Baillie's In Militarty 1790-1810

[Baillie 1799]

Hello. Glad to be back on this site again. It's been awhile.

I am having some trouble finding that first link back to the Baillie's original location somwhere in the Highlands of Scotland. My earliest documented record of the Baillie's is a church record in Colombiana Ohio that Margaret Baillie, her two sons Alexander and Daniel, Margeret's brother-in-law George arrived in Columb., Ohio around 1807. George's brother John arrived at the same location about 1804. However I have never been able to make a solid connection with Scotland other than the church record from a church history book and all it lists as a home in Scotland is the "Highlands". Pretty vague I know.

Now . . . I thought I would try another angle. I always thought it was very odd that Margeret's husband did not make the trip overseas with the rest of her family. She pioneered the uncharted Ohio Settlement by herself (with the rest of her family) but never re-married and always claimed head-of-household on all census records.

I have always had a gut feeling that Margaret's husband William (I'm 90% sure that is his name) may have died before making the trip to America. Possibley from military action or I have heard that it was common around the time opf 1800-1820's that when young men were trying to leave the country they might be apprehended by the British Military as a prisoner to fight for them.


Unable to find any birth records on Alex or Daniel. Or marriage records on Margaret and William, I thought it might be worth a look at the military side to see if I could find anything under William, George or John Baillie (mostly William though) between 1790-1810. Unfortunately I don't have a clue where to begin with any of this. Still pretty new to the Scottish research. Any suggestion on where to begin?



Thanks,

Dave

[SarahND]

Hi Dave,
Did all our ideas last time fall through? I thought we had come up with some promising leads.
If anyone wants to go with this one, it might help to have a look at the previous threads so as not to duplicate what has already been said:

viewtopic.php?p=59238

All the best in 2008,
Sarah

[Baillie 1799]

Hello again Sarah,

Hope you had a great Holiday and New Year! How has everything been going for you?

I'm actually still working on some of the William Baillie's we talked about before. I haven't ruled all of them out completely yet. I have found a couple of wills for different William Baillie's including the one in the military, James William Baillie that was married to a Margaret Ross. But it didn't list any children. I have found wills on the Ross families that we had talked about (hoping that a Ross father that might have died would have listed children and/or possibly inlaws) and most of them have been able to be ruled out.

I found a website4 called Highland Family History Society that is linked to GENfair.co.uk and I have just ordered some books for a pretty resonable price that list Monumental Inscriptions from area cemeteries in Inverness that have Baillies in them. The more I have look into the Baillies, including Columbiana County, Ohio and talking with you, I really feel pretty strong that my Baillies were from the Inverness area. Most of the families I researched that settle in Columbiana County, OH from Scotland and were our original neighbors back then were all from Inverness too.

So some have been able to be ruled out and a couple of Baillies that yuo have helped me with still have possibilities I am just having truoble finding more info on any of them to either confirm or deny them.
I thought the military angle might be a good one to try. I have always had a gut feeling about it but never really knew where to begin with it.

Also . . . I think you might have mentioned when we talked before about another William Baillie that was married to a Mary Hay around 1797 and is found on the IGI. This has some promising possibilites too since the first child I know of was born in 1799. But I can't find any other information on this couple that would list childrens names.

I would love to be able to show that James William Baillie and Margaret Ross were the right couple because therr is alot of inforamtion out there on him because he was so prominent in the military. However, they were married pretty early, 1783, so they would have waited 16 years before having children. I am still trying to find more inforamtion on them too. I feel like I am getting reeeeeallly close, just not quite able to positively link Alexander (1799) and Daniel (1800) Baillie with any parents quite yet.

So I thought I would try a different angle with the military.



Thanks,

Dave

[Currie]

Hello Dave,

I saw your post a week or so back but seem to have lost sight of it subsequently. I’m no expert on military matters but will give you a bit of an idea where to look and an opinion. I have only just glanced at your previous posts.

If all you have is recent and current speculation that William didn’t arrive in America because he may have died in military service then you are really up the creek without much of a paddle so far as military research is concerned. The number of William Baillie’s who died for all sorts of reasons possibly would outnumber those who died in the military by 100 to 1. I imagine only a small minority of those would have left wills. The paucity of death and related records in that time period combined with not having any definite information of the part of Scotland he came from just exacerbates the situation.

All that said, this link is to a series of guides at the National Archives. See those listed under “B”. You will note that early records are arranged by regiment and that knowing which regiment can be vitally important. http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/cata ... ex.asp?j=1

If you go to the National Archives Advanced Search http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/sear ... d=True&j=t and search in the required date range for keyword ‘regiment baillie’ or ‘regt baillie’ and other combinations as ‘all words’ you’ll find not too many results. I guess that whether you want to latch onto any of those or any others is entirely your decision, but at least they might give you some clues.

It is one thing to find, while researching your family history, that one of you ancestors is famous. It is another thing entirely to find someone famous or well documented and then try to link up with that person because you can so easily be enticed down the wrong track. Just a thought, so best tread warily.

All the best and the best of luck with your research,
Alan

[Baillie 1799]

Sounds like a great idea actually.

I wish I knew more about William, where he was from or his wife Margaret's maiden name. This makes it especially hard to find any Scottish information because this coincidentally was the same time the Baillies left for America. If I can find that first small bit of information whether it be a death, birth, will, land, or military type record, I know it would be much easier to built from that first piece of information and it would hopefully lead to many more Baillie documents down the road. Just finding that first piece will be very hard.

I am also very novice with researching this information. That's what makes finding the TalkingScot website so nice because it really has been an eye-opener for me. Everyone here has been very helpful explaining specific places to look for different information and/or documents that I might be looking for and not know where to start looking for them.



Thanks for your help with that Alan. I will definetly start searching in those sites.

Dave