First, let's set the scene. According to ALHW, Catherine's father came from western Scotland. This makes some sense because the Latta surname is Irish in origin. The map above left shows all of the shires (parishes) in Scotland. I found records of Latta families in the shires in the lower left hand corner of the map (above left): Ayrshire (pink), Renfrewshire above that, and Dunbarton (pink) above that.

The map above right is a closer look of the western shires. Ayrshire extends all the way up the coast from Girvan to Largs and inland to Kilmarnock, Mauchline and Cumnock. You can see a jagged red line enclosing all of those towns and I presume that to be the boundaries of Ayrshire. North of Ayrshire, you'll find the city of Renfrew which, fittingly, is in Renfrewshire. Greenock, on the coast is also in Renfrewshire. Dumbarton, on the north side of the Firth of Clyde, is in the parish of Dunbarton (with an N, and not a typing mistake). Notice the proximity of Glasgow to both Dumbarton and parts of Renfrewshire.

My first step was to get a sense of the distribution of Latta families at about the time that Catherine's father would have been born. I chose to do that by getting a list of all the Latta marriages in Scotland between 1785 and 1835. The largest population (32 marriages) was found in Ayrshire - confirming ALHW's comment that Latta is not an uncommon name in Ayrshire. These marriages were scattered throughout 15 little villages with the largest number of marriages (8) performed in Kilmarnock which you can see on the map, above right.

The second largest population of marriages (30) was found in Renfrewshire (directly north of Ayrshire). The majority of the marriages were performed in Paisley which is not visible on the map above. Paisley is on the south bank of the Clyde, about 9 miles southwest of Glasgow. It is now considered to be a Glasgow suburb.

A significant number of marriages (10) were performed in Dumbarton, north of the Clyde. Dumbarton is 19 miles west of Glasgow. Glasgow itself saw 9 Latta marriages.

If the Latta family had originated from Ireland and settled in Western Scotland as I suspect, by the 19th century, family members had spread all the way to the Atlantic. Fife had 23 Latta marriages and Edinburgh had 14. However, our attention is focused on the western shires where Catherine's father was reportedly born. So, I did another search for any Latta male who was born in the western shires, who married, and who then disappeared from the records. I realize that this is a narrow assumption. For example, Father Latta may not have married in Scotland. Or, Father Latta may have married, had one child, that child may have died, and then the family emigrated to Canada. Or, Father Latta's marriage may not have been recorded. Or, Father's Latta may have been born in the western shires but married somewhere else. So, the list of potential fathers to Catherine Latta that I'm going to produce below is probably only a subset of potential candidates. That said, I believe that I am pursuing the most likely set of assumptions (born in western Scotland (including Glasgow and Stirling), married there, and emigrated soon afterwards). Here's what I found.

Ayrshire

Thomas Latta and Janet Morton married in Kilmarnock, Ayr (in the red map, above) on December 5, 1828 and then disappeared from the records. Thomas was not born in Kilmarnock. It's possible that he was born to Thomas Latta and Jean Deans in Old Cumnock, also in Ayr, in 1794. That would make him 34 on his marriage and approximately 40 years old if Catherine was born in 1834.

Renfrewshire

Renfrew is a much smaller shire than Ayrshire in terms of geography, but it had much bigger density levels, with Paisley the key location for us. You'll notice how close Paisley is to Glasgow in the above map (i.e., 7 miles). At this point in the Industrial Revolution, Glasgow was in the midst of heavy industrialization, for example ship building and mining. Paisley in the early 19th Century, however, was growing primarily through textiles (printing, bleaching, cotton thread) and the name Paisley was given to the Kashmiri pattern of curving shapes found on silk and cotton fabric. I found evidence of 5 different Latta families raising children in Paisley between 1775 and 1800. There were no Lattas in the area before that. At around 1820, there were seven Latta marriages in Paisley and most of these have a presumable link back to the first generation. Six of these marriages produced no children born in Scotland and so they are eligible for our Catherine Latta father's sweepstakes award. I'll show all candidates below. (FYI: I conducted a search for Lattas throughout Renfrewshire and found no eligible candidates for Catherine's father outside of Paisley.)

1. Robert Latta and Agnes Glen were married in 1820 and then disappeared from the records. Robert might be considered Catherine's father because he may have been born in 1787 to Robert Latta and Marrion Pollock who named one of their children Catherine and another child John. This family had enough children for there to be an uncle and an aunt who lived in Halifax. The negative about this Robert Latta is his marriage came well before Catherine's birth.

2. John Latta and Catherine McAlpine were married in 1821. John and Robert (above) were brothers, so he has the same benefits of being part of a family with the name Catherine in the family. Plus, John's wife was named Catherine so there would be two reasons to bestow that name on the first daughter. It would also be fitting to name the son John after his father. However, John's marriage came well before Catherine's birth.

3. Alan Latta and Catherine Buchannon were married in 1821. I found no link between Alan and the previous generation of Lattas in Paisley. His candidacy is helped by having a wife named Catherine, but as with the other men above, an 1821 marriage is quite early for our purposes.

4. Robert Latta married Fanny Stalker in 1823. I found no link to a previous Paisley family and, as above, the 1823 wedding is quite early. The mother's name is intriguing because JBW and Catherine named their youngest child Fanny.

5. John Latta and Janet Cochrane are our next two candidates. They married in 1825 which, while better than the above Latta weddings, is still quite early for someone born between 1833-37. It's possible that John was born in Paisley in 1804, and if that were the case, his father would have also been named John. Three generations of John Lattas?

6. The strongest candidate coming out of Paisley is probably this sixth candidate: James Latta who married Helen Hart in 1832 in Paisley. However, that relatively close proximity to Catherine's presumed birth date is the only support for him being the father and that's quite weak.

All in all, there were lots of candidates in Paisley, but no compelling choice.

Dumbarton, in Dunbarton Shire

The above map of Dunbarton Shire shows the location of Dumbarton, north of the Clyde. (Glasgow is off the south-east corner of the map.) Note, Renfrewshire is on the south bank of the Clyde with Paisley in the south east portion of the map.

Unlike Paisley where the Latta's were recent newcomers, the Dumbarton Lattas had lived in the town/parish since at least 1739. There were six Generation 1 Latta families who married sometime between 1739 and 1752. Generation 2 consisted of 6 families who married between 1766 and 1785. Generation 3 is what we're really interested in because these would be the parents of Catherine's father. There were four Latta males (John, Robert, William, and William) who married between 1798 and 1805. Together they and their wives produced 26 children. I believe that all of these children are genetically related back to one or more of the families in Generation 1.

But, the number of Lattas in the town of Dumbarton is not the key story. The reason that Dumbarton is so interesting to us is the number of Catherine Lattas that are found in the family. The first Catherine in the Latta line was Katherine Lang who married James Latta in 1781. One of her six children was named Catherine. In the third generation, five more Catherine Lattas would appear. You may ask, Why is this significant? Surely, there were lots of Catherine Lattas around? To answer your question, I made a list all of the Catherine Lattas who were born throughout all of Scotland during my research period. It was a short list. Moreover, the large majority of the women on that list were born in Dumbarton. In other words, if you wanted to find a Catherine Latta in your genealogical history, your best bet would be to look in the town of Dumbarton.

But the Dumbarton tradition of naming a child Catherine did not start with Katherine Lang in 1781. It actually started in the Lang lineage when James Laing and Janet McAlpin named their daughter Katharine in 1677. After that, the Katherine Lang (or Catherine Lang) name would reappear in 1685, 1731, 1735, 1736, 1738, 1746, 1759, 1762, 1772, 1775, 1780, 1783, 1798, and 1816. Fifteen Katherine Langs in all. And six Catherine Lattas who followed. So, if you were a Dumbarton Latta man who had emigrated to Canada, and your first-born was a girl, do you think there might be an expectation that you should name her Catherine?

After eliminating the Latta males who married in Scotland and had children there, there are 2 possibilities, the first of them very intriguing.

From parents John Latta and Ann Lindsay:

• John Latta, born in 1802. It's probable that John married Sarah Lang of Dumbarton in 1828 but there is no record of any subsequent children. A wedding in 1828 would have given the couple ample time to emigrate to New Brunswick and have our Catherine in the 1833-1837 time frame. John Latta had three brothers, one of which probably married and had children in Scotland. That leaves Mathew (b. 1799) and James (1802) who could have emigrated to Halifax and adopted Catherine's brother. John also had a sister (Catherine, b. 1807) and there's no record of her marrying in Scotland. She could be the Aunt who adopted our Catherine's sister. If this indeed was Catherine's family, she would have had a Grandfather John, a father John, and a sibling John.

From parents Robert Latta and Henrietta Allison:

• James Latta, born in 1807 may have married Elizabeth McFarlane of Dumbarton in 1836 but there is no record of any children. A wedding in 1836 is cutting it very close, but they might have had our Catherine in 1837. James Latta (b. 1807) had three brothers (William, Robert, David) who might have become the uncle in Halifax. James also had two sisters (Catherine, Henrietta) one of whom might have been the Aunt in Halifax. However, I have doubts about this James. Although he was born in Dumbarton, his family moved to Greenock in 1813, and it would have been more likely for him to marry someone from Greenock.

So who was Catherine's father?

In my mind, there's only one strong candidate for our Catherine's father: John Latta, born 1802 in Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire. His parents were John Latta and Ann Lindsay. John married Sarah Lang in 1828 and then disappeared from the records. I like this John Latta because of the long history of Catherines in his family, the common appearance of the name John, and the relatively close proximity of the marriage to Catherine's possible birth year. One could also argue that Catherine Latta and John Baxter Wighton named their first born Ann, not only because JBW's mother's name was Ann, but because Catherine's grandmother's name was also Ann.

I should reiterate: I made a lot of assumptions in my search for Catherine's father and those assumptions took me down a relatively narrow search path. Any of the 8 candidates described in this essay could be Catherine's father. Furthermore, Catherine's father may have come from a Latta man who married in Scotland but escaped my screen because that marriage wasn't recorded or because he didn't marry in the parish where he was born. There were too many Lattas to be able to track them if they were born in one parish and married in another. In the absence of more information on Catherine's birth and/or information on her parents' arrival in Canada, all I can say is that her father might have been John Latta and her mother might have been Ann Lindsay.

Sources

ScotlandsPeople Database (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/)