Prior to the 20th century, ancestors tended to baptise their children using a frustratingly limited range of names, which can make it challenging to determine whether you have identified the correct person.
This issue is further complicated in Scotland, partly because the pool of names is even smaller, but also due to the tradition whereby children were named after their parents and grandparents in a prescribed order. In a large family, if every child follows the convention it doesn’t take long before much of the population in a village has the same name as multiple generations of their cousins.
I have already written about my efforts to resolve which Elizabeth Welch from Bere Regis was my great great grandmother, but there is another troublesome Elizabeth in my tree, this time Elizabeth Watson who was my 3x great grandmother.
Marriage of James Sim and Elizabeth Watson – Old Parish Register for Cruden
Elizabeth married James Sim in Cruden on 19 February 1798 – he was a mill wright and she was his second wife as his first, Christian Scott, had died in 1797 after giving birth to three children. Elizabeth and James had at least two children themselves: Jean, born around 1799 (my great great grandmother) and Elizabeth, who was born around 1805.
Burial of Elizabeth Watson – Old Parish Register for Cruden
Elizabeth Watson died in Cruden in 1838 – the mention of Bullwark, Old Deer in the record of her burial suggests that she had been living with her daughter, Jean Sim, who had married John McDonald, a farmer who is listed at that address when the 1841 census was taken.
As she died before census records and no age at death is recorded, I had no clues as to her birth date, but when I first researched my tree, I was confident that I had discovered who she was as the Old Parish Records for Cruden list the baptism of an Elizabeth Watson, daughter of Alexander, on 18 November 1769.
However, it now seems that things may not be quite so simple. I recently had another look at the family of Jean Sim and John McDonald, and noticed that in 1841, their 9 year-old son, James McDonald, is living with a Jean Watson at Bogbrae, Cruden rather than with his parents at Bullwark. This piqued my interest because James and two of his siblings were all baptised when their parents were living at Bogbrae, so I set out to discover who Jean Watson was.
Tracking Jean through the census records revealed that she was had been born in Methlick, Aberdeenshire around 1771. Thanks to the fact that she lived until she was 90, she has a Statutory Death Record which names her parents as Robert Watson and Susanna Cassie, and the Old Parish Records for Methlick list her baptism there on 10 October 1773.
Robert Watson and Susanna Cassie were married in Methlick on 3 April 1760, where they baptised four children: Elizabeth (1762), Mary (1764), William (1768) and Jean (1773).
Could Jean Watson be Elizabeth Watson’s younger sister ?
Baptism of Elizabeth Watson – Old Parish Register for Methlick
I have not been able to find any further records relating to Robert and Susanna, but it seems likely that they moved their family to Cruden at some point as, in addition to Jean’s residency, her brother, William Watson, married Ann Midler there in 1802. They baptised six children in the Parish, with William farming 40 acres at Aldie, a few miles from Bogbrae where, in 1841, their son, also William Watson, is working as a farmer.
Bogbrae is a small place – the Ordnance Survey Name Book describes it as “a small district in the western part of the parish, it consists of one small farm and two or three crofts” and in 1841, there are just five households recorded, three of which are headed by individuals with links to Jean Sim and John McDonald: Jean Watson, her nephew, William, and Jean Sim’s half-brother, William Sim.
My hunch is that my 3x great grandmother is probably the one born in Methlick. The evidence of her links to that family is undoubtedly circumstantial, but I also have five DNA matches who descend from Robert Watson and Susanna Cassie, including two from Jean Watson’s daughter.
As 5th cousins, the DNA we share is slight, however, and far from conclusive, leaving me with the classic genealogist’s dilemma – do I have enough to include THIS Elizabeth Watson in my tree ?
Sleuthing Notes 