I've been looking at my neighbour's family tree and found out that her ancestor Helen MCCALLUM married James GOLDEN at Glasgow. It was on 31 Dec 1856 at Coatbridge by an English Episcopal Church service, the civil marriage registration giving Helen's parents as James MCCALLUM & Mary MURRAY and James' parents as John GOLDEN & Charlotte PURL. Their residences at the time of marriage were both given as Dundysaw in Old Monkland, Lanarkshire.
James and Helen emigrated to New Zealand arriving at Lyttelton 16 Feb 1864 on the ship MERMAID, they being described in the passenger list as being from Stirlingshire. They settled at Rangiora in Canterbury province.
New Zealand, Archives New Zealand, Passenger Lists, 1839-1973
https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FSBF-PZPJames GOLDEN died 1866 and widowed Helen married again to Edwin EVANS in 1872 but he died 1881 at Rangiora. By this time the family were known as GOLDING in records at the New Zealand end. A few years later Helen (aka Ellen) and her family moved to the Northcote suburb of Melbourne in Victoria, Australia where she died in 1903. Some of her family returned to New Zealand, eg her son John GOLDING who had married Ellen Christina THORNE at Christchurch NZ in 1885 and whose daughter Alice was born at Northcote in 1894. Back in NZ Alice married Charles Frederick IVORY at Christchurch in 1922, and these two are the grandparents of my neighbour.
I can find only one marriage at Scotlandspeople or elsewhere to be the parents of Helen MCCALLUM, that of James MCCALLUM & Mary MURRAY at the East Church, parish of Perth, Perthshire in 1814, but it's a little early given that Helen's ages on documents indicate birth about 1831.
Online I've noticed a couple of trees that have this couple having children Mary at Perth in 1816, Jane at Shotts in Lanarkshire in 1818 (the person whose baptism interpretation has been under discussion), Grizel at New Monkland in Lanarkshire in 1820, and four issue baptised at Slamannon parish in Stirlingshire, being Margaret Murray 1825, Helen 1827, Ann 1831 and Agnes 1833.
It is oh so tempting to jump in boots and all to enter all these details regarding issue to James & Mary into my database, but the databases have no sourcing and there is a fair spread of years over all the issue, so that I have to be careful that there wasn't another couple of the names lurking around. At marriage in 1814 James MCCALLUM is described as being in the Lanarkshire Militia which doesn't sound much like a weaver. That's not a real problem, because people change occupations or can have more than one occupation at a time, but it doesn't help.
If the above is true then my neighbour will relate to people in this conversation?
Peter
Christchurch, New Zealand