Half Seventeen Cottage - A place for family to stay connected.

Another note: Researching is essentially is reaching backwards from what you know hoping to find what logically should be there. As Sherlock Holmes famously said "when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Genealogically speaking, each person must to be verified three times before they're considered proven.

This means searching through census; birth, death and marriage registrations; graveyards; cemetery, land registry, probate, civil & criminal court, military, guild records and more; obituaries, newspaper archives, regional historical accounts & books, etc. Add wars, famines, wide spread disease, new world opportunities, and the thronging masses - research road blocks are inevitable. So, when a mystery gives itself up, it's very exciting.

The mystery of the McLuskys, for us, began in June '04 in the Edinburgh records office when we discovered Mary Ann as James Fisher's wife.

Meticulously plodding backwards, it seemed as if the McLusky family suddenly came apart but I didn't know why. In a similar Essey (Dad's family) situation, I eventually discovered tuberculosis caused a family to scatter and one entire branch to die in short order. I looked for that sort of cause.

Between the 1841 and 1851 Scottish census', Dennis with wife, Catherine, and son, Thomas (born Ireland c. 1836) left Ireland for Scotland.

Beginning in 1845 and lasting for six years, the potato famine killed over a million men, women and children in Ireland and caused another million to flee the country. http://www.historyplace.com/worldhistory/famine/introduction.htm

We know that his parents, Thomas, a small farmer, and his wife Martha (nee Donachy) McLusky died before 1862.

Ireland in the mid-1800s was an agricultural nation, populated by eight million persons who were among the poorest people in the Western World. Only about a quarter of the population could read and write. Life expectancy was short, just 40 years for men. The Irish married quite young, girls at 16, boys at 17 or 18, and tended to have large families, although infant mortality was also quite high.

A British survey in 1835 found half of the rural families in Ireland living in single-room, windowless mud cabins that didn't have chimneys. The people lived in small communal clusters, known as clachans, spread out among the beautiful countryside. Up to a dozen persons lived inside a cabin, sleeping in straw on the bare ground, sharing the place with the family's pig and chickens.

I assume Dennis and Catherine lived similarly before leaving Ireland for Scotland - probably fleeing the potato famine. A similar potato fungus was blamed for a lesser but still devasting Scottish Highland blight (1846-1857). Irish refugees, drawn by food ration support in Scotland that was non-existent in Ireland, were driven into Scotland's interior by threat of deportation.

1851 Scotland census - Dennis - working as a Hawker and Lodginghouse keeper - living in Stewarton with Catherine, Thomas, Mary Ann and baby Margaret. His lodgers are nearly all Irish.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/skudtz/McluskyDennisCensus1851cropped.jpg

1861 Scotland Census - Dennis, a watch and clock maker - still living in Stewarton with Catherine, Mary Ann, John, James and a "Doherty" boarder.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/skudtz/McLuskyDennisCensus1861cropped.jpg

In subsequent census searches for 1871, 1881, etc., Dennis vanished. In 1871, we found Catherine as head of the family:

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/skudtz/McLuskyCatherinecensus1871.jpg

Where did Dennis go? Possibilities - off visiting when the census was taken, working elsewhere but still part of the family, in military service, prison, hospital or possibly dead.

Mary Ann's and James Fisher's marriage reg'n, 18 Oct. 1872, Stewarton, lists both her parents as deceased.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/skudtz/1872MarriageRegFisherMcLusky.jpg

So we started digging for death reg'ns for both Catherine and Dennis. We found Catherine first, working forward from the 1871 census. Catherine, daughter of John (weaver) and Maggie (maiden name unknown) Docherty, both deceased, died 26 January 1872 at 20 Vennel Street, Stewarton - the widow of Dennis McLusky, watch and clock maker, reported by daughter Mary Ann McLusky who witnessed her death. The cause of death is unfortunately nearly illegible.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/skudtz/McluskyCatherineDeathRecord.jpg

So now we knew Dennis was dead - and probably died before the 1871 census. Searching from 1871 backwards, we found his death reg'n in 1862.

http://i49.photobucket.com/albums/f278/skudtz/McluskyDennisDeathRecord.jpg

Initially, I was just excited to finally know the answer to why he vanished. Then I looked closely at the cause of death - looking for any possible patterns. "Gun shot wound". It is hard to read but I kept seeing gun shot wound. I checked with Ian - he agreed - gun shot wound. In 25 years of research, that's a first for me. Dennis McLusky died 12 hours after being wounded, on January 2nd, 1862 at Townend Stewarton.

Ian started searching for library newspaper collections in Ayrshire. He made some phone calls to the U.K. and found the most wonderful Mr. Ian MacDonald who works with the local Museum Services. Mr. MacDonald and Ian exchanged a number of emails detailing where Mr. MacDonald might and had searched for any mention of Dennis McLusky's untimely death.

Mr. MacDonald spent considerable time going through several regional newspaper collections by hand in his spare time. This morning he sent us this:

"In the Stewarton News of January 11th there was the following news item; January 11th 1862

'FATAL ACCIDENT BY THE INCAUTIOUS USE OF FIREARMS

Between 1p.m. and 2p.m. of the New Year's Day, 1862, a number of drunken persons were competing for a prize at Townend, Stewarton, by shooting with powder and shot. While John Hawthorn, shoemaker, was discharging a gun, it burst and part of it struck Dennis McClusky, a watch and clock maker here, wounding him in the side, which resulted in his death at 2.31p.m. of the 2nd inst.

It is thought the gun was unsafe to use, and having been heavily loaded caused the explosion. Dr Gilmour was in immediate attendance on McClusky and from the first saw there was no hope for the unfortunate man, who became weaker and weaker until death put an end to his sufferings. He has left a wife and three children to mourn his untimely end.'

Trust this answers all your questions, except that he is listed as a clock and watchmaker. There were quite a few in the town at that time, although most of the workings were bought in from outside and they made the cases locally. This might explain why there is no gravestone as they would probably not be well paid.
Regards,
Ian H Mac "

posted by Anney @ 1:24 p.m.