#52Ancestors - Week 7 - Love

With Valentines Day coming up, the week 7 theme of the 52 Ancestors challenge is Love:

Week 7 - Love. Which ancestor do you love to research? Which ancestor do you feel especially close to? Which ancestor seemed to have a lot of love?

I have 2 families on my tree whose names I love: the McLuckies and the Winlos. In a previous blog I mentioned how protective I am of "my" McLuckies, so that's who I will feature for this challenge - I'll save the Winlos for later. 

Hey Jim - if you're reading this, you still haven't taken "my" McLuckies off your tree even though they don't belong there!

Don’t you just love the name McLuckie? Every time I say it, it makes me smile.

My 1st encounter with the McLuckies is with my Great-Great Grandmother Rosana McLuckie. Listed on the birth records for my Great Grandmother Rosanna Hunter. (Rosana married Alexander Hunter in 1858.

Rosana McLuckie was born about 1840. I haven't been able to find a baptism record for her, so she is first recorded on the census of 1841.

Rosana is the 3rd of 4 children I have found for John McLuckie with his 2nd wife Margaret Ure. She also had an older 1/2 sister from the marriage of her father to Margaret Dick.

John was the first of 4 children of George McLuckie and Mary Malcolm. George was one of the 9 children that William McLuckie and Jean McLuckie had (yes, that is her real last name - her father was also a William McLuckie).

William and Jean were married in 1746 in Drymen, Stirlingshire Scotland and they are about as far as I have been able to go back so far.

Rosana had a sister called Margaret and two brothers - George and James. George is the only one of the 4 siblings I can find a baptism record for and it's a strange one. George was born in 1838 but he isn't baptised until 1846. I don't know what happened in the 7 years in between or why Margaret, Rosana or James have no baptism records. That's a mystery for another day - perhaps when I am in Scotland at the end of this year.

Anyway, George was baptised by Reverend Leitch. Occasionally I type in the minister's name to see if anything comes up - and this time I was "lucky" on my McLuckies. Reverend Leitch had a book written about him "An Earnest Pastorate: Memorials of the Rev Alexander Leitch MA minister of the south church Stirling""An Earnest Pastorate: Memorials of the Reverend Leitch MA minister of the south church Stirling" by Rev Norman L Walker in 1871. The book says "He wore out his life in quiet work, beneath his Master's eye". Reverend Leitch was a minister in Stirling from 1832 until 1868, firstly with the Church of Scotland and then as a minister of the Free Church of Scotland from 1843.

Many of you will have posted your family trees on one or more of the various online sites available out there "in the cloud" and received hints or matches to other family trees. One such match for me was to George McLuckie, Rosana's brother. I was matched to a gentleman by the name of Douglas S..... And this is the sort of stuff that makes detectives out of genealogists. Douglas is my great grandmother's aunt's daughter-in-law's grandson. 

Phew what a mouthful that is!

So here's the connection. George married Marion Neilson (she's my great grandmother's aunt). After George died, Marion married Henry Scully. They had a number of children one of whom was Leslie Scully. Leslie's 2nd wife was Janet Hodge Farman (the aunt's daughter-in-law). Janet married Matthew Campbell after Leslie died and they had a daughter named Elizabeth Neilson Campbell. Elizabeth's son is Douglas S.... (the grandson of the aunt's daughter-in-law - though of course technically not related to the McLuckies at all).

When I was in Scotland in 2010 I was able to meet Douglas S.... and we had a lovely lunch together in Edinburgh.

One last story about the McLuckies for his post. Tonight as I was researching I decided to put Rosana McLuckie’s name into the search function at www.FamilySearch.org – and I got an unexpected result – a daughter for Rosana and Alexander I hadn’t “met” before: Margaret Hunter born just 4 months after Rosana and Alexander married and my new oldest child for that family (which I confirmed by looking at the "certificates" avail able on the Scotland's People website)

So now a new great great aunt to research. I just love the McLuckies!