The basic ways:Mary Kate wrote: Thinking of brothers, I don't have any family paperwork about the Ballintines, is there any way that far back to see what children Thomas and Catherine had???
a. census information ~
From 1841, looks like there was a daughter Marion. From 1851, looks like there must have been at least two daughters, one who married a Henderson and one who married a Cunningham. {Note: slight chance that one or both of the granddaughters named Marion were illegitimate daughters of sons, using the mother's surname. Most cases I've seen, the children lived with the maternal grandparents, but that's not decisive enough to rule the possibility out.} Was daughter Marion the mother of one of the two granddaughters listed? Almost certainly not the 16 yo old Marion Henderson, but there's an outside chance she's the mother of Marion Cunningham. Had their mothers died by 1851 or were the granddaughters living with Thomas and Catherine to help out? Likely worth looking for marriage records for Ballantine brides marrying men with those family names.....
b. finding baptismal records for other children
c. finding other people with the same family name in the area (especially if the first names are ones used in the family), then finding marriage/death records to confirm that they are children of Thomas and Catherine
When you are dealing with this era, you want to find all the possible records on a person. Death records have later dates (such an obvious statement....
) but sometimes the informant didn't know the information or gets it wrong (my great-grandfather had the wrong name for his grandfather on his father's death record, but the grandfather had died well before my great grandfather was born, so that's not too surprising) ~ but always, always worth looking for the records, especially if it's 1855 or later.