The Mystery
In a trip to the Meigle churchyard in 2000, my wife and I used the gravesite map to find the burial plots for the Meigle line Wightons. Included within our list of sites to find was one for Janet Wighton (Generation 4, born 1791, died 1875). The records revealed that the plot had been purchased in June 1875 by Janet's nephew, John Wighton who was living in a house named Pictillum. I assumed that the John Wighton who purchased the plot was John Baxter Wighton (Generation 5, 1823-1890), who we knew was working for some estates in the area at the time. We subsequently discovered this Pictillum house halfway between Meigle and Alyth, took pictures of it, and assumed that we had found the earliest known, still standing residence of the Wighton family. Later, we found the gravesite easily enough but were surprised at the stone that was on top of it. Instead of the stone reading Janet Wighton, it read John Wighton. The grave registry indicated that this John Wighton had been interred October 28, 1911 and he had been 74 years old when he died. Here's the reason we were so surprised: there were no John Wightons in our line that could have been in that grave. All of the John Wighton's in the Meigle line were accounted for. So, I asked myself, who was this John Wighton interloper who had been buried above our Janet Wighton?
Clue #1
In our collection of family documents, we have a handwritten letter from Amy Louise Hutcheon Wighton, wife of John Murray Wighton (Generation 6) to her grandchildren, John Latta Wighton and Ella Peterson (Generation 8). John and Ella had asked their grandmother for some family history and this 1939 letter was the response. This passage caught my eye at the time. Amy Wighton wrote:
| A farmer named Wighton got very friendly with Grandfather Wighton when he was a factor for some of the estates in Angus and Perthshire. They tried to trace back to see if they were of the same stock and they were really very like each other. |
Clue #2
The grandfather/factor Amy Wighton was referring to was her father-in-law John Baxter Wighton, born in 1823. I told my cousin (Margaret Serzans, Generation 9) about the mystery of the unknown John Wighton and the reference to him in our great-grandmother's letter. She proceeded to find the 1881 census for Pictillum. The census data were as follows: John Wighton, unmarried, age = 52, birth parish = Kirkmichael, farmer of 92 acres employing 2 boys and 2 women. The other inhabitants of Pictillum were named as well - none were Wightons.
So, the John Wighton resting above Janet Wighton was likely John Baxter Wighton's close farmer friend. According to the 1881 census, John Wighton the Kirkmichael farming friend of John Baxter Wighton was born around 1829. I assumed, (incorrectly as it turned out) that John Baxter Wighton had offered him a berth in the grave that John Baxter had purchased for his Aunt, Janet Wighton. Mystery solved!
But that left a second mystery to be pursued. Were John Baxter Wighton and the farmer John Wighton of Kirkmichael related? They had certainly wondered about that. I thought it unlikely that I could find the answer to the mystery that apparently (?) they could not. But, it's difficult to know how much the two were aware of their family background, and I did have access to data going all the way back to Generation 1, so I thought it worth a try.
Sherlock Wighton is on the Case!
First, let's talk about Kirkmichael. Kirkmichael is both a village and a parish. The village of Kirkmichael is about 15-20 miles north-west of Meigle, and given the roads of that era, the actual distance was probably much greater. The village of Kirkmichael is located in the north of Kirkmichael parish and is considered a highland town. The farming is not particularly great there. The parish is shaped like a parallelogram with the long sides (approximately 17 miles long) oriented in the north-south direction. The short sides are 6-7 miles wide. The parish's southern border is not all that far from Alyth. To set the geography therefore, if you started at Meigle and traveled about 2 miles north-west, you'd get to the estate house Pictillum; a further 2 miles north-west would take you to the village of Alyth. Another 5 miles (?) and you'd be in the parish of Kirkmichael. If the unknown John Wighton had been born in the southern portion of Kirkmichael parish, he would have been approximately only 10 miles away from Meigle.
I found Kirkmichael's records of the farmer John Wighton's birth quite easily since he was the only Wighton born in Kirkmichael after 1800. He was born in July, 1828. (This meant that the 1881 census putting his age at 52 was correct. The gravestone's age of 74 was incorrect, but John died with no family who could attest to his correct age which would have been around 83.) John's parents were Henry Weighton (b.1795 in Kirkmichael) and Betty McDonald. John's grandfather was James Wighton, his grandmother was Janet Robertson, and they were married in 1790 and had two daughters in addition to Henry. The names James Wighton and Janet Robertson will ring a bell if you've just finished reading the biography of James Wighton (Generation 3) of Meigle. In that biography, I considered the possibility that James Wighton of Meigle had married Janet Robertson in Kirkmichael in 1790. I had discarded that possibility because there already was a James Wighton living in Kirkmichael. I had thought James of Kirkmichael was a better candidate to be marrying Janet Robertson of Kirkmichael than James Wighton of Meigle. But, that conclusion was formed before I had found out about the intriguing similarity between John Baxter Wighton and John Wighton, the farmer from Kirkmichael. Were they similar because they were related? They very easily could be similar in appearance if it was James Wighton of Meigle who married Janet Robertson in Kirkmichael because that would mean that they shared the same great-grandfather, namely William Wighton.
Could this have happened? It's pretty flimsy concluding that James Wighton of Meigle and Janet Robertson of Kirkmichael were married because their grandson John looked very much like John Baxter Wighton from the Meigle line. So, I did one final check on the Kirkmichael line - looking for anything that might provide a clue. Had I found every possible Wighton marriage in Kirkmichael? Had I found every possible Wighton birth in Kirkmichael? The answer to one of those questions was No.
One of the problems about using searchable databases is that they have certain restrictions on how you can do your search. This can mean that some data might not get retrieved if you don't pose exactly the right question. So, instead of re-searching the database, I went to the full parish listing of all the marriages in Kirkmichael. Then, I just read the file looking for every possible spelling of Wighton. Nothing new came up. Then, I did the same thing for the christenings. I found one entry that would have been next to impossible to retrieve from an electronic database.
I found that on February 25, 1793, an unnamed Wightan son was born to a James Wightan and May McNab in Kirkmichael. (Note the rare spelling of our surname). I had not found any reference to this James Wighton/May McNab couple before, but that birth meant that there likely had been two James Wighton marriages in Kirkmichael, not just one marriage as I had thought. One James Wighton married May McNab around 1792 and another James Wighton married Janet Robertson in 1790. (The fact that both May and Janet had a child within 9 months of each other in 1793 meant that it was unlikely that they were married to the same James Wighton.) Searching the marriage records hadn't worked because James and May's marriage wasn't recorded anywhere in Scotland. Finding the couple's presence in Kirkmichael through the baptismal records of their child was made quite difficult because of the absence of the child's first name.
Knowing that there were two James Wightons who were married in Kirkmichael within one or two years of each other changes the reasoning considerably. Having two marriages in Kirkmichael and only one local groom candidate meant that at least one of the grooms had to be born outside of the parish. Theoretically, it could have been James Wighton of Glamis or James Wighton from Dundee. But, the similarity of appearance between John the farmer and John the factor adds a certain credibility to the theory that it was the Meigle James who married Janet Robertson. Here's the way the genealogical table would look if you agreed with this theory.