Family trees with shaky branches

 

                                                         The wrong kind of weight can sometimes cause tree collapse

I thought it would be quick and easy. Just plug in Alexander Matheson's name and birthdate and check out Ancestry family trees to find out more about his family after he crossed the border into the US. Well, I found him in quite a few trees and attached to the right birth family too, for the most part, although those trees showed a few surprise siblings. Just where did that William Matheson come from? He wasn't listed in the family headed by Kenneth Matheson in any of the census returns which I had seen, not even after Alexander was no longer included. 

In the trees I'd looked at, the later information about Alexander himself was all over the map. I mean all over the map literally. Some trees showed him in Ontario which made some kind of sense as he'd been there with his family in 1851. Other profiles showed him dying back in Scotland. I wondered just where and when they'd tracked him back to the old country.

It looks like there won't be any short cuts in tracking down Alex and his family. I had hoped that it would be easier because, while I have his letters to give me clues they can be somewhat lacking in detail. Like the information he wrote to his sister, Margaret, catching her up with the 40 years of news she had missed out on. On one occasion in about 1890 he wrote: "Five years ago we buried our only daughter, a young married woman of 24. She died in childbirth. She left two little girls." Tantalizing clues but there are no names.

Perhaps it is just as well that I'll be building my history of this family piece by piece. At least then, I'll be sure of my facts and who knows what other clues the information I dig up will give me. Like the 1870 census that I stashed in my Ancestry shoebox. In any entry for Pleasant Valley, Grundy, Iowa was a record for Alexander Mathison with his wife Mary, daughter Anna aged 4 and son Frank aged 2. Anna must have been the daughter who died in childbirth 20 years later. Bonus though were the two other members of the household, Francis Gilpin 36 and William Gilpin 22, lending weight to the record of Alexander's marriage to a Mary Galpin being correct. Maybe doing things the slow way is an advantage after all. 

Sources:

Ancestry.ca search of Public Member Trees

Ancestry.ca 1870 United States Federal Census Pleasant Valley, Grundy, Iowa