Searching for my McLachlan ancestors!

[grisel]

Hello again.

As you are confident about your grandfather that is probably the best place to start. Make sure you have names and dates for his father and mother (your great grandfather and wife) whom you also feel confident about. Then you need to send for your gt grandfather's certificates looking for evidence of his parents in turn. Go back one generation at a time.

You say you also have family information. Try and work out which is truly original (old letters, original certificates etc) and which is from their own research - someone could have sent off for the wrong birth certificate for example, which could confuse things!

When it comes to Scottish records look for all the many possible spellings of McLachlan. Put in fuzzy matching in the search option on SP.

Hope this helps.

[LAC006]

So I reviewed the documents I have, and my gr grandfather's birth certificate lists his father as being born in Glasgow and being 27 years when my gr grandfather was born, which places his birth in 1861. So i have the right birth cert for my gr gr grandfather and am somewhat back where I started but will look into the passenger lists in case I found the wrong John McLachlan.

Thanks again for your ideas and suggestions! It's certainly helping to consider things I hadn't already.

[Dundee10]

You are missing a step. Next you need to get John McLAUCHLAN's Australian marriage cert to find his parents' names. In every state of Australia except SA in your time frame this information should be provided by the bride and groom when they married.

Who and when and where did he marry?

[helachau]

Does the 1861 birth cert include father's occupation?

[LAC006]

It says that he was a labourer. As a side note, it lists his address 127 Saltmarket Glasgow, however I'm not sure if this is the address when he was married or when his child was born. Regardless, I have trolled through the post office directories for the marriage year, and birth year and have found no connection between John Mclachlan and that address. I will try different years to see if it was recorded wrong.

[LAC006]

I have some sort of record from the Genealogical Society of Queensland. It lists husband and wife, and children. Against the husband, it says father's name was John and mother's name Dougherty.

My gr gr grandfather married Ada Grace's Marsh in Gilgai, Inverell, Australia on 31/12/1887. I will see about finding an official marriage certificate, perhaps it will contain more detail.

I have my gr gr grandfathers death certificate, but it just states unknown against mothers and father's first and last names!

[Lesley Robertson]

I have gone through the Scotlands People indexes, looking for any marriage between John McLachlan and a bride called Docherty. There's nothing in the post 1855 marriage registers, or the Roman Catholic and "other denominations" registers but there are 2 in the Church of Scotland registers - Mary in Barony (an old Glasgow parish) on 26 Jan 1851 and Helen in Barony on 14 Jan 1949.

There are a number of things to be checked:
1: The date and place of the McLachlan/Docherty marriage (if after 1855) marriage should be on John Alexander's birth certificate (it was only between 1856-1860 that this was not done). Where did your info that they married in Glasgow in 1856 come from?

2: I'm wondering whether they married in Ireland, and someone later assumed that they married in Scotland - Docherty is an irish name.

3: If they could have married earlier than 1855, have all the Church records survived? Damp, acid ink, negligence, fire (and war) all conspire to make sure that some records don't. The scottish section of GENUKI.org gives information about which registers are still available.

4: Sarah could have been a middle name that she preferred...

Did you have a chance to look at the 3 Johns I found?

[LAC006]

Hi Lesley,

I had never thought of Sarah being a middle name! That is definitely possible. I will have a look at the Docherty's you found!

I went back through the hard copy records I have, and the 'extract of an entry in a register of births' is for the right John McLachlan so didn't look further into the other three Johns you found. It seems that I might have the wrong passenger log as it lists his birth location as somewhere else in Scotland. Nevertheless, at least I have one official record that is correct.

So his register of births is where I found the marriage year/location of his parents, John and Sarah McLachlan - and their address of 127 Saltmarket, Glasgow. I looked into the Glasgow postal directory for John's birth year 1861, and the year of his parents marriage 1856 and couldn't find them registered anywhere, let alone that address in those years so possibly the years aren't correct.

Thank you!!!

[Lesley Robertson]

I see that Ancestry has a birth registration for John Mclachlan, 19 Apr 1861 in Calton, Glasgow, Lanark, born to John M and Sarah D. Their original source was an LDS collection called "Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1856-1950 and says that it's records "from Scotland").

One of the 3 I found was registered Calton, so I had a look and it is indeed him, details much as you gave. It gives the place of birth as "Central District, Glasgow"" even though the registration is in Calton... 19 Apr 1861 ïn Hospital, Glasgow (which probably explains the change of registration district). John Maclachlan, labourer, 127 Saltmarsh Glasgow. Sarah Mclachlan ms Dougherty, mar 1856 in Glasgow (the authorities didn't check such statements, the preceding birth cert shows the marriage as 1850 or 1851)). John's birth was registered by Mary Finlayson, matron (the preceding birth was also in the hospital and she registered it), not a family member.
This could make the marriage date/place suspect if she asked Sarah for the info before Sarah had a chance to rest...

There are 4 1856 marriages to John McL in Glasgow - none Sarah. There's 2 in 1855, none in 1857.
One marriage of a Sarah Docherty in 1856 in Glasgow, to Thomas Donnely.

I can't help thinking that a marriage in 1856 should have led to earlier children than 1861...

[LAC006]

I have the document you found, the extract is a typed out version. I agree with you about other children. My records of their son hasn't indicated the presence of any siblings, or any other family traveling to Australia with him.

Even broadening my search in terms of years hasn't really yielded anything results. I have even looked up any Sarah Docerty marrying a Mclachlan from 1850-1865 with fuzzy matching for the names and not limiting to location in Scotland and there are no search results!

I have found a few people on ancestry who have family trees that link to John and Sarah, but there is no information attached to them either. The frustrating part is that I even have a photo of them that I was given from my great Aunt who just turned 100 - unfortunately she doesn't know anything to help me in my search. I have sent a few messages to different people that have them in their family trees in the hopes that someone knows something!