Missing Horne found?

It seems there are quite a few stories in this branch of the family that aren't quite true. James Wilson Horne and his wife did not both tragically die in the same year, leaving their children orphaned (they died about three years apart). Their children were not all taken in by James's brother Robert, nor were they taken under the wing of the Lord Provost of Edinburgh (wishful thinking!). As far as I can tell, the orphaned children were split up, since they ended up scattered around the globe:

Margaret Kinnimunth Horne ended up living in Linlithgow, where she died in 1923. Various censuses show her as an unemployed boarder. One census even lists her as an imbecile! I can't find any evidence of her being a schoolteacher, as the family stories claim.

David Horne was supposedly the captain of a ship (highly unlikely, since he would've been a teenager at the time) and went to sea. Family stories say he disappeared in San Francisco some time before 1873, most likely the victim of murder since he had a temper and probably got himself into trouble. More about him in a minute...

John "Jack" Stafford Horne married a woman named Mary Brown, and their son, James Wilson Horne, was born in Glasgow in 1881. Jack ended up in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada... and is buried in the same plot with two of his brothers. I have no idea what happened to his wife. His son married Margaret Crawford in 1906 in Glasgow... and then the trail goes cold.

Isabella Horne, the first baby girl to have this name, died at the age of six months.

James Wilson Horne was said to have gone in search of his older brother, David, and was washed overboard near Cape Horn. No... I'm not kidding. I'm sure the poor kid didn't appreciate the coincidence in his last moments, though.

Stafford Horne left Scotland and had a few kids in Illinois before bringing his family to Victoria. He's another of the brothers buried in the aforementioned plot.

Isabella Horne, the second child to bear the name (the family seemed to adhere to the Scottish naming pattern, so I guess they needed an Isabella) married one of the sons of Barry Sullivan (the actor) in Lancashire, England in the 1880s. They later moved to Australia.

Thomas Henderson Horne was supposedly one of the children in need of guardianship, but I lose track of him between 1871 (on the census just before the death of his mother) and 1881 (where he turns up working on a farm in Ontario, Canada). He moved to Victoria and raised his family there. He's the third brother buried in the aforementioned plot.

William Stafford Horne was another baby who only lived a few months. I didn't even know about him until I found the birth and death records. Family stories never mentioned him (though they did mention the first Isabella); I don't know why William was forgotten.

Now for David Horne (see above)... Obviously, an 18-year-old as the captain of a ship is pretty unlikely. Getting oneself into trouble because of a bad temper... more likely, but probably a dramatic story that was made up because nobody knew what actually happened to David. Thanks to the Internet, the mystery may now be solved.

There is a David William Horne, born c1855 in Scotland (our David was actually born in Berwick-upon-Tweed, England, but he was raised in Edinburgh from the age of 3... so perhaps he thought he was Scottish), who was living in Sonoma County, California (not too far from San Francisco) from the 1870s onward. The censuses say he arrived in either 1870 or 1871. This could very well be our David. Perhaps he decided to settle in California. It's said that he was never heard from again... but if we think about this, we can see that that doesn't necessarily mean he was killed. If he'd written home in 1871, who would've been there to receive the letter? His parents were gone and his siblings were scattered about. The children on both sides of the Atlantic most likely never knew what had become of their siblings. How sad!

David William Horne (1855-1939) married a woman named Elizabeth Watts (1860-1910) and had seven children:

Jessie Elizabeth Horne (1880-1961)
Marian "May" C. Horne (1881-?)
Hadie Watts Horne (1884-1955)
Richard William Horne (1886-1960)
Jeanie R. Horne (1888-?)
David J. Horne (1894-1970)
Archibald Charles Horne (1897-1957)

Since these are fairly recent dates, I haven't been able to find much. I've only found three descendants in the next generation, and they're all from the girls; I don't even know if the boys married. I would dearly like to know if there are more Hornes out there... and if so, find out what their family stories say about how their ancestor, David Horne, arrived in North America!

Possible link-up of the elusive Horn(e)s

Try as I might, I haven't been able to find much information on my 3x great-grandparents, David and Isabella Horn(e).  David was born in 1793 in Roxburghshire, Scotland.  Isabella was born in approximately 1801 (according to the 1841 census, which of course rounds off the ages), but somewhere other than in Midlothian.  Both appeared on the 1841 census with their children (and David's father, James) in Edinburgh.  But by 1851, they had disappeared.  David and Isabella's three sons were living in Berwick-upon-Tweed under the care of the eldest (James Wilson Horne, age 24); their daughter Isabella, age 18, was working as a house servant in Edinburgh; and their daughter Agnes, age 16, was living with her uncle in Edinburgh (also James Wilson Horne... and there are more besides those two in this family!).  Despite spending money on Scotland's People and scouring the records available on Ancestry.com and on FamilySearch.org, I have not been able to find any records of David's and Isabella's deaths.  I'm assuming they died; the only other possibility is that they abandoned all their children and left the country in the 1840s (which seems unlikely).  Since their deaths would've been before 1855, I probably wouldn't get much from the death records anyway... but at least I would know what happened to them.

David's wife, Isabella, has been a bit of a mystery.  First of all, her maiden name appears to have been Horn(e) as well (this is according to the death registration of David's brother, James Wilson Horne -- the uncle mentioned above).  The family appeared to use the Scottish naming pattern, so I'd assumed that Isabella's parents would be Robert and Isabella.  I couldn't find any families that matched... though I did find an Isabella Horn, born 1802 in Orwell, Kinross-shire to Robert Horn and Catharine Hunter.  I might have dismissed this possibility until I noticed that this Isabella had a brother named Henry.  This is a name that didn't appear on David's side of the family.  So, if this is indeed Isabella's family, it would account for the boys' names that didn't really seem to show up in David's family.

What's even more interesting, however, is that I poked around a bit more and found that the only Robert Horn I could find in the right time and place was one born 1762 in Cleish, Kinross-shire, making him the son of David Horn and Isabel Westwood, and the brother of James Horn... who is also (I believe) David's father.  All of which means (if I've corrected all the dots correctly) that David and Isabella Horn(e) were first cousins as well as husband and wife.

Whew!  This would be interesting if it proved to be true.  Mathematically speaking, it's impossible to have all unique ancestors; some of the branches have to join back together further up the tree.  It's surprising to me that this is the first instance of a first-cousin marriage in my direct ancestry that I've found.

Hiding in Essex...

It seems that many of my ancestors either weren't truthful about a) their last name, or b) where they were born. Or maybe they just didn't do the whole baptism thing. I've been looking through the Seax site and getting thoroughly frustrated. Aside from the ancestors that I found there before on one branch of my family tree, I'm coming up with nothing. I've gone nearly cross-eyed from trying to decipher those old registers... and all for nought.

I'm seeking birth/baptism/parentage information on the following people who were supposedly born in Essex:

Eleazer Willsher, born c1575 (his children were born at Scripps Farm in Coggeshall... I couldn't find them, either)
Susannah Clarke, born c1640 in Coggeshall
William Fisher, born c1640 (daughter Elizabeth was born 1664 in Coggeshall)
Joseph Lambert, born c1645 (possibly in High Easter)
Henry Hobro, born c1655 (wife was Mary; daughter born in Great Wigborough)
Edward Saitch/Sach, born c1695 (married in Messing)
Mary Hayes, born 1703 in Bradwell Juxta Coggeshall
Elizabeth Jordan, born 1708 in Coggeshall
James Wheeler, born c1730 (married in Messing)
Joseph Hills, born c1740 in Epping
Elizabeth Bull, born c1745 (married in Manuden)
Joseph South, born c1745 in Essex (wife was Rose; daughter born in Messing)
Martha Steele, born c1755 (probably in Essex; buried in Great Easton)
Susanna Bassott, born c1771 in Wivenhoe
William Chiddock, born c1778 in Great Bentley
Joseph Wincle/Winkell, born c1789 in Kelvedon

If you have any information about any of these people, please leave a comment!

Norfolk ancestors

I managed to piece together a few more generations in one of my family tree branches. I'd earlier found a reference to a Catherine Kerridge who married John Skipper in Shotesham, Norfolk. In looking at the Skipper family, I'd found an Abigail Skipper who married a Francis Kerridge. Not having come across the Kerridge name much, I thought they might be connected... and it turns out that Catherine and Francis had the same parents. So we've got two siblings (John and Abigail Skipper) marrying two other siblings (Catherine and Francis Kerridge). I love it when the puzzle pieces come together like that.

So... Catherine and Francis Kerridge were the children of Francis and Elizabeth (probably Elizabeth Leech, based on the only Kerridge marriage I could find in the right area at the right time). Elizabeth may have been the daughter of Thomas and Elizabeth Leech. If so, she was baptised in 1698 in Norwich, married Francis in 1719 in Shotesham, and may have been buried in Shotesham in 1742.

Essex ancestors

I found some records on the Seax site. I was able to trace the Wheeler family back a couple of generations (I'd been stuck at 1798 with Sarah Wheeler), and I found some new names relating to that branch of the family: Saitch/Satch/Sach, South, and Hobro. All of these people lived in Messing, Essex in the 18th and 17th centuries.

I tried to find information about Sarah Wheeler's husband, Joseph Winkell (spelled Wincle on their Colchester marriage record of 1818). He was from Kelvedon, according to the 1851 census, but I couldn't find a baptism record of anyone with a similar name. There is a large Wyncoll family in northeast Essex (the same area as my Winkell family), and I think they must be connected somehow. Finding that connection is proving to be next to impossible, though.

Kerridge?

I came across a marriage record for John Skipper and Catherine Kerridge in 1755 in Shotesham, Norfolk. My putative ancestors were John Skipper and Catherine (maiden name unknown), who started having kids in 1756 in Shotesham... so the record could very well be applicable. I haven't come across the Kerridge name before, and I can't find any record for Catherine other than the aforementioned marriage.

It sure would be nice if one of these ancestors led to a decently researched family tree. I'm tired of finding dribs and drabs of my ancestry one solitary person at a time (and inevitably hitting a brick wall immediately after)!

James Carden

I broke down and ordered the certificate. I'm not too much further ahead, though. Or, rather, behind, since I'm trying to go back in time!

James Cardon was the son of John Cardon and Lucy, born 1818 in Dublin. John was a corporal in the Royal Horse Artillery at the time.

There is a marriage record (I think it was in Pallot's?) for a John Carden of the Royal Horse Artillery who married a Lucy Foster in 1812 in Woodbridge, Suffolk. These might be James's parents... however, Lucy is listed as a widower, so Foster is not her maiden name. I wonder if it might be Fryett; the only record in that area that I can find of these names comes from a daughter (Elizabeth) of John Foster and Lucy Fryett in 1809.

In any case, if I've got the right John and Lucy, then my James had at least two full siblings as well: John Carden (1812) and Matilda Carden (1815). Unfortunately, it looks like this is as far back as I can go without getting heavily into military history... which I have no idea how to do.