I’ve been feeling really guilty lately. I have been so involved in my Love success, that I feel like I’ve left Agnes Hamilton in the lurch. So today I’m going to spend a little quality time with her.

My family file

Trying to find Agnes’ birth record might get a little tricky. I have her records all the way from her marriage through her death, but nothing before. So the birth record and her parents names would be a huge stepping stone for me.

Unfortunately I have many birth date calculations for Agnes. They range from 1803 through 1811. Obviously, that’s a big gap. So I’ll do a search on Scotlands People to see if the options there will narrow it down.

The things I know are absolutely true are that her name is Agnes Hamilton and she was born in Kilmarnock parish.

Search Results

With my general results above, there are 3 possibilities there.

1. Agnes Hamilton, born May 1802, daughter of Thomas Hamilton and Agnes Cuthbertson.
2. Agnes Hamilton, born Feb 1805, daughter of Andrew Hamilton and Janet Bachop.
3. Agnes Hamilton, born Oct 1810, daughter of James Hamilton and Mary Wallace.

Just looking at the names helps me none. My Agnes had two sons with the first names of Thomas and Andrew. She also had a son with the middle name of Wallace. Agnes also had a daughter named Agnes, which could be for herself or her mother. So looking at the names does nothing for me.

One thing that pays in the favor of the second Agnes is that her birthdate is much closer to the birthdate of Andrew Love, my Agnes’ future husband. In every single record I have for the couple, their ages are always recorded as the same. Sometimes, you’ll get that because only one person is giving the information, however, I’ve never gotten that on every single record unless it is true. I’ve decided to have a look at the record for Agnes #2 first.

Agnes #2

This shows that the second Agnes is the children of “Reverend Andrew Hamilton, minister of the chapel in this place”.

The possibility rises of this Agnes being the one for one simple, weird reason. Andrew and Agnes have two marriage records. One in Beith parish, where Andrew was born, and another in Kilmarnock, where Agnes was born. Usually when I see two marriage records, the second record is just an announcement that the marriage happened in the first place. That’s not the case with these. The marriage records are dated one day apart.

Could this be a sign that there were two marriages? One for Andrew’s family and another for Agnes’ father, the Reverend?

The other Agnes’

I guess I’ll have to spend some more time with my Agnes before I can figure out which Agnes she actually is.

I’ve recently gone hog wild on the Scotlands People website. I must admit, this time I didn’t even use the FamilySeach indexes to help me along. Probably not a smart move on my part, but oh well now!

All that matters is that I have many names to analyze for the Love family.

To start off, I’ll be using the naming pattern that I wrote about here and Irish ones found here to “guess” what the key names will be to go back one generation from my current Love family generation wall, Andrew Love.

WHAT I CAN “GUESS” ABOUT ANDREW USING SCOTTISH PATTERNS AND ANDREW’S CHILDRENS’ NAMES.

• Andrew’s father is possibly named Robert.
• Andrew’s mother is possibly named Jean.
• Andrew’s fraternal grandfather is possibly named Andrew.
• Andrew’s maternal grandfather is possibly named William.

WHAT I CAN “GUESS” ABOUT ANDREW USING IRISH PATTERNS AND ANDREW’S CHILDRENS’ NAMES.

• Andrew’s father is possibly named Robert.
• Andrew’s mother is possibly named Jean.
• Andrew’s third son was possibly named after Andrew.
• Andrew’s third daughter was possibly named after her mother, Agnes.
• Andrew’s oldest brother is possibly named Thomas.
• Andrew’s second oldest brother is possibly named William.

WHAT I FIGURED OUT ABOUT ANDREW’S PARENTS AND SIBLINGS FROM THE ACTUAL RECORDS.

• Andrew’s father is named Robert (Scottish – 1/4, Irish – 1/6)
• Andrew’s mother is named Jean (Scottish – 2/4, Irish – 2/6)
• Andrew’s fraternal grandfather is named James (Scottish – 2/4)
• I don’t have Andrew’s maternal grandfather yet (Scottish – 2/4)
• Andrew’s third son is named Andrew (Irish 3/6)
• Andrew’s third daughter is named Agnes, like her mother (Irish 4/6)
• Andrew’s oldest brother is not named Thomas, but he did have a brother named Thomas. (Irish 4/6)
• Again Andrew’s second oldest brother is not named William, but he did have a brother named William. (Irish 4/6)

IN CONCLUSION

• Naming patterns aren’t an exact science.
• Just because the Loves stuck to more of the Irish patterns doesn’t mean they’re Irish. It also doesn’t mean that they aren’t Irish. It just means that they used family names.
• Naming patterns are fun to use, but usually I only find that the parents part of them fit into my families.

Aren’t naming patterns a great way to make you look more at your family? I’m very excited to have found all 9 of Andrew’s siblings (I think that’s all!) and even his parents and grand parents. I’m once again blocked. I haven’t completely filled in Robert Love’s parents and siblings. I don’t even know if I have them all. What I do know is that in Beith parish, there is a farm/village called Hoodsyard and it’s because of Hoodsyard that I was able to distinguish my Loves from all the other Loves. Now to figure out where the other ones fit into the family!

I worked quite a bit yesterday on my maternal lines. The only drawback is it burned me out a little bit on researching. So I decided to switch to my paternal line, and just kind of observe it in pedigree format in FTM2012.

click for full size

Here are some things I’ve noticed:

1. Josephine Doremus is the only one of my 3rd great grandparents that wasn’t an immigrant.  All others that are listed were born in other countries
2. The missing spots in my 3rd great grandparents aren’t immigrants… at least I don’t think. I have possible parents for both Jennie Featherson and Sarah/Sadie Sutcliffe, just no paper trail yet.
3. My Moore line is completely Irish.
4. My Thorward line is a quarter German, a quarter ?, and half Scottish.
5. My Redford line  is half English and half ?.
6. My Parkin line is half English and half ?.
7. All the known immigrant ancestors on my paternal line were all here before 1875.
8. This entry has been sitting idle for 45 minutes because I’m watching Ugly Betty on Netflix Streaming.
9. I probably shouldn’t “work” in a room with a TV, much less one with Instant Streaming capabilities.
10. Featherson and Sutcliffe don’t sound like normal names. They’re not exactly Thorward, if you get my drift, but they aren’t Moore or Johnson either.

Okay, I’m so behind this week, but I’m rolling with the punches. In my previous Love family posts, I talked about Martha’s birth record leading me to James. Then I talked about James’s birth record adding weight to a document I was hoping was Andrew Love’s birth record.

Above, you see the three children that I found birth records for in parish records. If you have your eagle eyes on, you’ll also notice that in all three records, they show “Andrew Love of Hoodsyard”. I took that and added in an estimated birth date from various records.

I had to scale the image town but this is the record I found for Andrew Love. There were two records in this parish for my time frame. Both Andrew Love, but one in 1805 and one in 1806. The one you see above is the one I think is the one I’m looking for. I’ll tell you the reasons why.

1. Hoodsyard is mentioned as the birthplace.
2. Robert and Jean are the parents. Andrew used both those names with his children.
3. The other record used the names Hugh and Janet. I have none of those names throughout my Love family tree.
4. The other record didn’t mention Hoodsyard.

So while, neither of the last two reasons are concrete reasons to dismiss the 1805 record, the first two outweigh the last two in my mind.

In my previous post about Martha Love’s birth record, I was very surprised to find out that Martha was actually the third child of Andrew Love and Agnes Hamilton.

The problem was that we were going off the records in America and tracing back. I had known there was a first born Robert, through my long lost cousin Grace (is she still long lost if we e-mail regularly?). It was even Grace who clued me into Martha who married Duncan Walker, and through them I was able to identify one of my Mystery Monday posts. Which I was then able to smack myself upside the head because Duncan and Martha were living next door to Andrew and Agnes in the 1880 census.

Just remember folks there is a reason I named my blog the Misadventures of a Genealogist. I don’t do things the easy way, I do them the banging your head against a brick wall way!

Here we have the second child of Andrew Love and Agnes Hamilton.¹ Unfortunately James doesn’t appear with the family in censuses or any other records so far. Another great thing about this record is another mention of “Hoodsyard”. This place is mentioned on a few of the birth record for Andrew’s children.

In fact, it might just help me find Andrew’s birth record, but you’ll have to stay tuned for that! I have to head to the grocery store before the week begins again and then I have to update my website and e-mail my Love connections with all my progress!

1. Beith Parish (Ayrshire, Scotland). Old Parish Registers, OPR 581/3, James Love birth (1829); New Register House, Edinburgh. [↩]