North Carolina Livingstons

[jmlivingstone]

Allan/Donald,

See below, ref. spelling of Milling/Malling,

John


John et al,

It is actually Malling - a farm to the west of Port of Menteith on the road to Aberfoyle. Catherine Livingstone died at Malling in 1892 and Hugh went to live with his daughter Mary Anne and her husband Peter Graham at Ballabeg, a farm to the south of Port of Menteith. Hugh died at Ballabeg in 1900.

His son, Hugh McDiarmid Livingstone emigrated to Australia in 1879.

Cheers

Terry

[Canadian Livingstone]

Hi John,
Thanks John. I did not notice some of those details. Terry managed to find quite a bit there regarding Hugh Livingston Juniors family back in Scotland. Going through the list of LIvingstons in Parker Livingston group last week I noticed that one of Livingstons was an Australian LIvingston connected the same Ardnamurchan Livingston family as Terry. I wonder if Terry knows him?
Not sure if Terry from the older messages is in the DNA project but I think one of his kin is as I noticed that one of the 17 Livingstons has family history that links to Hugh Diarmid Livingstone Jr. son of Hugh Livingston Sr. and Catharine Diarmid that Terry first mentioned some years ago I guess now. Have not heard from Terry in a long time. I was curious if he knew this other Australian Livingston in the DNA group who is also descended from Hugh Jr. and his Livingston family that originated in Ardnamurchan. Allan does not have his results as but I suspect he may be a close match actually some of the Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island Canada Livingstons or to the Parker with a North Carolina Livingston connection. That assumption based on the 37 marker test results of an apparent 3rd cousin also from the same North Carolina Livingston family as Allan from a while back.

regards,

Donald

[Alan Livingston]

Donald,

I am trying to get a basic understanding of the DNA project. Am I correct that both your cousin ( Lloyd is it?) and my cousin, Duncan, are both in the "Parker/Liv" group? I am looking at a family tree DNA chart online, and see around 18 people in that group, but do not see a Lloyd or a recent Duncan listed-they could be among the unnamed ones?

Also, how do they get the DNA results for the oldest ones, such as Duncan Daniel, born in the 1700s? Are these actual tests from hair, etc, or is this data some how derived in some manner scientifically way over my head?

Alan

[Canadian Livingstone]

Hi Allan,
Definitely 100 percent in the same group. Not closely related but definitively shared a Maclea Livingston ancestor, my guess within the last 500? years.
I am not certain we are talking about the same list. The list of names of your matches you wont see until you are able to login with the familytreedna site and are able to access your 12, 25, 37 and 64 marker results after that info is released to you by the folks at Familytreedna. No one has access to their results and the matches info until the first of their results come in if you catch my drift. Duncan and Lloyd V are definitely on list of matches together at 12, 25, and 37. Duncan has not done the 67 marker test as of yet so his name wont appear on the matches for the 67 marker group when you receive that if you match to the Parker Livingstone dna group which based on your ancestral tree closely matching Duncans I think you should. Once you receive the results for the 67 marker test it will be easier to see. The 67 marker test narrows down the matches quite a bit for the group that Duncan and I assume you will match with. If you are with the same group as Duncan Donald Livingston that my cousin Lloyd V. Livingston is in then you will the 18th in that group. Actually the 67 marker results will may you the 17th in that group presuming your results match up with what has been nicknamed the Parker Livingstone Group. There are 18 Livingstons with you but Duncan has only gone as far as the 37 marker test. I could be wrong but I wont have access to familytreedna lists of your matches at 12, 25, 37 or 64 markers until your test results at these levels are released to you. And you have to go into the familytreedna site with your kit number and password to access your match information at each of these 4 test levels once that information is released to one test at a time. At least I think that that was the way it went. The 67 marker match when you can access it will include the names of those Livingstons and other families who are the closest genetic distance matches to you. My cousin Lloyd V. Livingston and your cousin Duncan Donald Livingston should hopefully be on that list of those matching at varying degrees genetic distances some more closely related than others. Anyways when you get the first test results it may be for your matches at the 12 marker test and that will be hundreds of matches but at a testing of 12 markers the vast majority of them aren't that closely related to you. As I said the 37 and more importantly 67 marker test results will tell us more about which participants in the Parker Livingstone you might have share an ancestor back in Scotland or the case of Duncan in North Carolina.

What we have ended up so far within the group I've mentioned are folks from Livingstones and others whose families with mostly highland Argyllshire and neighbouring Perthshire roots settled in other parts of Scotland, the United States, Canada and Australia at some point in the 19th century. The two or three from Perthshire Livingston families likely had earlier family roots perhaps not known in Western Argyllshire with old Macleas (Livingstones) there I suspect. I think the whole thing will make more sense once you get your results and are able to go to login to the website and see your results and those matching with you. Hope I have not confused you with all of this. I am more at home with talking Clan Livingstone history and genealogy than I am with the DNA project. Science was not my best subject in school. That being said I have found the results among a number of the project groups to be most interesting and I think I have a better sense of the possible origins of many of those out there who go by the family name Livingstone or Livingston than I did before. I do think you will find the whole thing was worthwhile. I can pretty much tell you right off the bat that the results won't help you find the location in Western Argyll where your ancestors were born unfortunately, but I do think in the years to come your results and that of others may match up closely enough to give us perhaps a greater sense where in Western Argyll your ancestors might have come from. I think with Ancestry.com and sites like that have helped genealogy really take off as a popular hobby with many families you seen more and more people some of them Livingstones getting into family history and learning about genealogical DNA testing. National Geographic has even got into the DNA testing thing with a big project underway to help people trace their most ancient genetic origins.

Anyways once you get your results we can see if someone can explain the significance of your results in terms of the science of it, haplotype and all that DNA stuff and comparing DNA results with other Livingston groups in the our Clan DNA project. You may find that part of it interesting as well.

regards,

Donald

[Alan Livingston]

Donald,

i found that DNA chart from Family Tree by googling around, but i don't know how old it is, or exactly how to read it. not that you need to look at it, but here is the link. about half way down there is a group called "Livi*/Parker" which includes a Duncan Livingston b 1756 and a Duncan Daniel Livingston b 1774, who sounds like could be my GGG GF. i don't understand how they would have DNA results for someone of that time period. just made me curious.

https://www.familytreedna.com/public/li ... n=yresults

i am looking forward to getting my test results in a few weeks.

Alan

[Canadian Livingstone]

Hi Allan,
Livi Parker is another name for the Parker Livingstone group. This group you probably will match up with if I am correct and your results are similar to what seems to be case with your cousin Duncan. I dont know how old that list is but it may need updating. Not sure. Anyways hopefully you will start to get your results soon.
That is list of all or most of the tests done over the last few years within the entire Maclea Livingstone Project which includes the Parker LIvingstone group and many other groups or individual test results that have no relatively close matches as yet. Boggs, Lancaster Maclea Livingstone is a name that has been used from when the Clan launched a dna project. Andrew Lancaster was involved with that and others over the years. There are a couple of versions of their list that they have I guess. One of them the original one is located on the Boggs, Lancaster Maclea Livingstone dna website but does not include names just kit numbers of the participants. The actual log in familytreedna site once you are able to check your matches will actually have the name of your closest Livingston matches and other matches. The Boggs Lancaster Maclea Livingstone Project is the name for our Maclea Livingstone Project and group which my Cousin and Duncan are in within that is being referred to as the Parker Livingstone group.

THat list that you found is basically a variation of the marker result list for the whole Boggs Lancaser Maclea Livingstone project that is on their Boggs Lancaster Maclea DNA project website. That a huge list of many of the results but I only noticed the name of the participants ancestor and not the name of the participant. So you find your cousin Duncan or my cousin Lloyd mentioned there. And that is a bit confusing with only the ancestors name listed beside the test results but that is happening there. Since the list on Boggs Lancaster Maclea Livingstone website put together their info their have been some new participants. There is brief bios that have put together there for some but with our group there referred to as definitely a highland group some of the results arent included on the list and some participants have not submitted brief bios. I am working on trying and seeing if we cant get all the participants to eventually submit brief two paragraph ancestral info for the dna project and the Clan Society. Many of them have but others have not. I find it helpful to get a sense of where their ancestors came from and comparing it with where others came from. In many cases not all the ancestral origins are known but often people arrive in the DNA project having done some of their Livingstone ancestral research which they can share with us. Also if someone joins the dna project and has a known similar family history to another participant like you and DUncan it is very helpful to have that information known.

Yes that list only gives the names of the listed ancestors of the participants of the entire project group which is a couple hundred livingston and other matching families. Or at least of those who submitted the names of their ancestor. Once you are able to login to your results via familytreedna login you will see your 67 marker matches and see your cousin Duncan and a number of others close and not so close matches with your test results.

regards,

Donald

[Canadian Livingstone]

Hi Allan,


One book that I think you might enjoy reading is Iain Montcrieff's book "The Highland Clans" which was published in the 1960's and is long since out of print. It has a brief history of a number of highland clans including our Clan the Maclea Livingstone. If you read that and all the material on our Clan website which our Chief has contributed over the years I think you can learn quite a bit about the origins and early history of our Clan from that. My area of expertise is more the later history and subsequent genealogy of the Clan. You can probably acquire a copy of Iain Montcrieff's book through Abe's books website which connects you through them with hundreds of used booksellers worldwide. I am pretty sure some book dealer through Abes Books will have a copy for sale somewhere in the United States as an used copy probably at a reasonable price. Abes books is like an online middle man for thousands of used and antiquarian book dealers world wide. It really is a great way to find a book particularly if it is out of print or rare.

I have a few other books that discuss our clan to some degree but they are extremely rare and extremely hard to find unfortunately. Anyways I think the Montcrieff book is probably a good choice for starters. The information on the other highland clans is also very interesting in the book. Christopher Duffy's book 1745 on the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745 is quite good if your interested in the 1745 Rebellion and Bonnie Prince Charlie. It does not mention Livingstones but our clan members were known to be ardent Jacobites and some of our clansmen served in the Appin Regiment 1745-1746 including Donald Livingstone (1728-1816) of Savary,Morvern and were at the famous Battle of Culloden with the Appin Regiment where the Jacobite regiments under Bonnie Prince Charlie were defeated by those under the Duke of Cumberland, the son of King George II.

My oldest known Livingston ancestor my great-great-great grandfather Miles Livingston came to British North America in the fall of 1812 with his second wife Janet also a Livingston, his son Donald 1796-1862 from his first marriage and another Livingston a Donald Livingston 1791-1876 a fellow boatbuilder recruited for the Lord Selkirk's settlement at Red River in present day Manitoba, Canada by a highland agent of Lord Selkirk. This other Donald later brought out the rest of his family to the Red RIver settlement in 1819. There is no way of knowing whether this other Livingston family is related to mine though a descendant of one of this DOnald's brothers and I have tried to find proof of a family connection and we have always suspected we may in fact be distant cousins.

My ancestor Miles Livingston was born abt. 1775 in Mull, Scotland according his Selkirk Settlement records in Hudsons Bay Territory, British North America (later Canada) which was apparently a factual error based on the fact that he travelled to Lord Selkirk's REd RIver Colony with a highland group that included a number of McLeans and others from Mull in Argyll. A clerk seems to have assumed that the highland Livingstons like the McLeans at the settlement were all originally residents of Mull it would seem to be. Donald Livingston 1791-1876 a fellow boatbuilder working on the Isle of Islay who was likely a cousin of Miles and who accompanied him to the Selkirk Colony in 1812 stated a few years later that he was himself born in Morvern. According to Miles Livingston 1812 marriage record from Bowmore, Isle of Islay, Argyll recorded by the Presbyterian minister in Bowmore, Miles was a native of Morvern Parish, Argyll although a baptismal record from the neighbouring Island of Lismore states that a Myles Livingston lived on the Island of Lismore and was baptised there in 1775. Is that the same Myles Livingston or a different one born nearby in the same year. A mystery I am unable to solve. I am lucky to have this much information on Mile Livingston's origins. I have more info however on him after he came to Canada which is quite interesting and may include it someday in our Clan newsletter The Parnassus.

Regards,

Donald

[Alan Livingston]

Thanks Donald,

i will look into Montcrieff's book.

from your family history and the book i just read by James Hunter, it sounds like there was a shortage of first names back in those days! in Hunter's book there were constantly people with the same first and last name. they had to distinguish them by nick names, like "Big John" and "Little John", or "James of the glen" (of course these were in Gaelic). very popular were the names James, Duncan, Hugh, and even Alan, spelled like my name. i don't even think my parents knew it was a Scottish speilling when they named me. it is no wonder i am having trouble figuring out which Duncan Livingston is which.

Alan

[Alan Livingston]

just ordered Moncrieff's book through Amazon, used, for about three dollars. also ordered another one by James Hunter about Scots who immigrated to US and Canada. you can get some cheap hardbacks that way.

[Canadian Livingstone]

Hi Allan,
I was pretty certain that the book had a good print run when it was published. Don't know if more than one edition was published but I have seem a number of them available as used books. Great that you found a copy through Amazon. Amazon is a great source for history and some genealogy books.
Our highland Livingston ancestors went by their gaelic name Maclea or Maconlea before adopting Livingstone or Livingston. THere are some interesting theories when and why this happened but what I have noticed is that virtually all of the clan who resided at least in the parishes in Western Argyll in the 1750's by the end of the 1750's as Western Argyll parish records indicate were all referring to themselves by the Clan name Livingstone'/Livingston. Some who went by the name Maclea in Eastern Arygll and their likely kin in nearby Bute where there were there some old families that went by the name Maclea did not seem to be affected by this name change by the Western Argyll Maclea/McOnleas.

The Western Argyll clan clung to old Patronymic naming system into the 1600's and into early 1700's. Many of them did not adopt a family name as we use them before the early 1700's. A 1716 List of Morvern Parish, Argyll men, former Jacobite rebels or sympathizers likely who were found in possession of arms after the 1715 Rebellion shows some typical names of our clansmen at that time: Dugald McIain Vcinlea of Kilintine, Morvern (Dugald son of Iain son of a McInlea (DUgald's grandfather was obviously a Mcinlea. For reasons unknown it is sometimes spelled with V I think it indicates that was the grandfather;s clan name or something like that). Another Morvern resident from Fuinary who refers to himself as Donald McOlonie a variation of Mconlea and from Fernish, Morvern a clansmen who simply refers to himself with more updated name of Donald McLea. An example I would assume of some clansmen clinging to old patronymic name system used by gaelic speaking highlanders before Clansmen adopted family names as last names as they had been doing for some time in other parts of Britain. Other clansmen in Morvern Parish however for example Donald McLea became comfortable with the notion of a more contemporary usage simply "McLea" as a last name. Just about 40 years later Mconlea, McInlea and maclea was gone in Western Argyll replaced by all of the Clansmen by the name Livingston or Livingstone and as mentioned there are some interesting notions as to why the Clan changed their name to Livingstone and when the name was first introduced to the Argyllshire Mcdunleas/Mconleas. If the old Patronymic name system used by our McOnlea ancestors was still used by your family in the 1800's in North Carolina Peter Livingston might be known to his family and scottish neighbours as Peter McEwenVconlea or something like that. Ewen often used instead of Hugh in Western Argyll or both were used. Of course that was not the case though there is every possibility that Duncan could speak some gaelic. Good chance he spoke both scottish gaelic and english as my ancestor likely did when he came to North America. There are still some cultures in the world today that do not go by a family name as a last name in the way we do and their last name recorded in an official document is simply their fathers given name.


regards

Donald