a William and Mary Margaret Helen Muir (allegedly the mother of Nathaniel and John, but also possibly to others), I was really happy that I'd found the true mother. But people are just as likely to misassign these boys to her as they are to any other Mary. There was a William and Mary Muir in the records. There may have even been one in Ayrshire. But I'm going to stop doing what other Americans might: just assume that Ayrshire, Glasgow, Cairnhill, they're all the same. They aren't. Thewe boys go in one family (or maybe a step situation) but not six different ones.

This leads me to the birth records and marriage records of rural Ayrshire and Glasgow etc. All I can say is that there are plenty of William and Marys out there. It's a world of William and Marys. Two of them, these boys looked back and said, those were our parents. I'll find which two, I hope.

James Wallace 1739-1788

I just started looking into this guy, an older (possibly half-) brother, who may not have been on that original 1770 passage because he was married and possibly living in Northern Ireland, or perhaps Scotland. There are many versions of who his parents were, and I couldn't get to the bottom of how or when he traveled, or how he died.

If you look carefully at that death date he very well could have fought in the Revolution, as one person suggested, but I found no evidence for that. He had one daughter but she had descendants who cared enough to make a profile. He died in York County PA, which could be war-related or not. He seemed to leave his descendants there too. But look at those dates - he was only 49 when he died.

There were some odd suggestions about his parentage. One was that Mary Coke and Mary Muir were the same people, so his mother was Mary Coke Muir. Hugh's mom, the same. Several people put him with Hugh as if you had this full brother and then some half-brothers. Very possible.

One of the fathers suggested for him was William Hugh Wallace (1717), who has come up before - but while I was there I just followed him jp until I found that he had as the father the same guy our William (1711) had, which meant they were the same people? wrong dates? THere were lots of cousins in there, lots of Williams. James' grandad had maybe thirteen; William had maybe ten; no surprise that there were a few other Williams around.

If he died in 1778 at the age of 49, he left a wife and daughter in York, but they were ok. It was not the wide extended family implied by the description but they would at least be recognized relatives in the Wallace line, also in Pennsylvania. I'm no closer to finding who the mothers were. It seems a lot of that is lost in the vagueness of Scottish marriage records.

In search of Hugh

As a general report I've been mulling over the four boys who allegedly came over in 1770, and learning more about them so I can be more sure of what families they belonged to. I am not absolutely sure we have the right ones.

Six came over before it was all over - James, William, Hugh, John, Thomas and Nathaniel. Charles reported that it was James, William, Hugh & John who came together in 1770, but he was talking about his grandparents' generation and may have gotten it wrong; it was likely that in his family they were well in touch with James, Hugh, John & William, and not the other two, so he got that wrong in reporting. Some have questioned whether there were four at all.

The situation on their mothers is also murky, and that is interesting because it means we may not be of the Wallaces or Cairnhill. We could be of some William Wallace who was hanging around Glasgow in 1750, married to any of several women including Mary Margaret Helen Muir. Jane Carshall, Mary Coke, and Jean Campbell are also names that come up. But here, can I find any evidence in any of the boys' lives to help me figure out which it could be? The only way is to dig and find out.

Hugh is a good example of how messed up dredging information can be. There are lots of Hughs out there - b. 1741, 1740, even 1750 - all of them seemed to die in 1823. One Hugh lived in Cecil County Maryland for a while - that one has to be ours! - another was a Revolutionary War soldier, and was buried at New Castle. We want that one too! One reason we want to claim that one is that Robert, a young lad, may have lost his father and it would make sense if he stayed with his uncle in New Castle when he met his bride, a New Castle girl. Make that one ours! But everyone claims that Hugh. He ends up on every tree because his fame puts him at the top of every google search.

James is the best candidate for older half-brother, who wasn't actually on that 1770 voyage. The reason is that he had already married and set up a family in Northern Ireland. It was likely that the pig-stealers were looking for him when they fled Scotland. He did bring the family to York. He did stay in touch with the family. But maybe he wasn't in New York in 1770.

The search goes on.

More thoughts on placing John

In a kind of hazy overview-kind of mood, I am remembering that a lot of times the Wallace boys are reported with different mothers, or different birth dates, or something like that. There is no way to know, tuning into Ancestry in May 2025, what has been repeated most often simply because it was there, yet often it's not right, and just repeated because someone else accepted it. Being in the position of that someone else, I now find myself wondering whether to repeat information, just because I found it, or instead do a deep dive and see if I can't find the truth through deeper clues. Maybe someday AI will do all this for me. Probably the last thing I can do before AI takes over is to get at the truth and get it up there in some form or another, so that AI and anyone using it will at least see one variant that they can then choose or not.

I am now convinced that six Wallace boys found their way over here somoetime between 1770 and 1820, with probably the four mentioned by the BCHS (James, William, Hugh, and John) coming together but John at least going back for a while before bringing his entire family in 1797. Believe that story if possible, I say, until you can see how someone might have mixed it up. I am finding what they said to be mostly true, with James ending up in York, PA, William up in New York, Hugh in South Carolina (but then returning to PA) - why not believe what they say about John? There's also Nathaniel and Thomas connected to the family, who came over at some time or another.

Most people have put them with William Wallace and Mary Coke, about whom very little is written. One person put Nathaniel and John with Mary Margaret Helen Muir as mother, which could be possible. I'm not ruling out a second marriage or step relationships, half brothers etc. But to me the whole thing opens up the possibility that alll of them were placed in the wrong family, that, with all the William Wallaces around, someone just stuck them with this one (Mary Coke's WW 1711) because he was there and was prominent. He was, after all, a Cairnhill Wallace, and the boys were born in Glasgow or Ayr. It's not solid enough proof for me though. I want to see clues that all six came from that family.

Of course I would like to see them connected to the Muirs. But most of all, I just want the truth about who my Scottish ancestors are. The reasons they came over are easier to find.

Mary Margaret Helen Muir

Most of the tree-makers on Ancestry have assumed that John's parents were William Wallace (1711) and Mary Coke. There were a couple of others; one said that a woman named Jean Campbell had four children by William besides John and of those four one died in Jamaica and two died in India. I followed those leads for a little while before I realized this had to be a different William Wallace (1711). It very easily could have been a different William Wallace (1711) of Cairnhill. I could also accept the idea that our William could have had more than one wife. But probably not four or five, and probably not going back and forth, from one to another and then back.

One claimed that Mary Margaret Helen Muir was John's mother, and also Nathaniel's. This was interesting. We married into the Muir clan? It turns out that John Muir (1838) also, our famous one who started the Sierra Club (and shared my birthday btw) was from this same area, around Glasgow; he was born in Lanarkshire. People don't seem to know that much about his ancestors, but perhaps I haven't looked too far. In other words, trying to connect him. to Mary Margaret Helen Muir might be a bit of a chore.

Nevertheless in investigating Mary Margaret Helen Muir, I found that she was married to a William Wallace (1714) who was an entirely different person. Now was it possible that John and his closest brothers were all in this different family? Sure, but I have to be careful here. I don't want to put John in Mary Margaret's family just because I want to.

There are lots of what are essentially spurious assumptions out there. People just say, this must be the William, they grab his basic information, and they put him in the tree. That must be him! But it all gets pretty murky once you get up in Scotland in the 1740s. It would be helpful if one of the descendants, in our line or in that of one of John or Robert's brothers, actually said something about who their parents/grandparents etc. were.

The main evidence I have to work with is that the brothers seemed to come over as a group. They left William, wherever he was born and whoever he was married to, back in Scotland near Glasgow. A couple of them were established for a short time in Northern Ireland. Four allegedly came to New York before the revolution and allegedly landed in Carlisle, Pennsylvania. John went back, stayed in Northern Ireland, and brought the whole family back to Cecil County, Maryland. One of his brothers was there. His sons seemed to end up near where the. other brothers ended up. A lot of them seemed to disappear into a sea of Wallaces, but the geographical clues, plus their testimony that there were four brothers, is a good place to start.

If Mary Margaret was his mother, that would explain some things, and, at least in a very general kind of way, connect us to John Muir. I'll leave it at that for now. It's possible.