Geneology - What's yours?

[cessna152towser]

My ancestry has been difficult to trace as one set of great grandparents were Irish and many of the old Irish records have been destroyed. The other three sets of great grandparents were weaving families from Paisley, Scotland. In Scotland, unless your ancestors were rich or famous, or owned land, it is usually very difficult to find any definite information prior to the start of census records in 1841 or statutory birth death and marriage records in 1855. Older Parish Records are often incomplete and where they do exist, the information given in many parishes is insufficient to enable you to be sure whether you have found the right person or a namesake. I did get lucky with one line, finding a great-great-great-grandmother Jane Hamilton who lived till February 1855, just long enough to have a statutory death record which gave names for her parents Robert Hamilton and Janet BELL. They are mentioned in a number of Old Parish Records from which I have been able to find out something about them. They were married in Glasgow in 1763 while Robert Hamilton was a soldier. Between 1767 and 1771 he left the army and became a weaver. Between 1773 and 1776 the family moved from Glasgow to Paisley. They had ten children, at least four of whom died in infancy. The bride's father was Daniel Bell, who was also a witness to the baptism of their first child. Daniel Bell as a 5 x great grandfather is my earliest confirmed ancestor, he would have been born about 1710 to 1720. I have been unable to prove or disprove whether this is the same Daniel Bell from Lesmahagow in Lanarkshire who fathered a daughter Janet Bell in 1742. If I could confirm this then I could go back a further three generations as that family were farmers and were well documented in local records. So yes I share BELL ancestry.
I also have MacKenzie, Cunningham, Gardner, Gilchrist, Knox, Fleming,Tait and Fraser lineage on my father's side and McLeod, McAllister, Wallace and Wilson lines on my mother's side.