Tombstone Tuesday ~ Alston Plot at Union Dale Cemetery Pittsburgh

And another set of third-great-grandparents buried at Union Dale Cemetery from my 2017 visit.

There are two long rows of burials. The first five stones, representing six burials, are on the left in the above photograph:

Lillias (Johnston) Alston - 52 Ancestors #43

For this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from blogger Amy Crow Johnson of No Story Too Small, I am sharing the little bit I know about a third great-grandmother, Lillias Johnston.

Almost two years ago, I blogged about finding Scotland, Births, Baptisms, and Marriages at FamilySearch.org. I found a record for the birth of "Lilias Johnstone" on June 4, 1806, in Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland, to Robert Johnstone and Lilias Kennedy. She was the third of their six children. She was baptized on June 16, 1806.

Just after her 27th birthday, she married John Alston on June 28, 1833, at Glasgow, Scotland. (See their marriage record and read about her husband at John Alston - 52 Ancestors #36.)

The Alstons immigrated to America in 1835 with their oldest child and settled in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania.

Recently, I borrowed a microfilm from the Family History Library to look for my Presbyterian ancestors in Allegheny County. This microfilm had records from several different Presbyterian churches, but about half of this microfilm (items 5 - 8) was:

Church records, 1830-1900 from the First United Presbyterian Church (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania : Allegheny). These included Session minutes 1837-1870, 1830-1870 (includes communicants, deaths, received by certificate and testimony); Session minutes 1839-1900.

(See the complete microfilm description at the FamilySearch Online Film Ordering website.)

This church was organized in 1831 as the Associate Reformed Church of Allegheny. (As readers of my blog and those familiar with Pittsburgh history know, Allegheny City merged with Pittsburgh in 1906.) In 1858 the church became the Allegheny First United Presbyterian Church, North Side in Pittsburgh and in 1994 the First Allegheny Presbyterian Church.

Although I had no luck finding my Hunter ancestors in these records, very early on, I found mention of John and Lilias Alston joining the church!

John Alston, Carpenter - 52 Ancestors #36

For this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from blogger Amy Crow Johnson of No Story Too Small, the theme is Working for a Living, in honor of Labor Day in the U.S.

Third great-grandfather John Alston was a carpenter. He was born in Symington, Lanarkshire, Scotland on September 2, 1806, to John Alston and Jean Jamieson. I found Scottish birth and marriage records at FamilySearch.org and wrote about them here.

John married Lillias Johnston on June 28, 1833.

Church of Scotland (Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland). Old parochial registers for Glasgow, 1612-1854. Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Family History Library microfilm. number 1042942.
Record for John Alston and Lillias Johnston. Page 412: Glasgow, 28 June 1833

Alston, John Alston, Wright, in Glasgow, Lillias Johnston, residing in the parish of Douglas. Married 28th June by Mr. John Jamieson, Burgher and Minister in the parish of Douglas.

John's marriage record lists his occupation as "Wright," which is a Scottish term for Carpenter. (A great list of Scottish occupations can be found at ScotsFamily.com.)

List Your Matrilineal Line - Update

Back in October 2011, I shared my matrilineal line - my mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. At that time, I only knew back five generations to my immigrant maternal ancestor, Lillias (Johnston) Alston.

I recently discovered indexes of Scotland Births and Scotland Marriages at FamilySearch.org, and have extended my matrilineal line by a couple more generations.

a) Elizabeth
b) My mother (still living) married Charles McAlpin Pyle, Jr.
c) Helen Lysle Hunter (1907 - 1990) married Lowell Townsend Copeland
d) Marguerite Lysle (1876 - 1967) married Percy Earle Hunter
e) Marion Helen Alston (1850 - 1885) married George Lysle, Jr.
f) Lillias Johnston (4 June 1806, Lesmahagow, Lanarkshire, Scotland - 3 Jan 1852, Allegheny, Pennsylvania) married John Alston on 28 June 1833, Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland.
g) Lilias Kennedy (27 December 1775, Douglas, Lanarkshire, Scotland - ????) married Robert Johnston, 22 November 1801, in either Douglas or Carmichael, Lanarkshire, Scotland.
h) Jean Grienshields [Greenshields] is listed as the mother on the index of the birth of Lilias Kennedy.

This line is how my mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) was passed to me. Since I originally shared this maternal line, I have had my mtDNA tested (with FamilyTree DNA) and I now know that I am in mtDNA haplogroup U5b2a1a1. A haplogroup is a personal DNA signature, which can be thought of as a branch in our common maternal lineage, which traces a branch back to a shared maternal ancestor in Africa. The U haplogroup is the major branch, and because I did a full mitochondrial sequence, I know the "smaller branch" of the haplogroup that I descend from.

Mitochondrial DNA is passed along from mother to child (son or daughter), so a son can be tested for his mtDNA. (Y-DNA is passed along from father to son, so only a son can be tested for his Y-DNA haplogroup.)

Going back thousands of years in the "maternal tree" (what FamilyTree DNA calls the "deep ancestral origin"), my branch's migration was from western Asia to northern Europe. When I look at my mtDNA matches in FTDNA, they are primarily in Norway, England, Scotland, and Germany.

For a more thorough  explanation of using DNA in genealogy, I recommend the blog, Your Genetic Genealogist, written by Cece Moore. Also, The Legal Genealogist, Judy G. Russell, wrote weekly posts about DNA last year, many of which explain DNA very well.

Tuesday's Tip ~ Scotland, Births, Baptisms, and Marriages

I have been working on my maternal Scottish ancestry recently (Freeland and Alston) and I wanted to know where in Scotland David Freeland and John Alston came from. I visited the website for the National Library of Scotland and on its home page, there was a suggestion that records could be found at FamilySearch.org. On the search page, I clicked on United Kingdom and Ireland and found that when I filtered for Scotland, the following indexes were available to search:
Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950 and Scotland, Marriages, 1561-1910.

In searching for James and David Freeland, I was able to find that James Freeland was born on May 6, 1814, in Govan, Lanark, Scotland, to David Freeland and Barbara Fullarton Arroll. With that information, I adjusted my search to capture the births for ALL the children of David Freeland and Barbara Fullerton Arroll.

I then found David Freeland and Barbara Fullerton Arrol were married on July 30, 1809, in Govan, Lanark, Scotland.

Surname Saturday ~ Alston of Scotland and Allegheny, Pennsylvania

My immigrant Alston ancestor is John Alston, born on September 2, 1806, in Lanarkshire, Scotland. He and his wife, Lillias or Lillian Johnston, both 29 years old, immigrated to the U.S. in the summer of 1835, leaving from Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, and arriving in New York on August 7, 1835, on the Platina with their son, John, age 1.

Ancestry.com, New York Passenger Lists, 1820-1957. Year: 1835; Microfilm roll: M237_27; List number: 562;
Lines 28-30 [Passengers 69-71]. Record for John, Lillias, and John Alston.

In November 1835, their second son, Robert was born in Pennsylvania. (November 1835 is what is reported as his birth month in the 1900 U.S. Census.)

John and Lillias went on to have Lilly, Margaret, William, Mary, Andrew and twins Marion Helen and Christine Agnes.

In the censuses between 1850 and 1880, John is reported to be a Carpenter, a Master Carpenter and a Lumber Merchant, as well as in various Allegheny / Pittsburgh City Directories for the era.

Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities, 1870/1871, p. 42
from Historic Pittsburgh City Directories

He must have been successful by 1870, as that census reports that he owned real estate valued at $10,000 and personal estate valued at $20,000.

Detail from 1870 U.S. Census for John Alston

His wife, Lilleas Johnston Alston, died on January 3, 1852, and is buried in Uniondale Cemetery in Pittsburgh, along with many of the Alston family. (See her Find A Grave Memorial.) By 1860, John had married Marion Slimon. (I know her maiden name because it is on her gravestone. See Marion's Find A Grave Memorial.)

John Alston died on April 4, 1882, at his home in Allegheny, Pennsylvania. He is buried in Union Dale Cemetery on the North Side of Pittsburgh (formerly Allegheny City). (See John's Find A Grave Memorial.)

I descend from their daughter, Marion Helen Alston, who was born in 1850.

Saturday Night Genealogy Fun ~ List Your Matrilineal Line

Thank you to Randy Seaver at Genea-Musings for the idea to write this blog post. See the details of the challenge at Genea-Musings. The challenge is to list my matrilineal line - my mother, her mother, etc. back to the first identifiable mother. Note: this line is how my mitochondrial DNA was passed to me!

a) Elizabeth

b) My mother (still living) married Charles McAlpin Pyle, Jr.

c) Helen Lysle Hunter (1907 - 1990) married Lowell Townsend Copeland

d) Marguerite Lysle (1876 - 1967) married Percy Earle Hunter

e) Marion Helen Alston (1850 - 1885) married George Lysle, Jr.

f) Lillias Johnston (about 1807, Scotland - 1852) married John Alston.  They arrived in New York City in August 1835 from Scotland and settled in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania, where the next four generations of women were born.

I have not had my mitochondrial DNA tested, but I hope to do it one of these days.

February 2014 Update: I have had my mtDNA tested, and I shared the results here.