This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Surnames: Stewart/STUART Classification: Query Message Board URL: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/msg/rw/BgC.2ACI/1288 Message Board Post: Need help finding parents of Charles Stuart, b. 1806 in "Sutherland Shire," according to his handwritten obit. Question: Did parts of Morayshire ever belong to Sutherlandshire? Charles left Scotland for Nova Scotia in 1816 at age of 10 to live with father's brother, John Stuart, who was listed as being from "parish of Plymouth, county of Moray." Someone has suggested that Plymouth is most likely Speymouth. Other family names are Mary, May, Alexander. HELP! Am I even asking the right questions?

> Need help finding parents of Charles Stuart, b. 1806 in "Sutherland > > Shire," according to his handwritten obit. Question: Did parts of > Morayshire ever belong to Sutherlandshire? No, absolutely not. But it is quite possible that Charles' father moved from Moray to Sutherland, or even that his uncle John moved from Sutherland to Moray (though in that case he isn't so likely to name Moray as his county of origin) or even that Charles' grandparents moved so that one son was born in Moray and another in Sutherland. > Charles left Scotland for Nova Scotia in 1816 at age of 10 to live > with father's brother, John Stuart, who was listed as being from > "parish of Plymouth, county of Moray." Someone has suggested > that Plymouth is most likely Speymouth. Sounds plausible. They would sound pretty similar to the ear of whoever was collecting the information for whatever document you found that in. In the late 18th and early 19th century Speymouth was the centre of a major shipbuilding industry. Timber from the forests around Rothiemurchus was floated down the River Spey to the mouth of the Spey at Kingston, where it was used to build wooden vessels. > Other family names are Mary, May, Alexander. Not very useful as they are all pretty common (May is usually short for Marjory) > Am I even asking the right questions? Yes. But whether the answer exists at all is another matter. What you neef to do is search the IGI at www.familysearch.org to see if you can find a John Stewart or Stuart born in the late 18th century in Speymouth with a brother born in Sutherland. A long job, but I don't see any short cut, I'm afraid. Even then, you could not be sure you have the right man. If you have dates of death you could try http://libindx.moray.gov.uk/mainmenu.asp just in case there was a death notice in one of the local papers in Moray. HTH Anne