Who are the parents of George and Jean?

After the initial success of finding which Buchan family my emigrant Robert Buchan belonged to, the goal of my DNA study was to identify the parents of George Buchan and Jean Johnston from the DNA of their descendants. 

George and Jean are my x4 great grandparents, both were born between 1770-1780. No document has yet been found that identifies their parents. Many researchers, including myself, propose that Jean is the daughter of James Johnston and Mary Bowstie. This couple had a daughter Jean baptised on 1 February 1780 in Temple Parish, Borthwick.  


Temple is a village and civil parish in Midlothian, lying immediately to the west of Borthwick, and about 6 km from Newlandrig. Their address is provided as "Slabs Greenh[ouse?]" and as yet I have not found a similar place on any map. Findmypast has transcribed the date of baptism as 14 February 1780. I think the correct date might be 17 February, reading the text on the document as "James Johnston and Mary Bostie in Slabsgreenh a daughter bapt and named Jean, Witns James and Thomas Johns[ton]. NB the reason of this irregular date was because the child's name was not given in until after Feby 15!!" 

Yes two exclamation marks. Two boys are baptised on the 15 February above Jean, and the next child was baptised on February 23rd.

This is the only Jean Johnston whose birth record is extant born in about 1780 in Midlothian, but that does not mean it is the correct person.

There is no marriage between a George Buchan and a Jean Johnston on ScotlandsPeople but as we know perhaps 50% or more of marriages were irregular, ie there was no church ceremony, or the ceremony was in a church that did not keep records; or the ceremony was in a church whose records have been lost.

In a previous post I proposed that George Buchan of Dewarton and Newlandrig, was almost certainly related to the Newbattle Buchans who lived in Easthouses, just three kms from Newlandrig (Dewarton is three and a half kms from Easthouses).  So it is also feasible that George might have met a woman born in the neighbouring parish.

So how might DNA help identify the families of George and Jean?

From the people who shared their DNA match lists with me, I was able to identify (and label) all their matches who were Buchan matches. Since I started with the DNA match list of my father's first cousin (Pat), I could identify all the Australian born descendants of my Robert Buchan somewhat easily. There are 50+ of us. I could identify them not because I knew their names, but because they shared pieces of DNA with Pat that non-Australian descendants of George and Jean shared with Pat. Every person who shared their DNA list with me widened the number of people who had bits of George and Jean's DNA in them. I find this reality mind-blowing.

So with seven Australian's lists, and eight non-Australian's list all searched for people with matching pieces of DNA, I found over 500 people. But I can only place 120-ish of them as direct descendants of George and Jean. Undoubtedly the lack of trees of some of these matches who might still be direct descendants of George and Jean has stopped me from identifying them as such. 

But lets say that is only 200 people at a maximum. The remaining 300-ish people are probably descendants of George's siblings or Jean's siblings. If I can only link some of the 300 people to each other - then I might be able to find common ancestors for them. After all these ancestors are the same generation as George and Jean, and I have been able to trace 120-ish people back to George and Jean!

Here is the rub (as we Australians say). The DNA that these 300 matches share has actually come from either George's parents or from Jean's parents. In other words they will likely have only HALF the amount of DNA that George and Jean's descendants share amongst themselves. Making it TWICE as hard to identify them.

For this reason I have tried very hard to convince people who are the generation closer to George and Jean than I am, to share their match list with me. I have identified 14 people on Ancestry and MyHeritage who are the closest generation to George and Jean who are alive to have taken a DNA test. My father's cousin Pat was 93 when she tested. So far four of these 12 people have shared their match lists with me, and I know that another three of them have died. That leaves maybe 7 people who may still be alive who I can contact to ask to share their match list. I have contacted them all so far without success, but I am still hoping.

Breaking news - one of the seven has shared her match list with me! About six more to go.

Time to do this analysis

In 2023 I turned my attention to a different family line. Now I am back on the Buchans. It would not surprise anyone to know that very few DNA test takers know their pedigree, correctly, back to their x4 or x5 great grandparents. But this is what is needed to trace at least a good number of matches back to either Buchans or Johnstons in late 18th century Scotland. How many is a good number? I would like more than twenty to be convincing.

These matches are going to be at the bottom of the Ancestry list, and thus far I have not added in MyHeritage, 23andMe or Living DNA matches into this big match list.  Although I have put them on the Buchan DNA tree.

Proposing the Buchan family of Newbattle (and Dalkeith) as possibly related to us, I have spent a lot of time doing 'Descendancy research' on these Buchan families. All that I learn I have added to my Ancestry tree, McGuiness Ellison Working Tree 2023, which is public.
See the Big Documentation Push to find out how I am going about becoming confident that the families I will be looking for in the 300-strong group are the correct ones. 

I have no handle on the Johnston families. James Johnston and Mary Bowstie had one other daughter according to ScotlandPeople records, and she married a Brotherton. So far no match mentions Brotherton in their pedigrees. But we are a long way back now, and I am hoping that they just don't know their pedigrees well enough. A large Johnston family lived next door to the Buchans in Newlandrig, but I do not think any of the children have descendants!

Breaking news - I found a match named Brotherton on Gedmatch on 1 July 2024 - yet to be further investigated.

The steps I will take are these:
  • rank the 300-ish match list by cM value
  • rank them then by availability of trees
  • from the top, work back their Scottish lines (if there are any) to Midlothian in particular, but also to Aberdeen, Perthshire or Angus where most Buchans come from
  • As soon as I can link two separate matches together, ie to a common ancestral couple, I will focus on that couple to push them back to the necessary time frame
  • 300+ is a lot of matches, but there is no other way
  • I could propose that half are Buchan and half are Johnston, so I could look for which matches seem to share the same piece of DNA, since it will often be just one piece of DNA at such low cM levels. If I can 'clump' together any of them in this way I could focus on that small group
As I write this late June 2024, I am still waiting to receive the "matches of matches" information that is being rolled out by Ancestry. How this might help me I am not sure.


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