Sinclair family
Hi I'm at a brick wall with verifying parents for my 2nd great grandfather, John Sinclair, born 1835 died 1922 in ingham County mi. I'm hoping to find family I haven't connected to yet. How do we break through these brick walls?
Answers
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Good morning @DawnL5317
This looks to be the profile: https://www.familysearch.org/en/tree/person/details/9VHD-Z4L
John's profile is well-documented, except for his birth in Scotland. His parents and some siblings are also well-documented.If you're hoping to work on his earlier family, you may want to post in the Scotland Research Group or the British Isles Research Group.
https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/170-scotland-research
https://community.familysearch.org/en/group/16-british-isles-researchBest of luck with your search!
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Hello, I have updated this family and found quite a few items that needed work. I also updaed his siblings/mother/father. Hope that helps.
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Hi @DawnL5317, I think you need to start by locating John's immigration and naturalisation records. This may require looking further afield than FS records, as it's not currently clear when he arrived in Michigan or what port he arrived in the US and not all records are held by FS. There's a gap of about 20 years missing of his life in the US before marriage that needs to be traced.
These records may give you more information on where in Scotland he was from, a better sense of his birth date and potentially his parent's names. All these crucial details are fairly shaky based on the records that are currently attached. Records currently have his birth ranging between 1835 and 1845, which is quite a range. Given that and the fact that no attached record state place of birth beyond "Scotland" and no known records list his parents names, I'm highly dubious of the currently attributed place of birth and attached parents.
To illustrate why: 244 baptisms for "John Sinclair" (including variants) occurred in Scotland between 1833-1846, this is without taking into account RC records, dissenting congregation records, or parishes for which the records no longer exist. This number drops to 64 if you look at a range between 1834-1836, but that's still a large result pool and realistically, I'm not sure you can make the range that small, given how erratically he reports his birth year.
John is also a bit erratic in reporting his arrival year, understandable given he was only a child at the time, he reports variously 1847 (1900 census), 1840 (1910 census) and 1845 (1920 census), so I'd suggest looking at a range between 1838 and 1849 to begin with. He does consistently say he was naturalised, which is helpful. The question would be whether he himself was naturalised or was it a byproduct of his father being naturalised?
Given he was a child when he immigrated, it's likely he traveled with family, which will give you further data points to narrow down the search in Scotland. Realistically, without those extra details from immigration and naturalisation, you're looking for a needle in a haystack jumping straight across to Scotland.
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I agree with the points made by @RaniM .
I see both @DawnL5317 and @Tiffany Farnsworth Nash have been working on this profile for some time, but I can't see the evidence for many of the inputs made against John Sinclair's profile. There are no Collaboration items added to his profile and a lack of reason statements against the Vitals inputs.
It would appear he was born in 1835, but even the precise age shown on his death certificate doesn't exactly match this D.O.B. As is very common, the age / implied Y.O.B. varies between different census records, but I would agree 1835 is a reasonable assumption.
On the points raised by @RaniM, why assume the birth / baptism detail inputted when there were so many individuals named John Sinclair born around 1835 in Scotland and there appears to be no suggestion in all those U.S. sources attached of which part of Scotland John was from?
I believe it will be equally difficult to confirm any immigration / passenger lists that reference his arrival in the U.S. I have been working on a similar exercise recently with an equally common name of John Jackson and am finding a number of options that might relate to his arrival in New York, so I guess the same would apply to individuals named John Sinclair, who arrived in the U.S. sometime between 1840 and 1847, depending on which census record might be accurate.
Before looking to confirm his parents, I would certainly be investigating the likelihood of a Lanarkshire birth and, if the evidence exists, to add comments to a Collaboration item, which should detail the research undertaken that has led to the current conclusions.
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I believe being signed in to ScotlandsPeople might help here!
For example, I am registered to the website, so can make free searches, but then one needs to pay to see the images connected to the indexed results.
On the initial assumption this Glasgow family is the correct one, John Sinclair (senior's) sources show he married an Elizabeth ROSS in 1832. Searching under the Statutory Deaths section, using this maiden name, I found the deaths in Glasgow districts of three SINCLAIR individuals whose mother's maiden name was ROSS: Catherine 1899 (age 59 - even if married, the maiden surname is usually indexed, too), William 1906 (age 65) and John 1859 (age 24), that give ages that match within a year of the children found with parents John Sinclair & Elizabeth (Ross). However, this would then "rule out" this John Sinclair (if indeed a match for these parents) as being the individual who emigrated to the U.S. in the 1840s. (Update - I have added a note to the profile referenced for John Sinclair and the surname ROSS for "mother" Elizabeth, as found on the baptism records for the individual baptised at Rutherglen, and baptism records for his siblings.)
Searches on the website (or, I believe, at a FamilySearch Centre) could be made of 1841 and 1851 census records to confirm members of Glasgow area SINCLAIR households in 1841 and 1851 and, hopefully, to confirm matches with the family shown on Family Tree.
With cases like this, I have found a lot or work is usually involved to gain evidence of identity, and sometimes money, too! But, if this were my family (I do have a John Sinclair ancestor, in fact, but who moved to England from Banffshire at a much earlier period), I would certainly be prepared to spend a lot of time and effort here - accepting the fact that the result still might lead to reaching a "dead end"!
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To build on the good work @Paul W has done:
That death record for John Sinclair who died in 1859, Hutchesontown, Lanarkshire, is verifiably the son of John Sinclair and Elizabeth Ross. The civil record is attached to PQGQ-9ZW and lists the parents names in full in the transcript. That PID was previously linked as their son, but it was removed.
In my opinion, that definitively proves this is not the family of the John Sinclair who died in Michigan. I've gone ahead and restored that relationship in order to detangle the two Johns.
I think this illustrates my point of not assuming location without anything to base it off of. I've traced a fair few of these US/Scottish connections by now and as often as not, a bit of digging disproves the unsubstantiated assertions of origin.
Getting in the weeds a little here, but I don't think the Catherine who died in 1899 is the Catherine from the Rutherglen Sinclair family. I believe that Catherine is the daughter of Duncan Sinclair and Christina Ross, who was born in Gorbals in 1840 and lived all her life in and around that area. She is traceable through records as having married Thomas Robb, which fits with the 1899 death record. I think this is also the Catherine that @Paul W you found living with her grandmother in the 1841 and 1851 Census records.
It's possible that the Catherine of the Rutherglen Sinclair family is the same as the Catherine who married Robert B McKay. Her mother is listed as Mary Ross on her marriage record, but there is no corresponding baptism for a Catherine born to a John Sinclair and Mary Ross and the geography and ages fit, so its possible that 'Mary' is an error. Unfortunately, whilst her death in 1864 should be in the civil deaths record set on FS, I couldn't unearth it to cross-reference the parents full names.
Since proving (or disproving) a match often requires detailed lateral research into other family members like this, I still caution against diving straight into Scottish records without more information, given the huge number of baptisms there are to sift through.
I don't necessarily agree that the immigration/naturalisation records will be equally as difficult. A quick search on FamilySearch of Immigration and Naturalisation records with a name, birth year range of 1833-1848 and an "other" filter of 1830s and 1840s produces only 11 results. Of those 4 are born in Ireland, 1 in the US and 1 in Jamaica, leaving only 5. Of those, two are actually "Johana"s which leaves only 3 records to explore further. Admittedly this number jumps to 120 if you remove date of birth. But a great many of those can be manually discounted by Y.O.B and collections such as "Crew Lists" where the subjects would mostly be too old to consider a match.
As I said, I don't know that FS holds an exhaustive collection of US immigration records (??), but tracing three potential leads (I'd look for them in subsequent census records and naturalisation records), at least to start with, is a less daunting task than anything from 64 to 244 potential leads that would involve a large amount of lateral research.
Naturalization records are going to contain more details, but they're also going to take more time to work through as the indexed information can be a bit sparse. The National Archives are worth a look here as they have a lot of records digitised.
I'd also look at deed records to see if you can establish a timeline for when John Sinclair arrived in Michigan.
I do agree that tracing a connection like this usually takes a lot of work and effort, but it can definitely be worth it if you have the time and patience.
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