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.