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It's confusing for this Scottish boy too! My 2 x great-grandmother Agnes Petticrew and her siblings were brought across to Scotland from the Belfast area in the 1830s by their widowed mother Jane Petticrew, née Murray, after the death of her husband Archibald. I thought I had found every member of the family in the various Scottish censuses, where their place of birth is given simply as "Ireland", but now I've discovered that Agnes had another sister I didn't know about, called Jane Petticrew, who gives her place of birth in various Scottish censuses as Co. Antrim, Ireland.

At about the same time as I discovered Jane's existence, I finally managed (after about 20 years of looking!) to find their mother Jane Murray's death-certificate, which gives her parents as William Murray, stonemason, and Nancy Howat. I have a copy of Martin's 1841 directory of Belfast, which lists a William Murray, "stone-cutter", in Scotch Row, which to judge from my Belfast map is in Ballymacarrett. Looking for Howats on the IGI, anywhere in Ireland, I got 8 hits, nearly all of them in "Ballymacarrett, Co. Down". I suspect Ballymacarrett was where my Petticrews lived before my 3 x gt.grandfather Archibald Petticrew died and his widow Jane Murray brought the family over to Scotland. And the fact that one of the daughters, Jane, gives her place of birth as Co. Antrim rather than Down, just seems to show that even the locals were unsure whether they were in Down or Antrim.

Harry

Hi Harry

I have an Elizabeth Pettigrew (Petticrew?) who I think was born in Scotland c1800.  I just wondered if there was any chance she was connected to your family?  She married William McCrae and they had a daughter Mary c1826.




Jane