James, William Wighton and Margaret Finlay's fourth child, was born March 8, 1767 in Potento and baptized March 15.

There is no record of any James Wighton marrying in Meigle during the appropriate time period (e.g., 1790-1800). However, unlike the situation with his older brother Patrick where there were no possible marriages anywhere in Scotland, such is not the case with James. There are three marriages where James theoretically could have been the husband. So, in theory, how does an amateur genealogist decide if a family member was involved in a marriage or not?

Let's take the easiest case first: Assume that someone from a small village has an unusual name like Wighton and marries another person in the same, small village. For example, we can be highly confident that our William Wighton was the William who married Margaret Finlay. First, Meigle had a limited number of Wightons. I found no other William Wightons in the records who could have been the groom. If I had, then I'd look at the ages. William married at the age of 26 - a most likely age. Had there been two Williams, and one was 18 and the other was 26 - the better candidate would have been the older William.

What happens if the marriage is between two people of different parishes? If you're lucky, the marriage bans will appear in both parishes. For example, the marriage of James Wighton and Margaret Forman (Generation 1) appeared in both Meigle and Newtyle. Since there were a very limited number of Wightons in Meigle, we can be confident that it was our James who married Margaret.

OK, so what happens if one of our Wightons was born in Meigle but didn't get married in Meigle. We don't know what happened to him. He may have died as a child. Or, given the turbulence of the Lowland Clearances, he may have simply relocated to another parish, where he got married and raised his family. If his name was something like Wildman Wighton, it would be quite easy to find him in the records. But what if he had one of the most common forenames for a Wighton, say something like John Wighton or James Wighton? How would we know what his new parish was? Even worse, what if a parish had three Wightons who were the same rough age as our Meigle Wighton. How could we determine if any of these three was our ancestor?

In this case, you look to the grandchildren. For example, our fourth generation ancestor, John Wighton, was born in Kettins. There was no subsequent record of a John Wighton marrying in Kettins. However, there was a John Wighton of the right age who married an Ann Baxter in nearby Alyth. John and Ann's first child was named John Baxter Wighton - obviously after the mother's side of the family. Child #2 was Barbara Baxter Wighton - same situation. Child #3 was named Elizabeth Taylor Wighton and that provided the essential link. The mother of the John Wighton who was born in Kettins was named Elizabeth Taylor. This name-link between grandchild and grandparent is solid confirmation that John Wighton of Kettins was the John Wighton who married Ann Baxter in Alyth.

By the end of the 18th century, all parishes were keeping birth/marriage data. And, by this time as well, most parishes were including the names of the mother in the birth records. Theoretically, that made it easier to track one's ancestors. However, the amateur genealogist no longer had the benefit of looking for an ancestor in the same village where previous ancestors had lived. This was the period of the Lowland Clearances, and the peasantry were being shuffled off their lands and being forced to relocate to who knows where. No longer could you count on a Meigle birth leading to a Meigle marriage leading to a Meigle birth leading to a Meigle marriage, and so on. The relocations were still relatively close by (e.g., Meigle, Coupar Angus, Newtyle, Kettins,) but there were still instances of births/marriages not being recorded that muddied the genealogical waters considerably. Also, it was generally impossible to know if a child had grown up and married in another parish or if he had died as an infant. (The one exception was when there were two children with the same first name in the family.) Also, it was still not common to give and record a child's middle name. The middle name would easily distinguish one James Wighton from another James Wighton. All of this meant that links from one generation to the next could be uncertain during this period.

So, that brings us to the situation of James Wighton, fourth child of a father who, by all accounts, was not farming his plot of land when James became an adult. James was born in 1767, and if he survived the threats of smallpox and other childhood diseases, his career prospects would have been impacted by the Lowland Clearances. If he lived to adulthood, it is entirely possible that he would have found no farming job in Meigle. Would he have tried to find another farming job in the villages near Meigle? Or, would he have moved to nearby Dundee and taken a different kind of job? Our challenge in locating our James Wighton is complicated by the fact that the name James was the first or second most popular male name in Scotland. For example, I found five James Wightons who were born within a few years of each other - all within the Angus and Perth regions of Scotland. Did they get married? Well, some of them did because there were three James Wighton marriages in Angus and Perth during the appropriate time period. Five potential grooms - three potential marriages. Which ones got married? Was James of Meigle one of them? He didn't get married in Meigle, but did he marry in another community?

I'll use a table to present the five grooms and the prospective three brides. Let me reiterate: all five of the James Wightons shown in the chart are legitimate candidates for being one of the grooms for these three marriages. They were born in the right period and they were born close to where the weddings were held. Unfortunately, I could find no name-link between grandmother and grandchild in any of the marriages. That missing piece of critical evidence is what made the search for our James' family so difficult.

This search for a marriage for James is a good example of the uncertainties involved in interpreting minimal data. It makes some sense, for example, to give the wedding nod to James of Kirkmichael in the Kirkmichael wedding simply because the Kirkmichael Wightons had lived in that village so long. But what if my reasoning was logical but wrong? What if there are some other data that might point to another interpretation? If so, we might have an answer to a Wighton family mystery. Click on The Mystery of the Unknown John Wighton to find out more. After you've finished reading the mystery, close that new window, come back to this page and continue reading about James.

This search for a marriage for James of Meigle is a good example of how difficult it can be to link generations together, especially when you have minimal data to work with. It was quite reasonable to assume that the James Wighton who married Janet Robertson in Kirkmichael was a James Wighton whose family had lived there for generations. But, if you've read the Mystery of the Unknown John Wighton, you'll see that James Wighton of Kirkmichael was probably not Janet Robertson's groom. Did James Wighton of Meigle moved to Kirkmichael to find work as part of the Lowland Clearances? Once there, did he meet Janet Robertson and raise a family? If so, and if we believe the solution to our family mystery, James Wighton of Meigle would raise a family in Kirkmichael. Two generations later, the grandson of James Wighton of Meigle/Kirkmichael would work with the grandson of James' half-brother, Thomas Wighton, at an estate outside of Meigle around 1860 and would wonder why they looked so much alike.

If James Wighton of Meigle did indeed marry Janet Robertson of Kirkmichael, his line is shown in the table at the bottom of this page.

Now... to complete the biography of James Wighton. I found no reference in the 1841 census to a James Wighton who would have been around 74 years of age. Nor did I find him in the database of post 1855 death certificates when he would have been 88 or over. I assume therefore that he died sometime after 1800 when his third child was born and before 1841. From the death certificate of Janet, if she truly was his daughter, we find that James was a corn miller.

Sources

Family Search, The LDS Genealogical Website: (http://www.familysearch.org/)

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