Surname Saturday – Harreld (Harrald, Harold)

Last week, I did a post on the surname Harley, and told how I had traced my family back to John Harley and Agnes Moncur.  John and Agnes were married in Longforgan, and their children were also born there.  John’s death certificate had showed that his parents were Robert Harley and Janet Gun (or Cur).  The Longforgan burial records show a Robert Harley was buried in 1838, and a Janet M’Kay or Harley, wife of Robert Harley, buried in 1833.  The 1851 cesnsus had also showed that John had been born in Forres, Murreyshire (Morayshire) Scotland.  I had found a baptism record for a John Harrald in 1792. His parents were Robert Harrald and Janet McAish.  I found this entry by using the wildcar Har* after I had been unable to find any entries in Morayshire for the surname Harley.

The next thing to do was to try and find a baptism entry for Robert, and found three possible baptism records at FamilySearch.

Robert Harrald
Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950
christening:      27 October 1751           DALLAS, MORAY, SCOTLAND
father:  James Harrald
mother: Jean Douglass

Robert Harrald
Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950
christening:      31 October 1760           DALLAS, MORAY, SCOTLAND
father:  William Harrald
mother: Margaret Murray

Robert Harold
Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950
christening:      6 March 1759   FORRES, MORAY, SCOTLAND
father:  James Harold
mother: Jean Douglas

I have only been able to find two children for Robert and Janet – John, and Elizabeth:

Elizabeth Harreld
Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950
birth:    3 June 1790
christening:      6 June 1790      DALLAS, MORAY, SCOTLAND
father:  Robert Harreld
mother: Jennat Mcangus

I decided to do a search for all the Harreld/Harrald baptisms in Moray from 1700 to 1800 (using ScotlandsPeople as it’s easier to copy their results into Notepad and then into Excel).  I also searched for all the marriages for this time period as well.  My results can be downloaded here: Harralds

My Robert appears to have been the son of either James Harreld and Jean Douglass, or William Harreld and Margaret Murray.  This is a list of the children for each of these couples

Since I wasn’t able to find a marriage entry for James and Jean, or baptism entries for either James or William, I decided to check the coverage of parish registers for Dallas.

The FamilySearch Wiki shows that the coverage for the parish of Dallas is:

Established Church—Old Parochial Registers

Since marriages in Dallas only started in 1749, this would explain why I had not found the marriage entry for James and Jean, and why I couldn’t find baptisms for them.  I decided to filter the baptisms for those in Dallas only.

From this, it would appear that James (married Jean Douglass), William (married Margaret Murray), and Alexander (married Elizabeth Watson) were brothers.  The first child on the list for each of them is Margaret.  This would suggest that this was their mother’s name.  Both William and James named their eldest son Robert.  Alexander doesn’t appear to have had a son.  This would indicate that their father was named Robert.

So, I have determined that the two Roberts were probably cousins, but which baptism is for my Robert?

Robert Harrald and Janet McAish (McAngus/McKay) had two children, Elizabeth, born 1790, and John born 1792.  Robert and Janet had married in 1786, so they could have had 2 more children between their marriage, and the birth of Elizabeth.

I found a baptism entry for Janet McAish, and her parents were listed as John McAish and Jean Cumming.  This would indicate that Robert and Janet’s son John was named after her father.  But who was Elizabeth named after?

In Scotland, the most common naming pattern is to name the eldest son after the husband’s father, and the second daughter after his mother, and the eldest daughter after the wife’s mother, and the second son after her father.  So, left’s say that John was the second son, named after Janet’s father.  This would mean that the eldest son would have been named after Robert’s father, and the second daughter after his mother.  The most likely scenario then is that there were two children born before Elizabeth, a son James and a daughter Jean, and that Robert was the son of James Harrald and Jean Douglass.

The problem with this assumption is that the names James and Jean have not been carried down through the family.  The names William and Margaret do appear in a later generation, but these names appear in Agnes Moncur’s family (Agnes was the wife of Robert’s son John).

I therefore think that my Robert was the son of James Harrald and Jean Douglass, but at this stage I can’t be sure of this.  I haven’t been able to find what happened to the other Robert.  There is a baptism record of Robert Harrald in 1779, and his parents were Robert Harrald and Janet Donaldson.  I don’t know if this record is for the other Robert, or if this was a child born before Robert’s marriage to Janet McAish.