Background: I've got a fairly complete picture of Francis McGee and Helen Cassidy after their marriage at St. Mary's Catholic Church, Edinburgh, 1848. He's born in Ireland (Donegal or Fermanagh, depending on which record I believe) while she's the daughter of Michael Cassidy and Mary Goodman, baptized at the same church in 1832. I've got them in various later censuses and details on several of their children, including my great-grandfather Peter who was adopted out, after his mother died and his older sister married and moved to Dundee.
So here's the mystery: In January 1855, Francis and Helen have a daughter named Helen, and Francis toddles off from Hastie's Close where they are living to comply with the new registration law.
What caught my eye: the next line, child born same day as Helen and registed the same day, with the same witness to their father's marks. It's a James Callaghan, son of Thomas Callaghan and Mary McGhie, also resident in Hastie's Close. Aha, I think..... Any chance Mary is related to Francis? If not, it is quite the coincidence.
James's entry says his parents were married in 1844 in Dundee. Thomas, age 30 in 1855, was born in Co. Cavan, Ireland, while Mary was 38 and born in Donegal. James is her 4th child, with the previous three all deceased.
When I was in Scotland a couple years ago, I founn their marriage record at the Catholic church in Dundee: 9 July 1844, witnessed by James Trainor and Mary Farrell.
Ancestry's 1851 census lists a Thomas 26 and Maria Kallican 25 at 89 Murraygate, Beattie Close, on the 1851 census, with a son Thomas aged 1 that might well be them. Hurrah for cenus searches that don't require a last name!
But I can't find them in the death records or later census returns.
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I've tried lots of combinations of spellings/Soundex/wildcards with no luck. Looked through the US census and immigration records, just in case, on the off chance that they immigrated and I'd manage to find them amongst all the possible spellings.And in my wilder moments
$ , I wonder if James and Helen were actually twins, with Francis and Helen not able to handle them and letting his sister and her husband adopt one. And in the really wild moments, I figure maybe someday I'll track down a direct male descendant of James to compare his DNA to the test my dad had done as a present for me.BJ
