Toronto streets, about 1840

[T. Michael Sommers]

... after all the help you've been given, and the doubts you have cast on it, I'm not sure what it's going to take to convince you of anything to be frank.

What it will take is evidence.  All the hypotheses put forward are great, and you need some hypotheses to start with in order to have something to test, but a hypothesis is not evidence.  When confronted with multiple hypotheses (and 'none of the above' is always one of them, so it is always multiple), you can't just pick one and say it's true.

Sometimes we can't have 'absolute proof' of everything we want in this world. 

We can never have absolute proof of anything (outside of mathematics).  We can, however, have evidence.  They are not the same thing.

Occasionally, we have to go by having faith in those who have greater insight, intuition and expertise than we have ourselves.

Faith is the belief in a proposition despite evidence to the contrary.  Faith does not help the search for truth, historical, scientific, or otherwise.  Science did not start to progress until people lost their faith in Aristotle.

I had planned to say something about the implicit assumption, in the quoted sentence, that a person who asks a question is acknowledging the 'greater insight, intuition and expertise' of those being asked, but the only polite thing I could come up with is that, while asking a question does acknowledge that the asker does not know the answer, it in no way acknowledges a general inferiority to all those who might hear the question.

[JaneyCanuck]

And I guess nothing I say gets through ...

The only way to find out whether something is evidence of something else is to INVESTIGATE IT.

Descendants of all the various Lockharts and Cloyds from Rensselaer County can be sought out, by various means, to see whether they have any family knowledge or documents about their family that would show, or disprove, a connection. (And a lot more straightforwardly, the search results I gave directions to at ScotlandsPeople could be checked in minutes to see whether they might be relevant.)

That is what I have done with my own families, and in particular, as I have mentioned, with the great-grandfather of mine who was a giant mystery. I did find a descendant of each of the two women I had identified as sisters of the person I believed was my great-grandfather. It took me years, first of just plain hard slogging searching to find the person who was my great-grandfather, and then more years searching for descendants of his siblings. When I found them -- one contacted me via notes I had left at Anc'y on all her ancestor's census records, and one finally turned up on one of the regular searches I did of family trees at GenesReunited for the unique surname in question, adopted by my gr-grfather's sister's husband after the sister's death -- they were able to confirm their connection with those ancestors, but had nothing to offer by way of information about the family but tall tales they had heard about their ancestors of that generation. But that, in itself, was confirming evidence of the relationship with my great-grandfather.

Evidence/proof does not drop into one's lap from the sky, or even from the diligence of strangers. In many cases, information is only evidence (or not) once it has been used to obtain further information. It has to be INVESTIGATED. And it is up to the person to whom the information is provided to investigate it, to seek out further information, or not, as they choose.

And THAT is science.

And if a person asking a question does not respect the insight or intuition or expertise of the people they are asking, there is little point in asking.

And just for the record, since this all seems to be so unclear: *I* have NEVER asserted that any hypothesis is "true". I have advanced an hypothesis that seems so well matched to the known facts that it merits serious investigation, I have investigated it at some length myself, with considerable input from others, and I have suggested various avenues for investigating it further.

[royd]

Twist it whichever way you wish T. Michael, I stand by what I said.



It seems a shame that the OP has been given advice which they seem disinclined to explore, possibly because it doesn't fit in with their thoughts.  I know that if someone had offered me so much help and advice, I would certainly check it out, even if I thought it was a wild goose chase.  Sometimes,  the most unlikely scenario can produce the answers we are looking for.



Personally,  I have to go by faith in certain circumstances, as I know I have my limitations.  I willingly acknowledge and trust the expertise of others who are clearly gifted and experienced individuals to help me out when I'm stuck.  It's with the assistance of these good people that I will be able to improve my own skills and I'm always willing to learn.



R.

[T. Michael Sommers]

Twist it whichever way you wish T. Michael, I stand by what I said.

What did I twist?  No twisting was intended.

It seems a shame that the OP has been given advice which they seem disinclined to explore, possibly because it doesn't fit in with their thoughts.  I know that if someone had offered me so much help and advice, I would certainly check it out, even if I thought it was a wild goose chase.  Sometimes,  the most unlikely scenario can produce the answers we are looking for.

We must be reading different threads.  No one has refused to check anything out.  Rick's last post simply listed the current guesses as to Ellen's origins, and stated that there was no evidence that favored one over the other.  That is not a refusal to check anything out.

Personally,  I have to go by faith in certain circumstances, as I know I have my limitations.  I willingly acknowledge and trust the expertise of others who are clearly gifted and experienced individuals to help me out when I'm stuck. 

Faith is one thing; trust is another.  Trust is based on evidence: not just evidence of the competence and good faith on the part of the other person, but also one's own knowledge of the particulars of the case and also of the intrinsic probabilities.

[royd]

In my life, faith and trust tend to go hand in hand.


Maybe we should leave this until the OP reappears as it seems rather silly to be bandying things around  in their absence.


R.

[T. Michael Sommers]

In my life, faith and trust tend to go hand in hand.

We seem to be using words differently.  Where you say 'faith' in this context, I would say 'confidence'.  'Faith' implies belief contrary to the evidence, or at least in the absence of evidence.  If your trust is based on faith, then it is also based on contrary evidence.  If your faith is based on trust (and the trust is based on evidence), then it isn't faith, because it is based on evidence.

[JaneyCanuck]

Oh, honestly and for pete's sake ...

[heiserca]

On the topic of checking the facts, instead of putting people down...

1850 census, Lansingburgh, NY:
John Lockhart, M, 30, b. Scotland
Ellen Lockhart, F, 26, b. Scotland
Margaret Lockhart, F, 2, b. New York
William Lockhart, M, 0, b. New York

The Ellen Lockhart mentioned in that census was the wife of John Lockhart; he was born about 1820 & she about 1824.

The Ellen Lockhart described over the previous 13 pages was b. 1816, so a few years older than the Lansingburgh couple.  Ellen (who m. James Clezie) could conceivably be  John Lockhart’s elder sister.  Now that is a possibility worth exploring.  Wouldn’t it be ironic if the 2 Ellens were sisters-in-law? 

Does anyone know where in Scotland John Lockhart from Lansingburgh was born?  John's children - Margaret & William - might reflect the names of his parents, back in the Old Country. 

[JaneyCanuck]

I hope you're not suggesting that anyone ever proposed the Ellen Lockhart married to John in the 1850 census as being your Ellen Lockhart ...........!



On the topic of checking the facts, instead of putting people down...



Ellen (who m. James Clezie) could conceivably be  John Lockhart’s elder sister.  Now that is a possibility worth exploring.

What on earth did you think I had been saying for the last I don't know how many pages?!?!?  Elder sister of ALL the Lockhart siblings in that family, as listed in my multiple posts to that effect. One more time just for fun:

The 1850 census has
- John Lockhart (1820 Scotland), wife Ellen, children William and Margaret in Lansingburgh (had children baptised at the church where your Ellen married; daughter ends up with Margaret Henderson Lockhart Cloyd in later census in Chicago)
- Robert Lockhart (1834 Canada), with mother Margaret Henderson Lockhart Cloyde in Troy
- Mary Lockhart Dow (c1819 Scotland), with mother Margaret Henderson Lockhart Cloyde in Troy
- Jane Lockhart (1826 Scotland) in Troy (married Leach at the church where your Ellen married)
- also Margaret Lockhart (married Thompson shortly after the census, at the other Presbyterian Church)
- probably William Lockhardt (c1827 Scotland) in Buffalo in 1850: same occupation as Robert and the stepfather John Cloyd, and is in Shelby Tennessee where Robert is in 1860, and then in Chicago where much of the rest of the family is in 1870 and 1880
-- Just to add to those matched sets -- the widowed John Lockhart (c1820 Scotland) is in Chicago in 1880, and New Orleans in 1900 where Robert (c1834 Canada) is. They all go together. There is no question.
-- Note that I am assuming that Robert Lockhart c1834 Canada (who immigrated to the US in 1836 per his 1900 census) is a child of Margaret Henderson Lockhart Cloyd, although he is much younger than the others -- he could be her grandson, and could even conceivably be a child of your Ellen; if a record of his death after 1900 (when he was in New Orleans) could be found, it might name his parents.

The question is whether your Ellen goes together with them.

It's a QUESTION.



Does anyone know where in Scotland John Lockhart from Lansingburgh was born?  John's children - Margaret & William - might reflect the names of his parents, back in the Old Country. 

!!!!   I have referred, over and over and over, to the fact that the mother of all these Lockharts in Rensselaer County, NY, is

Margaret Henderson who married William Lockhart in Renfrewshire in 1811 and subsequently apparently married John Cloyd(e), apparently in NY state.

The John Lockhart you refer to baptised one of his children Margaret Henderson Lockhart.
The Mary Lockhart Dow in the Cloyde household in 1850 baptised one of her children Mary Henderson Dow.

Your Ellen had children William and Margaret.

I have said, over and over, that ScotlandsPeople finds five children born to a William and Margaret Lockhart in Renfrewshire between 1810 and 1830, names, as far as I can tell on a free search w/o paying to see results: Mary, Jean, John, Janet, Archibald. They do not show at familysearch. I don't know what the mother's surname was. I don't know whether they're connected. I haven't paid to look at the details.

If anyone KNEW, or had succeeded in figuring out, where John Lockhart or any of his obvious siblings in Rensselaer County were born, I think they would have said so by now. If you tell us what efforts you have made to find the answer, then we can be sure not to duplicate them.


cont'd because of length