Our we all related or is it just me !,,,,,

[Oldhug]

a few thoughts I had myself having visited some of there's places recently for the second time (sadly I first time was for the sudden death/funeral of my partners mother) I went to some of the places where my ancestors where born and lived which was mostly or largely on the coast line to mention a few leven, east and west wemyness , dysart, aberdour, dalgety bay, inverkeithing, dumfermline, culross, ect
These places to me even now aren't large places and if you go back say to 1700 there inhabitants would be much less in some place maybe lease than a thousand people also back then family's where larger to into double figures therefore it is my belief that these small villages towns consisted of not that many surnames possibly as small as ten or even smaller to thirty possibly and of course more in bigger towns (sorry there is a piont to my posting) combined with the face that these places where closes together and that travel was mainly walking horse or horse and cart most marriages would be of localish people cousins marring cousins brothers from one family marrying sisters of a another family so in family searches Similar names cropping up all the time as in surnames.

So my question is as every one is wise knowledgable on roots n ( I know that if you go right back I mean right right back we are all connected ) but if populations where much smaller and family's interconnected that maybe a surname say moodie is more connected with other moodies and may be missing links sorry badly dislexic I hope that you can follow what Iam getting at so my other piont is if this is the case then maybe a pool (of all say as I used moodie as the example all the moodies where put in one pot together with date place of birth parents as long as it was corrected as it can be surely then slowly all the missing links would fall into place?
Sorry for the woffle but thought I would post to see if anyone else shares my thoughts on this and if this is the case is there anything out on the World Wide Web that does this already I understand that it couldn't contain info of living people for dater protection reasons but most people Iam talking about have been long long dead !
Any thoughts on this would be most appesiated I posted in the fife posting as my ansestors on my scotish side come from small villages towns in the fife area as well as other areas in Scotland and the uk

[Oldhug]

P.s wish I was more techie and not so dislexic else I would try and sort a program out that did my first posting ..... Or maybe someone already has and I just haven't found it yet on the web ?

[Russell]

Hi Oldhug
I see what you are getting at. The village of Cellardyke is in the parish of Kilrenny and one of my ancestral lines (Watson family) hails from there. As you suggest, the pool of possible marriage partners was quite small and the various branches of my Watson family form connections with almost all the other family lines in the village. Migration has taken some lines to the U.S., Australia and New Zealand but despite the efforts of this world wide spread of researchers we have been unable to take the Watson line any further back than about 1640 since there seem to be no written records have survived from before that time. Not too surprising since they were common fisherfolk and little would be written about them. The name indicates there must have been a man called Wat at some point much earlier and he had a son !! but when that was who knows but certainly back before surnames were in common use and most of the later Catholic records were destroyed when Scotland turned Protestant.
There are many researchers who are working on One-Name Studies so perhaps sometime in the future we will make additional connections and the saying "We're a' Jock Tamson's bairns" will become a fact.

Russell

[johnniegarve]

Oldhug, have you tried posting your name list on Rootschat?

Bests,

Johnnie