Hunter/Gilchrist connection on Islay

 

                                      The Hunter gravestone erected by Mary Campbell in Kilnaughton Cemetery, Islay

There's nothing like going to where family connections lived and walking the places they would have walked. For a genealogist, an in-depth survey of their setting includes their final resting places. In 2010 I took a trip to Islay to follow up on my Hunters and Gilchrists. While there I walked the streets of Port Ellen and checked out the White Hart hotel which figured in the family somehow.

Being thorough, I also walked out to Kilnaughton Cemetery to check out the gravestones. It took me a while to understand the layout of the various areas in the cemetery as there was a new section and an old one. The old one held some gravestones that piqued my interest, particularly the one erected by Mary Campbell, the wife of Ronald Hunter. There, etched in stone, was her name and that of her spouse as well as the names of many of their children. It's probably a good thing that I took photos and notes of the names I was interested in. I've since checked out the online information for Kilnaughton Cemetery looking for the names of the Hunters on the stone that I recorded and none of the databases I checked have those names. Maybe the stone eroded so they can no longer be seen or maybe the people who recorded the information omitted that stone and a few others that I checked for.

                                                   The names that I recorded from the Hunter/Campbell gravestone

The information on the stone gives me a head start on Ronald Hunter's family. Now to see if I can find the final resting place of his brother, Hugh, and perhaps find out more about Hugh's daughter.

More connections for the Hunters and Gilchrists?

 

                                 Excerpt from Hunter/Campbell marriage record showing their mothers' maiden surnames

Although my research showed that my line of the Hunter/Gilchrist family (Mary/James) immigrated to Upper Canada around 1853, I tried to find out what happened to the rest of their family who had stayed in Scotland. Part of that was because it was the first family line that I'd gotten anywhere with. Besides, the Hunter part of the family didn't stray far from Glenegedale or Kildalton so they were easy to track down.

Of course, I mean by that the male Hunters were easy to find; the females, not so much. Land, including tenancies followed males. In this case, Mary Hunter's younger brothers, Hugh and Ronald. Both of these brothers had offspring but for each of them it was later in life. Extremely late for Hugh. He never married but named his daughter in his will. By my calculations he would have been about 65 when she was born.

Ronald also became a father later in life as he was 46 when he married. His bride, Mary Campbell, was 25. Quite an age difference. One thing I didn't notice until I looked at their marriage entry closely a few days ago was that both Ronald's mother Flora and Mary's mother Margaret had the same maiden surname, Gilchrist. Was there a possible family connection between the two mothers? Something worth looking into further.

Sources:

ScotlandsPeople 1879 marriage entry for Ronald Hunter and Mary Campbell

The Hunter family of Glenegedale

 

                                                                    Islay Airport, Glenegedale, Islay, Scotland

In past genealogical research, most of the family lines I followed led me back further in time, going back generation by generation following one particular person or couple each time. Those were the people I wanted to know about. What did I care if they had 10 siblings or none? Of course, with the advent of DNA testing, that type of research has changed. Now we want to know more about the whole family, all of the children and back in those days there could be a large number of offspring.

I strayed further afield when researching the Hunter family of Glenegedale. That was partly because I didn't find a baptismal or birth record for Mary Hunter, my 3 x great grandmother. (I eventually proved her parentage to my satisfaction by using the Scottish naming pattern.) It was also because there are lots of records related to Islay especially for families that stayed on the land and Hunters from this family lived in Glenegedale for generations. I was able to follow the names and the land through resources like The Day Book of Daniel Campbell of Shawfield 1767 as well as by using other information found on LDS films.

Sadly, I was unable to walk the land that my ancestors farmed through all those generations. The yearly valuation records for the land showed how the last Hunter tenant was gradually eased off the land to make way for the Islay Airport. 

My blog posts for June 4, 2022 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2022/06/ and November 11, 2018 https://genihistorypath.blogspot.com/2018/11/ mention my use of valuation rolls to find out about the Hunter tenancy on the land in Glenegedale.

Looking back at old research

 

                                                                    A scenic view on Islay

The first family I started my research with were the Gilchrists. It was my maternal grandmother's maiden name and I knew that her sister, my great aunt Peg, had done research on the family back in the day. That was in the days before computers were a thing. In her quest for information she traced them back to Islay and even visited there. Unfortunately, I don't know what she found there because her research wasn't saved or at least, if it was, I have no idea where it is.

Still, as a family to begin with in the infancy of the internet the Gilchrists were a good one. The OPRs (Old Parish Registers) were available at my local Family History Centre. I think they were on microfiche kept in the actual centre so they didn't have to be ordered from Salt Lake. It was on the OPRs that I found the marriage of James Gilchrist and Mary Hunter, my 3 x great grandparents.

I have no idea if Auntie Peg even got as far as the marriage entry with her research. However, I do know that she visited Islay where her grandparents came from. I have a postcard that shows the hotel where she stayed and, on my first visit to Islay, I stayed there as well. So, in a way, her research did inspire mine.