Toronto streets, about 1840

[JaneyCanuck]

So now, if I were you, I would try to see what happened to those Helen Lockharts. And I would assume that your Ellen very likely started out life as Helen; the two names are virtually interchangeable, along with Eleanor. I've seen people called all three, in different records throughout their lives. And you've got that "Helen Orr" birth to illustrate the pronunciation thing!

Helen was much more common in Scotland at that time than Ellen.  The 1841 Scottish census shows 292 Ellens born in 1816, but 2,866 Helens.

And don't forget spelling variations for Lockhart, e.g. Lockart. I have a friend in the US whose family I researched a few years ago. Her gr-grfather was a Marcum. After figuring out who he was, I found that a couple of generations farther back he connected with a Marcum family in the southeastern US that has been hugely researched, starting with a drummer in the Revolutionary War -- and the name was Markham until they crossed the water and there was nobody around who know how their name was spelled. Just for example.

I have no idea about Scottish geography really, so crossmatching any births that were found with marriages and deaths would take some researching for me. One Helen Lockhart did marry in Dumbarton, in 1840. (She could be the one born c1830 who is in the 1841 census living with a McLean couple.) (Er, no she couldn't. My arithmetic and reading comprehension seem to be as bad as my Scottish geography.)

It is tough slogging but sometimes the best you can do is take all the possibilities and track them each to where you can rule them out, if you can, and see who is left. Get some credits at ScotlandsPeople, identify the possible births, look for their marriages or deaths (i.e. while still single), look for siblings of the possible Helens who might also have gone to Canada, look for the various parents and siblings in later Scottish and Canadian and US records ... You may come up with a match that you might never be able to be certain of, but that is almost positive, e.g. if you found a Helen/Ellen born in Scotland whose family members match people in Canada.

Also keep in mind that James and Ellen could have had other children who died in infancy, whom you have not identified, who might have been named for Ellen's family.

If she was born in Scotland, as it seems from the censuses, she has to be there somewhere! Of course, parish records for that era are not complete at ScotlandsPeople, but it's the starting point for looking, anyhow.

[heiserca]

Thank you, JaneyCanuck.  You've given a tough assignment but I shall try to complete it.  I'm starting with the 4th Helen/Ellen you found - the daughter of John Lockhart and Margaret Rollo.  The name Margaret was certainly passed down in this family, so I'll start by assuming that the daughter of Margaret Rollo was my ancestor, and look for any evidence.  You've given the first lead as to where we should begin looking!

[JaneyCanuck]

It took me about a year to figure out who my mother's paternal grandfather was -- once I'd figured out he wasn't who he said he was because there was no such person ever born.

We'll call him Smith, although the name is actually a rare one. No records of him before he married my gr-grmother at age 32 ... so I just hunted for every person I could find with any kind of similar details, and I finally found him with the name Brown. Same unusual given names, born at the right time, in a place Smith gave in the one census where he appeared before splitting for Canada, and a father Fred Brown, just like the Fred Smith  (nonexistent in any record) he claimed.  Brown disappeared from the records after 1873, and Smith emerged in the census in 1881. And it turned out that Brown had a sister with the same unique given names as a Ms Smith who married around when my Brown became Smith (i.e. the sister we had no idea my gr-grfather had) ... and whose third given name at birth was in fact Smith. Put them all together, and there was just no question. My gr-grfather Smith was really a Brown.

A few years after I had settled that in my own mind, I heard a tale from another gr-grandchild of Smith whose mother was Smith's confidante in her youth, a tale my family had never heard: that he had been in India with the military for 5 years and deserted rather than be sent to Afghanistan when he had already done his time and was due his discharge, and had nightmares all his very long life about the old Queen coming to get him. The timing fit perfectly; the first wife of Brown died in 1873 and the second Afghan war started in 1878. The little scrap of possible truth my family had, and then it was only one uncle who knew of it, was that Smith said his first family was "wiped out by a plague". Sure enough, Brown's brother who died at 30, first wife who died just months after they married, daughter from that marriage at 19, and sister's daughter at 16, and I'm sure the several siblings who died in childhood and the sister, who disappeared after her daughter's birth, had died of tuberculosis.

I'm actually in the process of having DNA analysis done with a sample from Smith/Brown's son's son, to submit for comparison with both his apparently real surname and his fake surname (which, given the tale he told about illicit parentage, could be real after all ...).

I'm lucky - I have a male line to follow for the DNA analysis. You are looking for a female ancestor's ancestors, so you are out of luck!

But I offer my tale to buck you up, because sometimes coincidences do add up to indisputable fact. And the longer it takes to track somebody down, the more fun it is. Because otherwise, what would we do with ourselves??

[heiserca]

Thank you, JaneyCanuck!  By process of elimination, we can now say that - in all probability - the wife of James Kerr Clezie (previously known to us as Ellen Lockhart) was actually: Helen Lockhart, born 15 Aug 1815, baptized 20 Aug 1815, at Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, daughter of John Lockhart & Janet McFarlane.  My cousin in the UK got a photocopy of her baptismal record.  That puts us miles ahead of where we were, just days ago.  My great-great-grandmother actually had a past!

[JaneyCanuck]

Yeesh, you are a whirlwind! You ruled out all the others and couldn't rule out her, or there were irrefutable clues and coincidences for that one ...? Just always curious how it worked out!

[heiserca]

Ha ha... as you know, genealogy is rarely that simple.  Sherlock Holmes described his method thus: 

"How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

Helen Lockhart from Dumbarton fits all the parameters that described my ancestor, Ellen.  The other candidates each married the wrong person, or died wrong place, wrong time.  As no other Helen Lockharts births are known in Scotland between 1812-17, Helen Lockhart from Dumbarton must = Ellen.  Elementary, my dear Watson!  Thank you again, for your help.     

[JaneyCanuck]

Excellent, that's what I meant -- I just didn't think ruling the others out would be quite such a quick and easy task!

I was actually going to quote Holmes myself when I was first proposing the ruling-out approach. 

Very glad to have helped and I hope it continues to be so, er, easy.

[heiserca]

I come crawling back, my tail between my legs!  I was wrong.  Helen Lockhart from Dumbarton stayed in Scotland, married William Kirkpatrick in 184O. 

That means NONE of the 4 Helen Lockharts mentioned in an earlier post can possibly be my ancestor!  They all have an alibi, married someone else, died somewhere else.  My ancestor was another Ellen/Helen Lockhart, as yet undiscovered.  Now what?

[cosmac]

http://www.odh.ohio.gov/vitalstatistics/vitalstats.aspx

Ohio is an "open" state and anyone can request records as they are considered public property.  Have you ordered Ellen's death certificate?

Debbie