ceres village?

[diddymiller]

Hi  Tom, hope you can help. I have further info back about the family but there is some confusuin about Thomas Aitkens (henrys dad) birth. I have crossed out 2 dates and am now verging on 21/9/1718 as the right one. Nydiehill may or may not help.
henry was my ggg grandfather.

Diddy

[tommacgregor]

Hello Diddymiller & Jap,

At the end of World War II, I lived with my family at Easter Lathrisk Farm whose northern boundary was the River Eden, where I learned to swim. The farm was just a spit away from Ladybank, where the railway lines branch for Perth to the north-west and Dundee to the north-east. Bridgend and Ceres was only a few miles away and made an enjoyable bicycle ride for my brothers and I.

I know that I'm getting rather long in the tooth now, but the older members of the family referred to various locations in Fife using pronunciation and spelling that had to be seen and heard to be believed! As an example, they spoke of where some of them lived as "Hawbeath", (their pronunciation) although they were referring to Halbeath. "Muchty" was the usual way of describing Auchtermuchty, where my elder brother went to school using the bus provided by the Beveridge family from Freuchie.

Nydiehill was that part of Ceres where the River Eden made quite a sharp turn just north of the road between Craigrothie and Ceres. Now, that's all that I was trying to say in my posting. Living here in Australia, and now an elderly man, I still have many memories of that area and was simply giving my recollections in an effort to help you out.

I certainly hope that nobody was thinking that I was in any way arguing about the findings of other people. I was simply doing what I do quite a lot in my postings, i.e. drawing on local knowledge.

Kind Regards,


Tom.

[tommacgregor]

Hello again, Diddymiller & JAP,

Some time ago I considered doing a posting about the BRAID's, but stopped short because the information that I had in my old box of records was a bit dog-eared and not at all reliable. What I had done was to look at my own Family Tree connections to the BRAID's and noted how they were concentrated in:

CUPAR, COLLESSIE, CERES, KETTLE, AUCHTERMUCHTY and FALKLAND.

Now, the distances between those locations are rather small and so, in all probability, various members met and married individuals from these neighbouring towns and villages. I spent a bit of time looking at the names of the children, when and where they had been born and the names of their parents. I intended to spend a few days connecting them, merely out of interest and to pass away the time, but got side-tracked with other areas of my Family Tree. I'm sure that you've done the same kind of thing on occasion.

I noted your comments about Jean BRAID, "diddymiller", and smiled to myself, because I had dealt with quite a few ladies with that name whilst I was busy scribbling a few names on some sheets of paper. I certainly didn't want to contact you with such disjointed information that could have sent you off at a tangent. Maybe I was wrong in holding back on that information, but I didn't want other researchers to get the wrong idea. However, thinking about it, as long as people are prepared to accept it for what it is - rough, and in some areas, unsubstantiated, then it may be used as a launching pad for further examination.

Let me just give you a few snippets of information that appear to be from the right time period and the right location, and then allow you to accept or reject it.

James BRAID married a lady with a very familiar name to us, "diddymiller" - Bessie WILLIAMSON. Although I don't know when they got married, I certainly know the birthdates of some of their children:

Issobell BRAID christened 13th February, 1653 at AUCHTERMUCHTY.
John BRAID chr. 21st January, 1655 at AUCHTERMUCHTY.
Alexander BRAID chr. 1st March, 1657 at AUCHTERMUCHTY.
James BRAID chr. 15th July, at AUCHTERMUCHTY.

If the good, old-fashioned "naming patterns" were adhered to, then that information could be quite useful.

Another bit of information involving yet another familiar name: Agnes BRAID married John BAXTER on the 5th January, 1655 at AUCHTERMUCHTY.

We see the connection between the BRAID's and the ALLISON's:

Thomas BRAID married Katharine ALLISON. I haven't got the date of marriage.

Children:

Catherine BRAID christened 25th December, 1715 at FALKLAND, (a very short distance from AUCHTERMUCHTY)
James BRAID chr. 1st September, 1717 at FALKLAND.
Jean BRAID chr. 28th January, 1720 at FALKLAND.
Rachel BRAID chr. 1st September, 1723 at FALKLAND.

William BRAID who married Elizabeth SUTTIE.

They had (at least) a couple of daughters: Jean BRAID born 18th October, 1781 at FALKLAND and Elizabeth BRAID born 3rd October, 1785 at FALKLAND.

I'm running out os space so I'll continue on my next posting.

Kind Regards,


Tom.

[tommacgregor]

Hello again, "Diddymiller" and JAP,

I'm going to move up to Collessie now, (I always think of Ladybank when I see that name).

Although the spelling of the surname is different, I thought that you may be interested in this:

Patrick BRADE (?BRAID) was the father of:

Katherine BRADE chr. Oct 1731 at Collessie.
William BRADE chr. 25th April, 1725 at Collessie.
Anna Brade chr. 12th March, 1727 at Collessie.
Christian BRADE chr. 16th December, 1720 at Collessie.
Patrick BRADE chr. 20th January, 1717 at Collessie.

Another surname that you may have come across in your searches, "Diddymiller":

Isabell BRADE married Walter LATTO on the 27th November, 1714 at Collessie.

I now turn to KETTLE, very close to Ladybank. Here the father of the children is John BRAID.

Isobell BRAID chr. 18th August, 1638 at KETTLE.
Barbara BRAID chr. 26th June, 1642 at KETTLE.
Grissel BRAID chr. 31st July, 1644 at KETTLE.
Alison BRAID chr. 18th October, 1646 at KETTLE.

The name Alison BRAID pops up about half a century later in the same location, KETTLE.

Father of the children, James BRAID:

Isabell BRAID chr. 8th April, 1692 at KETTLE.
Alison Braid chr. 15th January, 1695 at KETTLE.
William BRAID chr. 2nd July, 1721 at KETTLE

In the mid to late 1700's a few more familiar surnames appear:

Jean BRAID married John LUMSDEN on 4th February, 1797 at KETTLE.
James BRAID married Janet MELVILLE on 21st November, 1740 at KETTLE.
Jean BRAID married James HAIN (or HANE) on 9th December, 1785 at KETTLE.

Again, I'm running out of space, so I'll end my posting with my next one which takes us to CERES and CUPAR.

Kind Regards,


Tom.

[tommacgregor]

Hello Again, "Diddymiller & JAP,

Father: George BRAID.
Mother: Janet LEES.

Children born to them included:

William BRAID chr. 29th December, 1773 at CUPAR.
Jean BRAID chr. 3rd December, 1795 at CUPAR.

We see a connection to the CAIRNS family with the marriage of William BRAID to Margaret or Catherine CAIRNS on 11th December, 1632 at CERES.

One of my prime reasons for amassing so much information was due to a connection to the HENDERSON family - (I really did open up a can of worms!)

George Braed (?or BRAID)  married Janet HENDERSON on the 16th of January, 1691 at CERES.

Children:

Anna Braed chr. 29th October, 1691 at CERES.
George Braed chr. 21st October, 1693 at CERES.
John Braed chr. 10th July, 1696 at CERES.

Well, there you are folks. Although, as I've already said, the information is a bit rough, some of it may be of some assistance to other people, and if it is, then my work was worthwhile.

Very many thanks for your involvement.

Kind Regards,


Tom.

[JAP]

So, getting back to the initial subject of this thread - the name (Neidy-hill) in the baptismal entry from the OPR and the actual location of this place - it seems we are no further forward insofar as determining which of the places called Neidy/Nydie-hill was the abode of Thomas & Jean.

We continue to have a choice (see replies #2, 3, & 4 on page 1) between
*Neidy-hill about 3m ESE of the village of Ceres (this is in Ceres parish)
or
*Nydiehill on/near the River Eden about 4-5m NNE of the village of Ceres (this is in St Andrews & St Leonards parish)
and there is still nothing to assist us in deciding which one it is.

Note that Henry7 found the Neidy-hill which is in the Parish of Ceres on a 1775 map.  He indicated that its location was where later (and now) there was/is a farm named Bankhead; he suggested that possibly the name of the farm at that location changed over time from Neidy-hill to Bankhead.

Interestingly, the Fife FHS site has references to Deeds in the 1700s which mention feuars (named MORTOUN) of Nydiehill & Blackfaulds.  Whether these places were close together is not indicated but it is interesting that Blackfaulds is part-way between Bankhead and the village of Ceres.

JAP

[tommacgregor]

Hello Diddymiller,

I forgot to mention that one of the reasons for my interest in the BRAID's was because of the connection to that part of my Family Tree which has proved to be an absolute nightmare - the LIVINGSTONE's. William Livingstone was a son of "the elusive James Livingstone" and he married a Cecilia ROBERTSON at Pittencrieff Street in Dunfermline.

Back in the year 1824, 26th of November, 1824, to be precise, a William ROBERTSON married Catherine BRAID. To the best of my knowledge, Catherine hailed from a place that I neglected to mention in my previous postings - MARKINCH. Markinch appears to have become more like a suburb of GLENROTHES the last time that I visited it prior to my emigration to Australia.

If one goes onto the IGI, the references to the BRAID's living in and around Markinch is quite staggering. Bearing in mind that Markinch is only about ten to twelve miles south of the area that I previously wrote about, it would not be surprising to find ancestors of the individuals that I have written about settled there. As an example, we can find George BRAID who married Elizabeth HENDERSON with their daughter Anne BRAID born 27th June, 1745.

I would think that there is now quite a bit of information with which to work on for those other researchers of the BRAID family.

Kind Regards,


Tom.

[rubyrose]

Hello All

I don't know whether this will help or not, but it is an interesting document in its own right. I have found 'Watermills on the River Eden' written in 1949/1950 which gives information on all the Watermills along the Eden, one of which is Nydie Mill. The link to the document is here.

http://ads.ahds.ac.uk/catalogue/adsdata/PSAS_2002/pdf/vol_097/97_237_244.pdf

Someone may be able to figure out exactly where this mill was in relation to Ceres and St Andrews and whether this is a help or just a distraction.

Regards

Ruby

[rubyrose]

Hello All

Well, I hope this helps nail the place . . .

There is a book on Googlebooks called 'The History Ancient and Modern of the Sheriffdoms of Fife and Kinross' which has several references to Nydie and Nydie-hill. You can access the book by doing a Googlebooks search on the title and then searching for Nydie within the book.

Couple of extracts:

Plain of Eden (How of Fife)
'on the east is Nydie-hill which runs from the south at Blebo, north to the water of Edin.'

'The eastmost place is Nydie, standing upon the water of Edin, a little above the Guard-bridge, it is the dwelling of gentlemen of the name of Corstorfin. Kemback at the west foot of Nydie-hills . . .'

Hope this does it!

Regards

Ruby