SWAN, JOHN Neilston, Renfrewshire b.circa 1705?

[caledonhills]

Hello everyone,

I have been researching the SWAN family from Paisley. I've managed to trace them back to a John Swan and Mary Pinkertoun (Pinkerton). They were married in 1744 in Neilston. Scotlandpeople.org shows him as being a shoemaker "in the kirk". I can't seem to find his birth. The only John Swan born in this area is in 1705. Other than Scotlandpeople.org, and familysearch.org, are there any other databases I can search. I'm in Canada. I can't find out where he would have been buried either.
I believe he may have died in 1766 in Neilston (which is where I get the birthdate from). This would make him quite old at his marriage and to have 9 children afterwards.

Any advice appreciated.

Regards,
Sandra

[MonicaL]

Hi Sandra

Forfarian recently posted this info. Understand you are not in Scotland, Sandra. This can be a problem for sure although maybe a paid for researcher could help in this area;

....Scotland's People is one of the great wonders of the genealogical world - a treasure trove of original information (unlike several web sites I could but will not name that contain nuggets of genuine information swamped in oceans of irrelevant, plain wrong and multiply duplicated misinformation).

However SP includes only certain parts of the information formerly held by the Registrar General for Scotland and National Archives of Scotland, and now held by the National Records of Scotland.

There are vast repositories of information out there in various archives that are not available online:

Kirk Session records
Parochial Board (Poor Law) records
School records
Estate records (there is one estate archive that I know of which is said to consist of 2½ tons of documents
Registers of deeds
Registers of Episcopalian churches
Registers of Free and dissenting churches
Court records (civil and criminal)
Hospital and asylum records
Registers of sasines
Services of heirs
Burial records

to name but a few that I have used over the years.

However they are not as easy to access as the Scotland's People ones. Generally you have to find out that they exist (sometimes but not always possible online), go to wherever they are, and then read through what can be many pages of difficult handwriting to pick out the item that interests you.

If you strike lucky you can find real gems - I found (in the 2½ tons) a letter written in his own hand by one of my umpteenth-great-grandfathers in 1771, and a sasine taking another branch of the family back to an even-further-back-great-grandfather who died in 1642. If you don't, you can spend a day reading fruitlessly through an unindexed book of deeds, knowing that you still have three dozen more books to check....

Monica 

[caledonhills]

Thank you Monica! I've taken this information and now have someone looking into a few of these for me!

Sandra