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We have Alexander Donald m. Janet Largue with children:
John, bap. 08 08 1773 Old Deer ABD
James, bap. 15 10 1775 Old Deer ABD
James, bap. 05 10 1777 Old Deer ABD
Margaret, bap. 29 08 1779 Old Deer ABD
William, bap. 18 11 1781 Old Deer ABD
Robert, bap. 14 08 1784 Huntly ABD

John's baptism record notes he was born in Stuartfield, a town just south of Old Deer but within the parish:
https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/#zoom=16&lat=57.50553&lon=-2.04546&layers=5&b=1
No witnesses were named. This is the earliest record I have found of Donalds in Old Deer.

William became a provision merchant, and m. 26 09 1840 Huntly, Helen McHardy. They lived in Deveron St. in Huntly in 1841. He died 26 06 1865 in Nelson St. in Huntly. His death record marks his father Alexander as a weaver.

I'd speculate that James (1777) is likely to be the Private James Donald, weaver born in Old Deer, who enlisted in the 92nd Gordon Highlanders aged 16 in 1794. He died 02 10 1799:
https://archive.org/details/territorialsoldi00bullrich/page/238/mode/2up?view=theater&q=donald

I also have it in my notes that a John Donald signed up to the 92nd in 1794 at Coynachie (parish of Gartly, south of Huntly), and that a lieutenant John Donald resigned from the 92nd in 1799. I can't find the original reference for that. Coynachie was part of the Gordon estate. The Duke of Gordon's Black Watch company of 1791 included a George and John Donald, brothers:
https://archive.org/details/territorialsoldi00bullrich/page/136/mode/2up
Whether either of these John Donalds is the son of Alexander Donald and Janet Largue I do not know.

The Largue family appears to be from Inverkeithny but I cannot trace a marriage record for the pair.

I have not been able to find any mention of the surname Donald in the 1696 Poll Tax records for Huntly, nor any other mention of Donalds in Huntly before 1716.

If you have the time and patience, it might be useful to go through the (recently released, free-to-view) Kirk Session records for Huntly and/or Old Deer at Scotland's People, looking for any mention of the surname Donald. If you do this, please do let me know which pages you've been through and what you've found, so that we don't have to go through them ourselves!

Best wishes,

Iain.

To anyone reading this thread, in the interim, we've done quite a lot more work on putting together this database of Donalds. However, we're now at the stage where more progress is able to be made through Y-DNA testing than conventional genealogy. If anyone is interested in Y-DNA testing their Donald lines in Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire, Banffshire or Moray, please let me know.

Jo - I've sent you a private message.

Cheers,

Iain.

Dear Iain,
Just wondering if you might have any of my family in your database?

Hi Cody,

I don't have this Bessie Donald specifically. I don't follow the female lines once they change their name.

Looking backward, there were two Donalds in Cairnie in the 1696 poll tax returns: John Donald (presumed single) at Miln of Kernborow and Androw (Andrew) Donald and his daughter at Hillsyde.

In 1758, a wealthy Jamaican merchant, James Donald, is recorded to have died. He was the son of a James Donald of Cairnie. (Scots Colonists/America; Scot. Settlers N. Am.; both available at archive.org).

I hope these give you some leads to work with. Cheers,

Iain.

Hi,

I'm hoping to attach the Donalds I am related to, with Nellie Donald 1890 being my grandmother. As I am visiting Aberdeen soon from Australia, I'd love to know where they are buried.

I don't have these Donalds in my database, but I notice that there's some discrepancy between Donald and McDonald. Do you know which they were using at what time, and when/what prompted the change? The two are generally not interchangeable in records, but at least two other Donald families in the area have latterly adopted McDonald as their surname.

I've looked for your ancestors in the Aberdeen and N.E. Scotland Family History Society index of memorials, with no success. This covers most of the cemeteries in the area. There may be no grave marker for your family, but you might (if you're lucky) still be able to find old burial records at Scotland's People that will tell you where they were buried. The other place to try is Deceased Online.

Best of luck!

Iain.

Any plans to make this available as a resource online?  Perhaps in the Aberdeenshire Resources Board?  Phil.

No - and purposely so. If it's made entirely public, people will just use it as they see it, without context. If people have to contact me first, then several things happen:
- There's a central list of who is researching each family, so cousins can be put in contact with each other;
- I get information in return, helping to expand the database;
- I can give advice on how to proceed from what I have (I can't afford to buy the thousands of necessary records on my own);
- I can put each family in a statistical context which isn't apparent from simply looking at family connections;
- A network builds up where each person researching a family can be notified when someone discovers something new about that family.

The means to do that don't exist through such a widely-based internet forum as this. For those reasons, I'd rather let people get in touch with me first, as I think it makes for a more productive system. I hope you understand!

- Iain.