Thomas Neil Quarrier Died of Cholera 1854

Background

As we have seen in the main narrative of the Neil branch of my family we only have a handful of references to the parents of my ancestor, John Neil, who was born 14th April 1836 and baptised 4th July 1836.

From his baptism entry in the registers of St. Andrew’s Cathedral in Glasgow we learned that he was baptised as John Neill, the lawful son of Thomas Neill and Agnes Feran but that is all.

From the registration of John’s marriage to Sarah Cassidy on 15th October 1860 we learned that he was the son of Thomas Neil, Handloom Weaver, (deceased) and Agnes Neil ms Fern (deceased).

When he died in 1889,aged 52, his parents are given as Thomas Neil, coal miner (deceased) and Agnes Neil ms Fearns (deceased)

As far as the original research done for me by the Scots Ancestry Research Society (SARS), they concluded

So that was where we stood for a long time. The only new avenues of research that cropped up after that were regarding the possible death of Thomas Neil and here a couple of candidates emerged but neither have really proven to be directly related.

Thomas Neil who died 7th February 1854

Some time ago, whilst doing an internet search, I discovered a posting by Matt Neil on the members’ forum section of the Association of O’Neill Clans web site (which I believe no longer exists) that traced his ancestry back to our common ancestor John Neil and his wife, Sarah Cassidy. A later posting also suggested that he had discovered Thomas Neil’s death in Glasgow. He also said that Thomas had been born in 1793 in Donegal. [source txt file]

When I searched for Thomas Neil deaths in the records I found this entry :

The curious thing about this is that whilst it does mention the death of Thomas, it does not mention his place of birth. Since Matt had said that he was born in Donegal, I tried to contact Matt to try to clarify where this piece of information came from.

I eventually managed to contact him (with some difficulty) but he could not enlighten me further as this information had been collected by his father and although I asked him if he could ask his father to contact me if he was interested in discussing this, I did not hear anything more so it remained a bit of a mystery. If the death registration did not mention a place of birth, how did Matt know it was Donegal ? Since we cannot find out the source of this information it is not really possible to verify it. The date of birth might also be a problem. If this is the same Thomas he would have been born about 1794 and therefore about forty years old at the birth of John Neill who was born 14th April 1836 and was baptised 4th July 1836.

Some time passed and in the summer of 2015 I was again in contact with Mrs Elizabeth Smith of the Glasgow & West of Scotland Family History Society (GWoSFHS) and I happened to mention my “brick wall” with this ancestor. She replied saying that “we have recently completed photographing and transcribing the stones …at Cathcart Churchyard” and she had found a gravestone that probably referred to this Thomas Neil. 

This was clearly the Thomas Neil, “Quarrier residing at Coustonholm died of Cholera on the 7th February 1854 aged 60” of the Cathcart mortality register so it was obvious, even if this was not “my” Thomas that I should try to find out more about this family  since the gravestone gave us so much information to start with.

The first thing we looked at was a possible death of Margaret Neil nee Murray and the Statutory Register of Deaths turned up the following :

There was one clear likelihood here so we looked at an image of the register entry :

This Margaret Murray was obviously the correct one and she was born circa 1803 so we thought that she probably married Thomas Neil after about 1820 The only likely Thomas Neil marrying a Margaret Murray I could find was one that took place in Sorn, Ayr and dated 22 June 1827

Moving on, we decided to look for children born to this couple and a look at the LDS web site turned up the following children that seem to be connected to these parents :

Name	Born	Christ	Where
Janet Neil	24 April 1828	4 May 1828	Sorn, Ayrshire, Scotland
Elizabeth Neil	6 April 1830	18 April 1830	Sorn, Ayrshire, Scotland
Robert Neil	19 August 1832	2 September 1832	Sorn, Ayrshire, Scotland
Agnes Neil	25 July 1834	10 August 1834	Sorn, Ayrshire, Scotland

The only other possible fits with parents of the same age were :/

Name	Born	Where
Harriet Neil	6 September 1842	Eastwood, Renfrewshire
Thomas Neil	10 November 1845	Eastwood, Renfrewshire

I found some other  outliers with the same parental names but these were obviously not ”mine“

Name	Born	Where	Notes
Catherine Neil	13 January 1874	Jedburgh, Roxburgh	mother given as Margaret Neil
Isabella Neil	31 August 1881	Wilton, Roxburgh	mother given as Margaret Murray Neil
William Neil	20 October 1883	Roxburghshire, Scotland	died Vancouver 8 January 1979

The gravestone that Elizabeth Smith sent mentioned a James, a Margaret, a Robert, a Thomas, an Agnes and a Janet. So we were still missing some births from the LDS returns. They did not mention James, Margaret, or Thomas. The Thomas born 10 November 1845 could be the missing Thomas but that seemed like a long gap between Agnes in 1834 and this Thomas in 1845. I thought that probably the best way to find out about these gaps between children was to try to find the family in the census taken a couple of years before Thomas senior died – the 1851 census.

I did the following search :

Search for the family of Thomas and Margaret Neil at 1851 Census

Clearly the two Thomas Neils listed as in Eastwood District are the same return and the Thomas we were interested in was supposed to have resided in Coustonholm  at his death in 1854. (which according to Elizabeth Smith is in Eastwood) so I looked at the 1851 census return and it showed :

This confirms that Harriet and Thomas did belong to these parents but also adds another child, Hellen, born circa 1838.  This raises a curious problem; the ages of the children given in the census are almost 2 years older than the ages returned by the LDS query in all cases where there was an LDS mention of the child. Thomas’s age seems right but Margaret is possibly a couple of years out as well. What we do not find here, obviously, is a James that the gravestone inscription mentions as dying 8th November 1839 but, more curiously, we could find no reference to this death in the parish registers either.

I decided to look back at the 1841 Census to see if I could find the family then and came up with the following :

As well as the children mentioned previously we also find not one but two Margarets (??) Margaret Neil aged 5 years so born 1837 and Margaret Neil aged 7 months, so born 1840. According to the gravestone she died 2 July 1844. This brings all the known children into the picture as far as the census is concerned except James who died 8 November 1839 before either of these censuses. On the matter of two children in the same family having the same name there is some discussion of this here . Of course, it could also be that the second Margaret was not the daughter of Thomas and Margaret but another relative – pehaps a grandchild or a niece ?

From all of the above it is hard to see where our John Neil would fit into all of this and so we have to conclude that this is not the Thomas Neil who was the father of Our John Neil who was born 14th April 1836 and baptised 4th July 1836, the lawful son of Thomas Neill and Agnes Feran despite the connection that Matt Neil seems to have made.

When I did the reconstruction of the children of this family including OPR mentions, the 1851 census and the information from the gravestone, I was stuck by the longevity of some of these children and started wondering if I had got the births of some people and the deaths of other people. In particular I looked at Janet Neil b 24/4/1828 Sorn and who the gravestone said died 2/9/1920 This would have made her about 90 – 92 years of age at death. Her mother had died aged 85 but this still seemed suspicious so I looked up deaths of Janet Neils (in case she had not married) :

Search for Deaths od Janet Neils 1918-1922

The likely entry would be the one for a Janet Neil who died in Pollockshields aged 90 so I looked at the registration :

The information on this family group that I amassed can be summarised as follows :

NAME	BORN	PLACE	SOURCE	BAP	C1841	C1851	DIED	SOURCE
Thomas Neil	circa 1794		SDR		Y	Y	7/2/1854	Grave and SDR
Margaret Neil ms Murray	circa 1803		SDR		Y	Y	6/7/1888	Grave and SD
Janet Neil	24/4/1828	Sorn, Ayrshire	IGI	4/5/1828	Y	Y	02/09/1920	Grave and SDR
Elizabeth Neil	6/4/1830	Sorn, Ayrshire	IGI	18/4/1830	Y	Y
Robert Neil	19/8/1832	Sorn, Ayrshire	IGI	2/9/1832	Y	Y	17/12/1874	Gravestone
Agnes Neil	25/7/1834	Sorn, Ayrshire	IGI	10/8/1834	Y	Y	02/04/1917	Gravestone
Margaret Neil	circa 1836	Eastwood, Renfrewshire	Census 1841		Y		2/7/1844	Gravestone
Hellen Neil	circa 1838	Sorn, Ayrshire	Census 1851			Y
James Neil	b 1839 ???						8/11/1839	Gravestone
Margaret Neil	b 1840 ?	Eastwood, Renfrewshire	Census 1841		Y
Harriet Neil	6/9/1842	Eastwood, Renfrewshire	IGI			Y
Thomas Neil	10/11/1845	Eastwood, Renfrewshire	IGI			Y	10/5/1886	Gravestone

Other Details

Thomas Neil married Margaret Murray in Sorn parish 22/6/1827

Thomas Neil, A Quarrier residing at Coustonholm died of cholera aged 60

Thomas Neil, A Quarrier and Stone merchant who died 7th February 1854

Margaret Murray was the daughter of James Murray, House Builder (Master deceased) and Janet Murray ms Mc. Meekin (?) (deceased)

Margaret Murray died of general exhaustion and old age, aged 85 years at 114 South Portland Street

Robert Murray died at Rodney Downs, Queensland

See a .pdf file of this family tree