Last week I came up with the idea of working with the Scottish naming pattern to find out more about the family of John Breac MacNeil and Margaret MacDonald. It seemed like a simple idea to follow the pattern and see where it would get me. The Scottish naming pattern, according to the reference I consulted was:
first son named after paternal grandfather
first daughter named after maternal grandmother
second son named after maternal grandfather
second daughter named after paternal grandmother
third son after the father
third daughter after the mother
then other children after aunts and uncles
I knew the name of John and Margaret's children from Rankin's genealogy. There were also several lists of those children's names on different online sources like Rootsweb. The list of their children follows:
Children of John Breac MacNeil and Margaret McDonald:
1. Catherine
2. Angus
3. Donald
4. Hector
5. James
– named in will of John Breac MacNeil
6. Margaret
“Mary”
7. Michael
“Mick” – named in will
8. Alexander
“Alex” – named in will
9. Stephen
W – named in will
10. John
It's easy to figure out how the girl's names would fit into the pattern as there are only two of them and we know that Catherine came first as she was the first white child born on the Gulf Shore according to Rankin. If the naming pattern holds true then Margaret MacDonald's mother would have been named Catherine and John Breac MacNeil's mother would have been named Margaret. The boy's names are a different matter. There were eight of them and I can't be sure that Rankin's list or any of the other lists have put them in order.
The last three boys, the ones who were named in John Breac MacNeil's will would have been the youngest according to the wording of the will and most probably would have been entered in the will in birth order as Michael, Alexander and Stephen but what of the other five boys? How did they fit into the family?
The five boys are:
1. Angus
2. Donald
3. Hector
4. James
5. John
I had the bright idea of searching for the men in the Nova Scotia censuses to get an idea of their ages. That would be possible if I was looking at some of the other places in Canada, like Ontario, where I have done extensive research. In Ontario, I was able to find 1851 censuses naming every person in a household and giving their ages. Unfortunately, the censuses in Nova Scotia are not the same. The first census naming everyone in the household is the one from 1871, too late to search for the sons of John Breac and Margaret MacNeil.
A trawl through various sources for other Nova Scotia censuses yielded interesting information which will need further study. For the 1861 census it was possible to search for a surname on the Library and Archives Canada website. I was also able to find other census returns for heads of households. There were Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia publications of various counties of the 1838 census which I was able to source at the BC Genealogical Society's library. I also found entries for the 1817 census of Nova Scotia in the Terence Punch book, Some Early Scots in Maritime Canada Vol. 1. But that was all information for another day. It wasn't getting me any further ahead with the task at hand.
Continuing the work with the Scottish naming pattern and sussing out the order of the sons of John and Margaret, the naming pattern for boys is:
first son named after paternal grandfather
second son named after maternal grandfather
third son after the father
then other children after aunts and uncles
Margaret MacDonald was the daughter of Donald MacDonald which places Donald as the second son. The third son would be John because he was the son of John Breac MacNeil. Angus wrote a will in 1864 which named his brother, James MacNeil, as one of the executors, so arguably James would be his younger brother. Perhaps the brother lineup was as follows:
1. Angus
2. Donald
3. John
4. Hector
5. James
6. Michael
7. Alexander
8. Stephen
W
That would be an argument for John Breac MacNeil's father having the name of Angus MacNeil which would be helpful if ever I can get the line back to Scotland. But does the naming pattern hold true in this family?
Sources:
Durie, Bruce. Scottish Genealogy, Fourth Edition. The
History Press, Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2017.
Canadian Census of 1861, Library and Archives Canada
Genealogical Association of Nova Scotia. 1838 Census
Index of Antigonish County, 1999.
Punch Terrence M. Some Early Scots in Maritime Canada
Vol. 1. Genealogical Publishing Company, Baltimore, Maryland, 2011
Rankin, Rev. D.J., A History of the County of Antigonish,
Nova Scotia (1929). Global Heritage Press/GlobalGenealogy.com Inc., Milton,
Ontario, 2003. p329
