James Young on Repeat

The evening of Mother’s Day brought some research time.  Some super fabulous, tree growing, exciting research time.  See the end of the Young line up there?  The couple handily highlighted in yellow with an asterisk?  James Young and Janet Robertson?  Yes them.

They did not use to be there!

 

Their son, James Young was my previous end of line individual.  The last time I worked on him was many years ago when I was a fresh faced, tentative researcher.  I had gently attempted to find his death record and was quickly overwhelmed with the sheer number of James Youngs there are in Scotland.  I set it aside for other research projects.

Well, last week I was tidying up some things in Family Tree on FamilySearch and noticed that someone had made a mess with James Young (1824-1895).  I cleaned up the mess and began sourcing James and his family.  Sunday evening I completed attaching the sources I had for James.  I decided to re-look at my previous searches for his death record.  They were not good.  I didn’t use very good search parameters and the results were massive.  No wonder I set it aside.  I’m older, wiser and a far more seasoned researcher now.  So I started a new search and found his death record on scotlandspeople after purchasing one list and one record – that came to $2.37 for a long desired death record.  His death record contained exactly what I needed to verify it was a record for my James and it had his parent’s names!  I just pushed my Young line back another generation!!  I was able to go on and find his birth record in the OPR (Old Parish Registers) and a possible match for him with his parents and siblings in the 1841 Scottish Census.

Hooray!

But seriously?!  Another James Young?  And Janet Robertson?  Oh boy.  Where are the unusual names when I could use them?

It seems I descend from a loooong line of James Youngs.  My great grandmother Mary Brown Young even had a brother named James Young who died at the age of 7.  The name James Young stopped there for my line.  That is FIVE James Youngs in a row that I know of.  I descend from lots of oldest sons.  I wonder if my new James Young is also the son of a James Young?

I plan to find out.

Do you have any lines with common names repeating for multiple generations?

 

note – I have been meaning to write a post about scotlandspeople for many months now.  It is one of my FAVORITE websites.  This post is reawakening the niggling.  I need to do that.  But May is a very busy month for me so in the meantime, if you have Scottish ancestors and you have never used scotlandspeople – IT IS FABULOUS, give it a try!