Make sure you are sitting comfily, and take some deep breaths… this part of my Scottish family is complicated – and takes a good few words to explain.
64 of my DNA matches at Ancestry connect with George Cameron, born in the 1850s in Glasgow. At least half of them have family trees that include George as a brickwall. All of them share matches with some or all of each other – and with me. So George’s parentage has been a mystery for a lot of people.
George made his life in Mississippi, USA and was commemorated at Findagrave: (https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/52669916/george-cameron) showing two wives and six children. Following their links shows that he brought about a very large dynasty.
So who was George?
Through analysis of DNA matches, I now think, with near certainty, that he was an out-of-wedlock son for my great-great-granny Cecilia Beaton or Beattie, who I have for a long time nicknamed Naughty Cecilia.
Who was Naughty Cecilia?
Cecilia was born “in fornication” (as the kindly parish clerk wrote it in the kirk register) on 15 April 1820 in Lennoxtown by Milton of Campsie, Stirlingshire, Scotland, baptised in Campsie Kirk seven weeks later on 4 June 1820. The fornicating parents were Alexander Beaton, labourer of Lennoxtown and Margaret Baird, aged about 17, daughter of coal miner Robert Baird.
Of course, we only have Margaret and the parish clerk’s word for it that Alexander Beaton really was the father. He appears to have done a runner and nothing more can be found for him afterwards. Not even DNA matching has shone any light, so I think it’s open to consideration he wasn’t Cecilia’s dad.
Lennoxtown and Campsie in the 1820s, at the start of industrialisation, were akin to the wild west, with coal mining and printfields (textile dying and print factories) drawing workers in from near and far.
Pollution of the river that powered the industries along with reeking chimneys and 24 hour noise must have been the everyday miasma for new arrivals looking for work, housing and love. There were high levels of drinking and ‘easy sex’ – not a lot else available as cheap entertainment. Inevitably, it was women who paid the highest price, in the form of unwanted pregnancies, absconding fathers and children beyond their means to support.
Records show that, from this tough start, Cecilia’s life stayed hard for good, though she survived to the age of 81. She must have been only 16 when she birthed her first child Janet in Kilmarnock in 1836, with ‘husband’ James Liddle, a handloom weaver. It was probably one of Scotland’s irregular marriages, unrecorded and frowned upon but considered valid. They had 3 more children in Glasgow, then James died young in 1846 – and Cecilia made her first parish relief application that year (mentioned in later records but no longer extant).
From then on, Cecilia moved back and forth between Glasgow and Campsie, bringing six more children into the world between 1849 and 1862 with uncertain fathers – including, by the look of it, George Cameron.
No baptisms can be found for any of the ten children, no marriages, several more parish relief applications in Glasgow (full of fibs) made by Cecilia and three of her daughters, and just two birth certificates for her youngest daughters – with a big fat fib included about Cecilia’s non-existent marriage to last known ‘husband’ William Williamson. Living outwith respectability honed a keen ability to lie. All the evidence suggests that Cecilia, with multiple mouths to feed, supplemented meagre income from printfield work and parish doles by turning tricks – just as many other desperately poor women did at the time.
Working out the DNA evidence
Most of the DNA matches of mine who have George Cameron in their trees share matches [by ‘triangulation’] with me and other descendants of the family lines begat by Naughty Cecilia – the Liddles, Melvilles, Forrests, Williamsons, Inches and more – so many of them that it would be hard to argue George was NOT a descendant of Cecilia.
He must have emigrated to Mississippi, USA before 1871 when he married his first wife Christine Caroline “Carrie” Chatham there. He made his life in Simpson County and died there in 1901. All the family trees where he turns up give his estimated birth date as about 1851 to 1858.
There was a gap around that time between Cecilia’s son Thomas born in c1849 (unknown father but given her late husband’s surname of Liddle) and son Walter born c1856 (unknown father but Cecilia’s parish relief application of 1867 said the dad was James Duncan who had absconded). Therefore, I postulate that George was born in that gap, say 1852-3.
I also postulate that he was passed to others at birth or soon afterwards, to be brought up, unofficially adopted, taken into the newly established Glasgow Workhouse, or into an orphanage… Records that might tell us his fate are thin on the ground but, in any event, he was given a different name to his mother and sibs and never appeared with them in any census or family record.
Another, even less attractive possibility, is that George was a child of one of Cecilia’s eldest daughters – Janet Liddle born in 1836 (therefore about 16-17 in 1852-3) or even Margaret Liddle born in 1840 or earlier (therefore possibly just old enough for a child in 1852-3). Both Janet and Margaret, and a younger sister Jane, did have out-of-wedlock children themselves. Janet’s son John born c1855 was ‘adopted’ into the family she had with husband William Melville (married 1857). Margaret’s daughter Frances born 29 January 1862 was found by police “exposed on a stair” in Glasgow, and the baby died at 11 months in December 1862. Soon after, Margaret emigrated to Queensland, Australia and married Joseph Banks there in 1865.
As we can see, all the available evidence points to desperate times for this poor family so there is no surprise in the idea that George Cameron was given up by whichever desperate woman or girl birthed him. But DNA doesn’t lie and it tells us that George did belong to one of them, most likely to Naughty Cecilia.
But who was the daddy?
What autosomal DNA hasn’t told us yet, of course, is who George’s father was. Y-DNA testing by living male descendants of George could produce results that match closely to other men whose paternal ancestry is known, and so could answer this question. Any takers?
Cecilia & her children – a brief summary
Cecilia Beaton born 1820 in Lennoxtown, Campsie; died 1902 in Clydebank
1st irregular marriage with James Liddle (c1814-1846)
- Daughter Janet Liddle (c1836-1875), married William Melville or Melvin 1857
- Daughter Margaret Liddle (1840-?), married Joseph Banks in Queensland 1865
- Son James Liddle (c1843-1912) married Mary Grant in Campsie 1863 (moved to Northumberland, England)
- Daughter Jane Liddle (c1845-?) married Hugh Brogan 1869 in Maryhill, Glasgow
With unknown fathers:
- Son Thomas Liddle (1849-?) emigrated to the USA
- Son George Cameron (c1852-1901) emigrated to Mississippi, USA
With reputed father James Duncan who absconded:
- Son Walter Liddle, later Williamson (c1856-1916) married Elizabeth Anderson in Campsie in 1878, moved to the Renton, Dumbartonshire
With ‘husband’ William Williamson who died in 1863 (and may not have fathered these children):
- Daughter Cecilia Williamson (1861-1919), my great-granny, married Robert Inch in the Renton 1878. They moved to Clydebank
- Daughter Mary Williamson (1861-1935) (probably fathered by a man named Forrest & married another one!) married James Forrest in the Renton 1881. They emigrated to Lynn, Massachusetts
- Son William Williamson (c1862-1903) married Janet Marshall Speirs in Row, Dumbartonshire in 1898 but sadly died a few years later in Larbert Asylum.
Morganhold 