DNA- Finding the family of Sarah Borland Menzies (1823- bef 1855)
I’ve found it difficult to find DNA
matches on my Scottish branches, as DNA testing in Scotland is fairly rare, but,
surprisingly enough, my greatest DNA break though came on my Scottish side of
the family. One of my earliest brick walls was Sarah Borland. She was born about 1823 in
Ireland and married Robert Menizes in Port Glasgow, Scotland on 3 Aug 1843.
Robert was also an immigrant from Ireland to Scotland and worked as a canvas
weaver. In 1851 Robert, Sarah and their three children were still living in Port
Glasgow along with Sarah’s mother Jane Borland and her brother Samuel.
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| Port Glasgow Parish marriage record for Robert Munice [Menzies] and Sarah Borland |
Unfortunately Sarah died sometime
before 1855, when Robert married again to a woman named Ann Black.
Genealogically speaking it is especially unfortunate that she died so early
because 1855 is the year that Scotland began civil registration. Had Sarah died
in 1855 or later she would have had a death certificate that recorded various
things about her including her parent’s names. I did know that her mother’s
name was Jane and that she had one brother named Samuel, but that didn’t get me
very far. I couldn’t find any records for Jane Borland after 1851 and I assume
she either died or returned to Ireland before 1855. I did find a marriage
certificate for a Samuel Borland, which listed his parents as Robert Borland
and Jane Geddie, but I couldn’t be sure that was the right Samuel. Normally birth or baptism records would have a good chance of helping to find the parents, but because Sarah was born in Ireland, where records are scarce, there was very little chance of finding a birth record, much less one that could be accessed without traveling to Ireland. That was
where my search ground to a halt for quite a while.
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| The Menzies family (spelled as Munace) on the 1851 census |
Last
year I got my dad an ancestry DNA test for his birthday. While I was able to
find a few Menzies matches on ancestry I didn’t find any that had a clear
Scottish Borland line. At Christmas I was able to help him upload his DNA to
FTDNA, another DNA site that lets you upload your ancestry results for free. I wasn’t particularly hopeful, since that site has a very small user
base and sure enough, besides one known first cousin (and my own DNA) he didn’t
have any very close matches. However, his closest match had the last name of
Borland and was even a shared match with his known first cousin on his mother’s
side of the family (the scottish side). I spent some time researching the matches tree and eventually
traced him back to a man name William Borland. Like Sarah, William was born in
Ireland in 1821, immigrated to Scotland, and lived in Port Glasgow at first. He
married a woman name Agnes McCauly and eventually moved to Dundee where he
lived until his death in 1883. Fortunately William did have a death certificate
that I was able to locate. He listed his parents as Robert Borland (canvas
weaver) and Jane Gettie. The same names as I had already found on the marriage
certificate for Samuel!
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| William Borland's 1883 death certificate |
I was now
fairly confident that I had the name for Sarah’s parents, but I wanted to know
more. I went back to my ancestry DNA matches that seemed to be on the Borland
side and started to build trees for them. I was able to trace at least five of
the matches to different children of a man name Joseph Borland, born 1832.
According to family stories Joseph had not wanted to serve in the British Army
and had stowed away on a ship to America at a young age. He married Malissa Ann
Forth and lived in Wayne Illinois. He served in the Union army during the civil
war and took part in Sherman’s march. With
so many matches I began to think that he might be another sibling of Sarah’s.
This led
me to re-examine the 1841 census. I had looked through it before and I was
pretty sure I hadn’t found the Borlands, but I decided to check again for
Joseph. I found a census entry for a Robert and Jane Borland living with six
children in Port Glasgow, fairly close to where Robert Menzies was living at
the time. My ancestor Sarah was listed as Sally, and Joseph was the youngest at
age seven. Looking through my Genealogy files it turns out that I had found
that census before, but had discounted it because the ages were off and Samuel
wasn’t listed. My guess is that Samuel was living with relatives, possibly in
Ireland at that time. This census finally gave me Robert Borland’s birth year
and five new siblings for Sarah. I was able to track down another sibling from
that census, Hugh, and found that he also listed his parents as Robert Borland
and Jane Gettie, solidifying my conclusions According to this census Robert
was thirty years older than Jane. I almost wonder if this was a grandfather
rather than a father, but until further evidence emerges I will leave him as
the father. The family I discovered for Sarah via DNA is as follows.
Robert Borland (1771- bef 1851) was married to Jane Gettie
(1795-bef 1855)
- John Borland (1816-??)
- Mary Borland (1818-??)
- William Borland (1821-1883) married to Ann McCauley
- Sarah Borland (1823-1854) married to Robert Menzies
- James Borland (1826-??)
- Hugh Borland (1827-1899) married to Ann McFaddan
- Samuel Borland (1831-bef 1871) married to Ann Gardner
- Joseph Borland (1832-1913) immigrated to Illinois and married Malissa Ann Forth
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