George and Jean
Here is where our Buchan Family begins
Traditional family history research found George Buchan and Jean Johnson through the birth, marriage and death records on ScotlandsPeople and earlier repositories. The family were in Borthwick just south of Edinburgh.
In 2022 I set out to create the most complete family tree possible descending from this couple using online trees and ScotlandsPeople. These resources do not show people who are still living, and are therefore very limited for connecting DNA matches (who are most definitely still living) to the variously published family pedigrees.
DNA companies have developed methods to try to bridge this divide - messaging platforms and clustering tools. I have used all of these to develop the Buchans of Borthwick family tree to its current degree, which can be found on Ancestry at McGuiness Ellison Working Tree 2023.
I have found more DNA matches amongst Robert's descendants because I know these Australian families in much more detail than what I have yet found for the other children. I hope my collaborators from other lines will help me connect up more DNA matches. In mid 2023 I found the first DNA match back to son Andrew. At July 2022, this is where we were:
It is clear that the more siblings in a family, the more descendants over time. In the next generation 10 of George's 11 children had families, all of Isabella's 6 children, and all of Robert's 9 children. But only 3 of William's 4 children had families, only 2 of Andrew's 3 children and 5 of Alexander's 7 children had families. This probably explains why as yet we have no matches from the lines of William or Alexander. A close examination of these early generations commonly finds that only one child in a family had descendants, and in both Williams and Alexander's families, several lines simply end.
Who were George and Jean?
George was a wright/sawyer or forrester living in Newlandrig, Borthwick Parish, Midlothian between about 1800 and 1818 when he died. The family were originally living in the nearby village of Dewarton, but were in Newlandrig by 1808. George and Jean had nine children, those listed above and an infant son who died in 1808. Newlandrig is a tiny village where James, as oldest son, kept a home that housed his mother, siblings, grand nephews and nieces at varying times between 1841 and 1881. His youngest sister Helen, who had lived with him all her life, was the head of the family in 1891. She was the last of the siblings to die, still housing her siblings' descendants.
George died in 1818 and was buried in Newbattle Parish. I am now working on the hypothesis that George was the son of the only Buchan family in Newbattle Parish. It was customary to be buried in the parish where your father's family was from, as there was a fair amount of internal migration (according to the New Statistical Account for Borthwick, 1839).
Jean was buried as Jean Johnston in Newbattle in 1849. There is no information about cause of death on these burial records, though it is noted that the informant for Jean's burial is her son Robert Buchan.
Site of Newbattle Cemetery on Newbattle Rd, now in Dalkeith
The children James, Isabella, Andrew and Helen all lived and died in Newlandrig, all living long lives. William moved to Edinburgh working as a joiner, where he was the first of the adult children to die in 1865. George and Robert both died while working at the Lingerwood Colliery in Newbattle Parish. Alexander worked for the railways and died in Roxburghshire.
Look out for posts focused on each of these early Buchans.
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