Week 5 Branching Out

The theme for week 5 of Amy Johnson Crow’s genealogy prompts is Branching Out. The last couple of weeks I have been doing exactly this with my ancestors from Scotland. My grandfather was John Robertson Kirkwood. I have followed the Kirkwood’s back to my 7th great grandfather. It’s past time to look into the women in these relationships. The story has a plot twist at the very end.

This is my grandfather, I have looked fairly extensively at him and his primary family.

This is Nettie Myrtle Smith, she married John in Boone, Iowa on 2 Jun 1913. I have researched Myrtle fairly extensively as well as her primary family. She was an amazing person and I look forward to telling you more about her in the future.

I am so excited to have this photo of my grandfathers parents. They lived in Scotland their entire lives and like my grandfather, his father was a miner in Lanarkshire. Walter Guy Kirkwood (1857-1927) and Marion Robertson (1854-1936) married in 1877 in Dalserf, Lanarkshire, Scotland. They had 10 Children. My grandfather, John was the third in the line. John and his older brother George both came to Iowa in the U.S. about 1905.

The next level up in the family is where I started to lose track of the women. I am so grateful that in Scotland women are almost always indexed with their maiden name. I had Walter’s parents as George Kirkwood and Helen Guy or Gay. We weren’t really sure of her last name until I found Walter’s birth record on Scotland’s People. It was Guy, which gave me a little more direction. I was able to find a marriage record for George and Helen first. They were married May 15, 1841 in Old Monkland, Coatbridge, Lanarkshire, Scotland.

George and Helen were fairly easy to find in the 1851, 1861, 1871, and 1881 Census’. Here is the 1881 Census with the two of them on their own. This let me know I needed to look for Helen’s death after 1881. That was a big help. The death record almost always list the parents names.

I found her death record with her parents listed as Robert Guy (a weaver! first one from Scotland who wasn’t a miner) and Mary Craig. The name Craig registered as being familiar but not really why at this point.

Armed with Helen’s parents names I was able to search for her birth record. Records such as this one are from written church records. This one is from 1817! It kind of blows my mind when I think of how old these records are, and there are many more even older. This record gave me a starting point to search for the records of Helen’s parents. The record was from the Parish in Cardross.

The next step was to find a marriage record for Robert Guy and Mary Craig. Lucky for me, they were married in Cardross. The 17th of December in 1808 Robert and Mary became a couple. I think the handwriting is beautiful!

I was having trouble at this point because I kept finding a Robert Guy with a wife named Catherine in the Census records. I turned to a Scottish Genealogy group on Facebook for some assistance. I still have more to find for Mary Craig but the wonderful people in this group helped me figure out Robert was married twice. They also helped me figure out why the name Craig seemed familiar. If you go back in this story you will remember that Helen Guy, Mary’s daughter was married to George Kirkwood. I had already found the parents of George and his grandparents as well so I wasn’t really thinking about his family. Well it turns out George and Helen’s mom’s were sisters! Surprise plot twist. Makes for a little less research that way.

I still have more to find and may write more about the Craig family in a future post. I feel very happy to have made this much progress in such a short time. There are so many wonderful sources and awesome people to help on this journey. I was saving some records to look up when I go to Scotland someday. Not sure when traveling will become easy again but if I do the research online as much as possible I will have more time to just enjoy the countryside when I make my trip.