May 14, 2015

SLC Trip Day #7: The Inglis Connection

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So, I spent the majority of the night of day #6 searching Google Books, the Archive.org, the website of the University of Glasgow and what felt like a billion other possibilities. I came away with a tremendous amount of information about the Inglis family including Rev. Hary Inglis’ marriage to Mary Bryce and the transcription and film numbers for their children’s baptisms. But I didn’t find the connection. And so armed with every ecclesiastical biography I could find I started day #7 chasing Inglis’ and the hint of an Alison connection.

FastiEcclesiaeScoticanaep212It took me all morning and the rediscovering of a brief biography that had actually been among the first I’d found. [Note to self (YET AGAIN) and all interested… make sure you go line by line through a document.  Skimming might mean you miss the clue you’re looking for.] In the Fasti ecclesiae scoticanae, in a successional list of Forteviot ministers I found Hary and a brief summary of his life including notes on both of his wives the widow of Mr. Maxton and Mary Bryce the widow of Alison of Tofthill.

A quick spin in FamilySearch.org offered indexed listings for the marriage of Charles Alison and Mary Bryce on 05 Oct 1747 as well as the birth of their son, Charles in Nov of 1750. Dates are lining up neatly! I also have already noted that Hary’s son John (my Harry Alison’s uncle) started his career in the church at Tibbermore and his bio appears later in the Fasti ecclesiae—followed immediately by his successor, Thomas Taylor whom married Harry’s sister, Mary Alison. Everyone’s in the right place at the right time.

AlisonBryceMg

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I spent the rest of the day pulling together the original baptismal and marriage records and building a better picture of the families. And as always it leads to more questions about the Bryces, Alisons, and the other connections listed in Harry’s memorials–like Lord Melville and Baron Montcreiff who appear to have been instrumental in Harry’s joining the British Army.

All in all it was a very successful day and a fabulous way to close my Salt Lake trip! I can’t wait to go back again!

Happy hunting!

Jess

 

May 11, 2015

SLC Trip Day #6: The Rev. Dr. John Inglis

Posted by JessLibrarian under Roadtrips | Tags: , , , , |
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I went into my second to last day with a long list of things to hunt down and copy. But I was very prepared—mostly I’d been through indexes so I had mapped out where in the original documents I needed to go. It worked so well that the list I thought would take me through the rest of my stay was done by lunch—even with the wonky print server. So the rest of the afternoon was spent working on a nagging idea.

Many of Captain Harry Alison’s memorials (such as these ones here and here) detail the sponsorship of his relatives, Dr. Inglis of Greyfriars (sometimes called his uncle) and Baron Moncrief, in helping him get started in his military career. So, I spent a bit of time noodling out just who these men were. Dr. Inglis was my primary target as more than one source explicitly describes him as an uncle. So I spent the afternoon looking into the Inglis family.

GlencorseResearching the Rev. Dr. Inglis, in full, the Reverend Doctor John Inglis was very interesting as he is from a very large and prominent family of overachievers. John served as a Minister of Greyfriars, in Edinburgh, Scotland from 1799 until his death in 1832. He was a mix of politician and clergyman also serving a Dean of Chapel Royal appointed by George III until his death. In Edinburgh he married Maria Moxham Passmore and they had four sons and a daughter. One of the sons, John Inglis, later Lord Glencorse, served as the Chancellor of the University of Edinburgh and Lord-Justice General of Scotland appointed by Queen Victoria. Lofty friends for Harry! But following out this line was wandering a bit far of field considering I had no solid connection to them.

But reaching back farther into his career, I found that Dr. Inglis was first ordained in Tibbermore Parish in Perthshire and that’s where his story starts to cross the Alisons. This was the parish in which Harry’s mother, Jean Maxton, was baptized. Better yet, Inglis was the youngest son of a Hary Inglis, minister of Forteviot, Perthshire—where Harry was baptized.

And the closing messages started up. So I gathered my stuff and headed out with questions buzzing around in my head.

To be continued…

Happy hunting,

Jess

Image from The Peerage, Baronetage, and Knightage, of Great Britain and Ireland for 1863.