#52Ancestors - Week 16 - Live Long

Week 16 (April 16-22) – Live Long. Time to feature a long-lived ancestor. Any centenarians in the family?

This is a story of the longest lived ancestor - who turned out not to be so.

Until the other day when I set out to write this post, April 5th 2015, I would have told you that my longest living ancestor was Rose Anna McLuckie McDonald born July 4, 1894 a daughter of Duncan McDonald and Agnes Wright Hunter.

Rose Anna McLuckie McDonald Birth - Scotland's People

I also would have told you that she died in 2004 in Kirkintilloch and Lennoxtown Dumbartonshire Scotland making her about 110 when she died.

Rose Anna is my first cousin twice removed (first cousin of my grandfather James Martin) and grand-daughter of my favourite ancestor Rosana McLuckie.

I can tell you all sorts of things about Rose Anna. For instance - from the 1911 census I can tell you that at the time she was one of 11 siblings and 5 had already passed away:

1911 Census (cropped) - Scotland's People

I could tell you that the only sibling I can name as having passed away prior to this census (very sadly) was Agnes Wright Hunter McDonald who passed away in 1903 at age 5 from burns to her body. I don't know who the other 4 siblings were. (That will be something I'll have to check when I get to Scotland at the end of the year - I probably need to start making a list)

Agnes McDonal Death 1903 (cropped) - Scotland's People

I could tell you where the family lived from time to time based on birth, death and census records:

1901 Census (cropped and edited) - Scotland's People

I could tell you that another sibling was born in July 1911 (John) taking the number of children in the family to 12

John McDonald Birth (cropped) - Scotland's People

But one thing doing this blog and also doing the Genealogy Do-Over has taught me is to look at everything and analyse the records to see if they back up your theories.

So while I was writing this post, I went back to have a look at what I said was Rose Anna's death record. I originally looked up the information on the Scotland's People on 26/04/2008 which was just a few months after I started using the Scotland's People site. Back then I was doing a lot of adding to my tree without properly thinking through what I was looking at - and I today I saw what I didn't see back then; it doesn't make any sense.

Rosena McDonald Death Lookup - Scotland's People

Because the death is so recent I couldn't look up the record on the site - and I decided not to order it because Rose Anna was not a direct ancestor.

But looking at this info, I am slapping myself for my stupidity.

What have we got that's the same and what's different?
Surname/Maiden Name = McDonald (same)
Forename = Rosena (different but expainable - Rose Anna is spelt 3 different ways on the birth, 1901 and 1911 census records, having it spelt differently on the death record can be explained. The middle name of McLuckie is not listed, but this is also explainable)
Mother's Surname = Hunter (same)
Other Surnames = Inches, Kenny (no explanation - I don't have a marriage listed for my Rose Anna and for some reason I didn't go and check marriage records to see if I could confirm the marriage to either Mr Inches or Mr Kenny as belonging to "my" Rose Anna)

Age = 68. This one is the killer blow.
2004 - 68 = a year of birth of 1936 - 42 years later than my Rose Anna was born!

Now I can see what I failed to see back then THIS IS NOT MY ANCESTOR! (Well perhaps she might be, just 2 generations later. Maybe one day I'll trace this Rosena back to see if she fits in with my Hunters somewhere)

Of course, I have just added some new tasks to my list of things to find out - and hopefully I will find some of the answers in Scotland at the end of the year:

1. When did Rose Anna McLuckie McDonald die?
2. How old was she when she died?
3. Did she marry and have children?

As I said in week 1 of this challenge, I'm going to go through each person and double check all my sources and make sure I only add in what I can prove. Of course when I wrote that (all those weeks ago) I thought I would only have to do it for my Farley/Dobson side. Looks like I've got some double checking for my Martin side as well.