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Looking for information on my 4th great grandfather, Hugh Livingston

I have been searching for years to find out where my 4th great grandfather, Hugh Livingston, came from. I have located multiple documents from here in Canada all providing his approximate year of birth as 1815 and that he was born in Ireland. He married Margaret Williamson 10 Feb 1840 in Ontario, Canada. His parents names are not listed. Margaret was born in Co Cork in 1819 to Robert Williamson and Mary 'Minnie' Donovan. Hugh's past remains a mystery. I have searched in a number of online databases with no success. I don't have the names of his parents from any Canadian document and no one in our family knows. Some other's in my search have suggested that Hugh was Scottish but over at least 7 different sources/documents, he says he's from Ireland. The earlier documents say that he presbyterian. He died in 1892 in Ontario.

Hugh and Margaret had 9 children that I can account for: William 1841, Sarah (my 3rd great grandmother) 1842, David 1846, Mary Anne 1847, Margaret 1849, Hugh 1849, Agnes 'Nancy' 1852, Eliza 1856 and Ida 1871. 

I would really like to find out anything I can about Hugh's life before coming to Canada, where he lived, who his parents were. I am not a beginner genealogist but this one has had me absolutely stumped for years. I keep coming back to it and I just can't find what I'm looking for. 

ruralrootsgene…

1 reply

DvdSteen,

Having a Scottish surname and being Presbyterian tends to point to Scottish ancestry. However the main influx of Scots to Ireland was in the 1600s when some 200,000 settled here. So statistically, it’s likely that Hugh was born in Ireland and that the link to Scotland was several generations before that. In Ireland today he’d be known as an Ulster-Scot. In North America the term tends to be Scotch-Irish.

The majority of Scots settled in Ulster though some did go to other locations, notably cities like Galway, Cork & Dublin. You can use this website to see where the surname was found in Ireland in the mid 1800s. Exclusively in the counties of Ulster, so that’s probably your best search area.

https://www.johngrenham.com/surnames/

Statutory birth, death and marriage registration (in some jurisdictions called Vital Records) only started in Ireland in 1864, save for non RC marriages which were recorded from 1845 onwards. So you won’t find statutory birth, death or marriage certificates in Ireland for this family. For earlier years you usually need to rely on church records, where they exist. Ideally you need to know the precise denomination and have some idea of where the person was born in order to search the correct records. Not all churches have records for that period and not all that do are on-line.

RC records are mostly on-line on the nli site:

https://www.nli.ie/en/family-history-introduction.aspx

For other denominations, the churches usually hold the originals but there are also copies in PRONI, the public record office, in Belfast. A personal visit is required to access them. Access to the records there is free. This link explains what records exist, parish by parish:

https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/publications/proni-guide-church-records

Without any idea of where in Ulster Hugh possibly came from, and without his parents names, I think you are going to find it hard to find any documentary record of him in Ireland. Possibly DNA testing may be a way of matching with others who have additional information about where the family originate. Family Tree DNA reportedly has more people with Ulster roots than any other company. That obviously increases the chances of finding a match. You might want to try them or, if you have already tested, you can transfer your results to them for no fee. The North of Ireland Family History Society is running an Ulster DNA project in conjunction with FTDNA and can offer testing kits at a reduced price.

http://www.nifhs.org (Go to DNA project on the website).

Elwyn, IrelandXO Volunteer ☘IrelandXO Volunteer

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