David Freeland ~ 4th Great Grandfather

I wrote about David Freeland three years ago in my Surname Saturday post for my Freeland line.

He brought his family to Canada from Scotland in 1821. Later, David Freeland and many of his family members ended up in Great Lakes states (New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio and Illinois).

What I didn't know when I wrote the Surname Saturday post were the names of all David's children and when and where he and they died.

A few months after I wrote the Surname Saturday post, I found that FamilySearch.org has indexed some records for Scotland. (See Tuesday's Tip ~ Scotland, Births, Baptisms, and Marriages.) So now I know that David Freeland was born on February 14, 1783, in Glasgow, Scotland, and that he married Barbara Fullerton Arroll on July 30, 1809, at Govan, Scotland. He had six children, all born in Govan, Scotland:
Barbara (1809-1887)
Anna (1812-1889)
James (1814-1863)
Charles (1816-????)
Mary (1818-1903)
Margaret (1820-????)
And a seventh, Oswald, born about 1823, in Canada.

The Scottish emigration record (Directory of Scottish Settlers in North America, 1625-1825. by David Dobson, (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co. Vol. 5. 1985)) suggests that David left Scotland and arrived in Canada with his wife, one son and four daughters. Charles must have died young, which would leave James, Barbara, Anna, Mary and Margaret traveling with their parents to the New World.

Because of a scrap of paper with a rudimentary family tree, I have married surnames for three of the four daughters, but I don't know what happened to Margaret.

I had found David in the 1850 U.S. Census living with his son, James, in Pittsburgh. By the time of the 1860 U.S. Census, David was living with his daughter and son-in-law, Mary and Frederick Wolf(e), in Buffalo. He was 77 years old and since I couldn't find him with any family in the 1870 U.S. Census, I assumed he died between 1860 and 1870. When I discovered that there is an 1865 New York State Census, and he was not listed, that narrowed my search for his death date.

Once again, Facebook has proved to be a useful resource, specifically, the group for the Western New York Genealogical Society (WNYGS), which I joined last spring. I shared my query about David Freeland, and got a helpful response: Freeland is not a common name in Buffalo, and there is a burial record for David Freeland on February 25, 1862, in Forest Lawn Cemetery in Buffalo.

Recently, these burial records have been digitized and made available at the website for Forest Lawn Cemetery. (See the search page at Locate a Loved One.)

Searching for David Freeland, I found a burial record. The record is on one line over two pages and the transcription is below with my notes in [square brackets].

Name: Freeland, David
Place of Birth: left blank
Place of Death: Buffalo
Time of Death: Feby 20, 1862
Married or not: left blank

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.

Surname Saturday ~ Freeland of Scotland and Allegheny, Pennsylvania

Lanarkshire, Scotland

My immigrant Freeland ancestor is David Freeland, who arrived in Canada from Scotland in 1821 with his family.

As I have been working on this Surname Saturday post, I have been finding out much more about this branch of my family, which I will share in upcoming blog posts.

The image at right is from page 96 of A Dictionary of Scottish Emigrants to Canada before Confederation, by Donald Whyte (Toronto: Ontario Genealogical Society. Volume 2, 1995. 435p.). If I interpret this entry correctly, David Freeland was from Lanarkshire, Scotland. He (with his wife and five children) came to Quebec, Canada, on the ship, David of London, arriving on 19 May 1821. They left from Greenock, Renfrewshire, Scotland, in association with an emigration society and they settled in Lanark Township, Lanark County, Ontario. The code of ICS refers to Immigration: Canada from Scotland with a description of "Selected records in the Ontario Department of Public Records and Archives [now the Archives of Ontario], 77 Grenville Street, Queen's Park, Toronto, M7A 2K9. Reel 154."

Lanark Township, Ontario

Wikipedia has a brief entry for Lanark, Ontario, (in addition to newly incorporated (1993) Lanark Highlands Township, Ontario) noting that it was founded in 1820 by Scottish immigrants who named it after Lanark, Scotland. Textiles was one of its major industries.

I found the reference for this book in an index (U.S. and Canada, Passenger and Immigration Lists Index, 1500s-1900s) on Ancestry.com, and then looked at a copy of of the book at the NEHGS Library, where I scanned the above page. Ancestry.com has another index: Canadian Immigrant Records, Part Two which provides additional information about David Freeland's family: that his wife was age 28 and that the family included: "male child age 7; female children ages 8.5, 3, 9, 11."

Update as of October, 2016: David and his family, had moved south to the United States during the 1820s, living in New Hartford, Oneida County, New York, by the time of the 1830 U.S. Census.

In the 1850 U.S. Census, I find David Freeland, occupation Weaver, in the household of his son, James, in Allegheny, Pennsylvania.

U.S. Federal Census. Year: 1850; Census Place: Allegheny Ward 2, Allegheny, Pennsylvania;
Roll: M432_744; Page: 76B; Lines 7-10: Record for James Freeland family

In the 1860 U.S. Census, I find David Freeland in the Buffalo, New York, household of his daughter, Mary Wolf, her husband, Frederick Wolf (a Lake Captain), and their two children, Oswald and Charlotte.

U.S. Federal Census. Year: 1860; Census Place: Buffalo Ward 5, Erie, New York; Roll: M653_746;
Page: 810 (140); Lines 30-34: Record for Frederick Wolf family including David Freeland

I couldn't find a David Freeland in the 1840 U.S. Census that seemed to fit my David Freeland. (The 1840 census is not an every-name census, and doesn't include as much detailed information as later census records.) However, I did find an entry for "Freder. Wolf" in Buffalo, New York, which included two males of the appropriate ages to be Frederick and his father-in-law, David, and one female of the appropriate age to be Frederick's wife, Mary (Freeland) Wolf. If this is the same Frederick Wolf, it appears that David Freeland's wife died by 1840.

I do not know when David Freeland died, but possibly sometime between 1860 and 1870. UPDATE: He died in 1862 in Buffalo, New York.

The names of his children that I do know include James, Barbara, Mary and Anna. I descend from his son James.

Generation 2:
James Freeland was born in Scotland sometime between 1815 and 1821. He married Nancy Rainey, whom I have written about, as she is one of my long-lived female ancestors. I have also written about James previously, as he was a plumber in the 1850 and 1860 census.

There are two men with the name of James Freeland who served in Union forces from Pennsylvania in the Civil War and it is possible that one of them is "my" James, but again, I need to do more research on that. He died about 1863, based on the family's listing in Pittsburgh City Directories in the 1860s.

They had at least five children, born between 1850 and 1858. Mary (b. 1850), William (b. 1854), Claudine (b. 1855), Edward, Emma (twins, b. 1858). In the post about Nancy Rainey Freeland, I shared several census records and city directory images showing.

I descend from their daughter Mary who I believe is the oldest.

Surname Saturday ~ McAlpin of Dutchess County, New York

My immigrant McAlpin ancestor is James McAlpin. He was born about 1780-1783 in Scotland or Ireland.

One of the (secondary) sources I have [1] tells me that he was born in Scotland because his son's 1901 death certificate noted that his parents were born in Scotland. Although no primary sources are noted, I'm a bit more inclined to believe the other secondary source [2], which tells me that he was born in Muckamore, County Antrim, Ireland. According to this (unsourced) research, this branch settled in Northern Ireland during one of the many colonizations by the Scots. At some point I need to research the primary sources for this ancestor.

Courtesy: Wikipedia

The secondary sources agree that James McAlpin sailed from Belfast, Ireland to New York on the ship Jupiter in the spring of 1811. He arrived with wife, Jane, and one child. He settled in Pleasant Valley, Dutchess County, New York, in what was known then as Clinton Township, later moving to Fishkill, also in Dutchess County.

His wife was Jane Hunter, born in Muckamore, Antrim, Ireland, May 11, 1786. They married in Antrim, Ireland on July 14, 1809.

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.