• General Notes

  Gave "Caldanagh" as residence on marriage certificate, died at Claragh, wife Jane died at Carnfinton.  Married: Dunloy Pres. Church. Weaver. Father farmer.  Marriage and death in Civil Records, from Don Asquith. This man could also be the son of Thomas Bellingham and Margaret Jane Mccart.
  I have now moved him to be a son of Jane McCart for the following reasons, outlined in an email to Al on 23/01/2007, after a brief correspondance with Irene Ferg:
  Thanks for keeping me informed.  Where do you think Irene got the impression that her Robert's mother was McCart?  She backtracked and said she had no proof, or that "my records are at another address", I am not sure which.  Do you think she may have been using some of our info which she might have found on one of the many trees I have scattered across the ether?
  Having said that, my current tree has Robert as the son of Agnes Dempsey.  I think I am going to change that to make him the son of Jane McCart.  Partly because of the later date of birth and partly because of his cohabitation with Hester in Newark - though of course he could just as easily be her half brother as her brother.  I feel that Agnes may either be dead (and that there WAS only one Thomas notwithstanding the two Marys problem) or at least that she was finished producing children before Robert was born.  She seems to just vanish from the records after Mary in 1823 and I was very tempted to revert to the one Thomas scenario.  And there appears to be a few years gap between 1823 and 1828 which would also fit that scenario.  Two Marys could be explained by the weird Bellingham habit evident with the next Thomases family of not calling children by their birth name.  But that's not enough.  I will stick with two Thomases for the time being but shift Robert over to the Jane McCart Thomas.
  That still leaves the problem of Robert calling an early child Nancy.  But this is not necessarily the first child.  He would be 28 or 29, not unusual for a Presbyterian of farming stock, but he could easily have been married several years earlier and as you point out, we have not extracted all Scottish records.  Also, it is possible that Nancy was called for her mother's mother, whose name we do not know and some contend that the first daughter was called for the mother's mother under the S-I naming convention, not the father's mother.
  Btw, I have this from you in an email:
  "How do we resolve the apparent overlap in presumed birth dates (about 1828 for Robert with about 1827 for Fanny and 1828 for Francis) while explaining the 'brothers' assertion between James (b. about 1822) and John (b. about 1829)"  Can you remember what you meant by the "'brothers' assertion"?  It is of course not impossible that James was born several years later than 1822, and was a full bro of Fanny and Hester.  And his having a daughter Agnes hardly counts when she was so late in his line of children.  He must have had far more than the five I have for him because there is a gap of 8 years between child 4 and child 5 - suggesting that we are perhaps missing a Jane.  So James could also be a McCart son - but I will leave him where he is for the time being!
                   

Details of Robert's family with Jane Brown