Re: 1796

[Lunney Family <jglunney@xxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Richard, I'm going to shock you rigid! I've been psyching myself up to
this all evening--Yes,let's suppose that some stupid amateur genealogist,
who had better remain nameless, couldn't read 18th C. uneducated
handwriting, and misread Alexr--the standard abbreviation for Alexander--as
Aaron. I can't quite write Alexr to fool myself that it's Aaron; but I am
going to look up some samples of mid-18th C. handwriting to see what can
be done. I have a sample of 1801 educated handwriting from the Dunboe
minister, and Alexr is there plain enough, but that's 50 years later and
educated. I will also run a check on our database at work and see how many
18th C. Aarons there are..... If we do substitute Alexander for Aaron , you
get some  interesting results. First of all, let's consider the children of
Samuel T. from the LDS site; I seem not to have the relevant section of the
xerox of RM Torrance, so I don't know whether he has this list or not.

Anyhow; from the LDS site--Samuel, b. 1719 in Coolnaman, d. 1788
Woodbury, Connecticut. This is the Samuel who acc. to RMT had a brother
Aaron. The LDS list says that his eldest son is Thomas, his second is
William, and his third was Alexander. No Aaron in the list. This makes it
look likely to me-at least when I'm in this mood-that Samuel had a brother
Alexander rather than a brother Aaron. Incidentally this is the same family
that those Tuttles descend from. Her paper has a selection of the children
of Samuel b. 1719, who actually had 11, acc. to the LDS site list. Also
from the LDS site, the Aaron who married Susanna Finlay from Armagh and is
said to be from Coolnaman; if you substitute Alexander, you get an
Alexander as a contemporary of Samuel, Thomas and John--he is said to have
been b. 1723; Samuel was born 1719, John b. 1717. So he could have been a
brother; John and Samuel had sons Alexander, perhaps Thomas had too, I
haven't got the appropriate section of RM Torrance. We conjectured that
John's father was Alexander, and so it could well be,    Anyhow, if we
now have an Alexander b. 1723, married to Susanna; then we have in
Culnaman in 1796 a John, whose family includes an Alexander and a
Susanna; the Alexander b. 1723 dies in Chester Pennylvania, to which
there is a close Culnaman tie, in that Jean's son John is there before
1804. Acc. to RMT, Robert Torrens of Mayoghil went first to Chester,
before going to Woodbury Connecticut--that is, to the home of Samuel and
Thomas; I distrust RMT so thoroughly that I'm not going to pin much on
this, but we do have the evidence about Jean's son John.

One of the LDS records lists an Aaron as a brother of Hugh 1665-1712 in
Culnaman; again, if you substitute Alexander you get something reasonable
enough; the site says that Alexander--I mean, it says Aaron, was b. abt
1665 and specifies that he was born in Scotland. Now I can't fit this into
our reconstructions of Culnaman, with HMR Hugh and Alexander in Carnroe and
all the rest of it, but it's getting a bit late tonight. Don't
precipitately consign me and this theory to outer speculative darkness; it
has merit, I think, and not least is that the name  Aaron disappears in
Ireland and I believe in America too. It does not continue! I would say
that Aaron is a VERY uncommon name in Scotland in the period. We know that
RMT plays fast and loose with sources; once a mis-reading gets into the
genealogies, it gets passed on. Think about it! Linde