The Expanding Buchan Study in 2025

Reconnecting to my Scottish roots has spiralled out of control! 

Firstly I just wanted to find the parents of my x2 great-grandfather Robert Buchan who left Scotland aged about 18 years, for Melbourne, Australia in 1852. After all I had their names from Robert’s marriage and death certificates in Australia – Robert Buchan and Janet “McCray”. Yet I could not find their marriage, their child Robert's baptism or a death record for either of this couple. There were plenty of Robert Buchans, but which was mine? As you'll see by the end of this post, I have now embarked on a world-wide Buchan DNA study, which by necessity needs a complete family tree down to the present day.

In 2022 I focused on this question using the DNA of my father’s first cousin, Pat, a lady born in 1924. Robert and Janet were her x2 great grandparents, as she was a generation closer to them than I was. The techniques used to ‘isolate’ DNA that came from Robert and Janet were to:

1) build a genetic network of people related to known Buchan cousins in Australia, 

2) identify and remove people who were in that group because they had DNA that related to Robert’s wife, Margaret Bain, and 

3) look at the shared matches of the remaining matches who should theoretically only have in common ‘Buchan DNA’ to see how they are connected to each other.

My success is due to using the techniques taught by American genetic genealogist Diahan Southard, and freely described on her website https://www.yourdnaguide.com/, her youtube channel, and especially her blog, https://www.yourdnaguide.com/ydgblog. I highly recommend them.

In her process I found Best Known Matches = descendants of Robert Buchan and Margaret Bain (there were about 6 key people who were of a closer generation to Robert and Margaret than me and therefore had more of their DNA than I likely did); then I created a genetic network with all the people who were their shared matches; then I split the Bain DNA from the network; the resulting Best Mystery Matches were people who had Buchan DNA (and could not be Australian as these likely had Bain DNA); I looked to find what generation they might have connected with Pat, based on their birthdays, how big the match was and looking at their trees; finally the Do Genealogy part was looking for the death certificates to prove all my matches had the same common ancestors.

The Plan (for solving mysteries with DNA) taught by Diahan Southard.

Finding the people in Pat's match list who had only Buchan DNA

So by the time I was at Best Mystery Matches in The Plan, I began with a group of just five matches. Three were connected by being descendants of Isabella and Daniel Inglis in Borthwick, Midlothian. Isabella’s maiden name was Buchan. One of these trees had just four names but one was Inglis! A fourth was a man with the surname Buchan, whose ancestor was a George Buchan who was born in the early 1800s. I looked firstly at George Buchan and found his death certificate on an Ancestry tree, and this provided the names of his parents – George Buchan and Jean Johnston. I found Isabella’s death certificate, and she had the same parents. I remember wondering if Isabella and George had a brother named Robert. I have since learned quite a few ways I could have searched Scotlands People to answer that. Instead I made the connection by noticing that the informant on George’s death certificate was his brother, Robert Buchan! When I bought Robert’s death certificate from the Scotland's People website, to my great joy, his parents were the same.

The simplicity and beauty of these strategies taking me straight to my Robert’s father and his Buchan grandparents, set me on a path of finding all descendants of George and Jean who had taken a DNA test. Over the next six or so months I had gathered nearly 100 of their descendants who matched each other in some way. I had gathered 12 people’s match lists to generate this list. They included a retired Scottish Church minister, a retired civil engineer (English), a retired astrophysicist (Scottish), an American, a Canadian, myself and two siblings, my father’s cousin and three other Australian relatives.

And then I found a descendant who did not match the 100+ strong network. I asked her father to test, to have more DNA to work with, and he did not match anyone in the network. It was the beginning of learning to study unexpected results. I later helped two matches find their biological fathers, and earlier ancestors; and in the case of HB I found her Buchan ancestor’s baptism and the marriage and death of that child’s mother. The child had taken the name of Buchan after her mother’s death, but her baptism recorded her as illegitimate in a Minor Church, with no father being acknowledged.  However it was clear that the Buchan name was well known to the child and was carried on through the generations even unto HB’s mother.

Today I have 19 collaborators who have shared their Ancestry.com match list with me, and found another 10 people whose DNA is available on other databases. I now have identified over 200 direct DNA descendants of George and Jean, and have well over 400 matches who some-how are related to this couple further back in time. it is through finding their connections to each other that I hope to George's and Jean's parents. 

Expanding the study beyond DNA

Making DNA connections was not enough. My research goals from 2024 were:

1.   to find every descendant of George and Jean

2. explore the potential origins of the Buchans of Borthwick

2.  to find every death record for descendants in Scotland looking at two key facts, their occupation and cause of death

3. document the emigration pathways of the Buchans of Borthwick

4. continue the study blog, and

5. two continuing DNA studies: 

1) who were the parents of Janet McRae? 

2) who were the parents of both George Buchan and Jean Johnston

Genealogy Tourism and research trips

I travelled to Midlothian in May 2024. There I found the burial place of Robert, his wife, his siblings James and Helen, his daughter Isabella and others in Newbattle Churchyard. Also in these plots was a Jane Brown nee McRae/McCree/Cree. Jane had a sister named Janet born in 1817, who would have been 17-18 at the time Robert was born in 1833-4. Could she be Robert’s mother? Thus, I have now two new surnames to look for in the match lists in the McRae Genetic Network. Finding DNA matches to McRae/McCree/Cree and Shaw in the network will prove that my Janet McRae is the sister of the woman in Newbattle Churchyard. 

I will travel back to Midlothian in 2025, spending more time in the rural villages where the Buchans lived. I plan to knock on doors in Newlandrig to find some-one who knows some of the history of the village; "an ancient one" according to the author of the Old Statistical Account of Borthwick. Spending time at several Scotland's People Centres completing the Scottish born descendants at least. I'll attend meetings of the Lothian Family History Society and hopefully meet a few more relatives. I plan to search the National Library of Scotland, the Edinburgh Archives and continue my search for the records of the Vogrie Estate.

Look for all these searches and discoveries on this blog!

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