robertmackayclan

First you need to read records in Bates Co. MO & St. Clair Co. MO to see if there was a blood relationship with your John D. Smith with Charles H. Smith living next to your known Mendenhall family. Their path into MO does not seem to be the same as Smith family.

Through census records the known man Charles H. Smith lived in Lake Co. IL where his children were born and he might have been married ?
So the records of Lake Co. IL need to be read. That county right on the line with Wisconsin (Kenosha) so those records also might be needed.

Then he is found living with his father John D. Smith in Lewis Co. NY, not far from the line with Canada. Those records in that location need to be read. Said John D. Smith might have come into NY from MA. You will have to hope the records exist in NY to say where he lived before that location.

You might be able to find orginial records on line, but in the end I believe you will have to spend $$$ for film rental through L.D.S. library systems.

The above locations St. Clair Co. MO from Lake Co. IL from Lewis Co. NY, I do not see that L.D.S. Family Project Task has records on line for those locations. I do not know about Ancestry.Com.

All of this means, of course, there is no way your Smith line is a descendant of Robert Mackay Sr.

Good luck with your research.

I agree any information would be useful.

One concern with the the census information is that it is based on either 1) what the person telling the census taker believed, or 2) what the census taker thought they heard. In my case we have 5 different decades with the same data so we have to assume that was the knowledge of John Smith and his wife. In other words that is what they believed based on fact or a story they were told. I have other census data on my other ancestors where some years their parents were born in one state then 10 years later it was a different state. Then it switched back.

I bring that up because if his parents died when he was only 7, how much knowledge would he have remembered. It would have been up to his "relatives" or adopted parents to know and tell him. I would prefer to start with the knowledge that our source documentation/information is true, but leave it open to error if I find a lead that may also be true. That also brings into question if MO was his birthplace. Again that is what he believed based on what he was told and remembered.

I guess I will have to wait until I can review your book to sketch out everything you already know. As I mentioned earlier you have that advantage on me. I am a very visual person. I lay out information on spreadsheets to visualize the facts and dig deeper. I hear you telling me that you don't believe I could have come through the lines we keep saying the DNA seems to indicate. However until I see these facts with my own eyes I find it hard to stop thinking about it.

As for the Smith name change, I don't think Michael or I are saying any McKay changed their name from McKay to Smith. It is more likely that John moved into the home of a Smith family and there THEY changed his name to match his new adopted family. This could have been a sister (to his father) who married a Smith (do you already know there are none?), or it could have been a brother or sister to his mother (for which we have no information outside of the MO birth data from the census).

I do understand your point of needing to have evidence of the McKays moving to MO and dying about 1858. We also need evidence of either a McKay family relative or a relative from his mother's side in MO.

I also agree there is the chance of an illegitimate birth of John Smith by a McKay. In that case his mother may have made up all sorts of stories before she died. Or maybe she had to give him up for adoption and he preferred to think that she was dead. This happens even today, so what makes us think it is not possible back then.

Currently I am going to keep my fingers crossed that I can find John D Smith and Mary Etta "Marietta" Mendehall's marriage certificate in the film, and I hope I get something on his parents there.

Thanks for your thoughts. They are helping me think this through more.

"The problem with Kent's line is the degree of closeness his profile has with proven Robert Mackay descendants life myself, Gerard and Junior McKay. His degree appears closer to mine and Gerard's than it does to Juniors..."

What happenned to Mr. Smith being closer to the James Sr. line ? Again the common ancestor to all these men could be 20 generations in the past !!

Mr. Smith need to move his blood line back in time to a location where the children and grandchildren of Robert Mackay lived in US. In the end I believe he will move his blood line back in time using the surname Smith well beyond Robert Sr.

"We really do need more test subjects......?

Very true and stop trying to connect with people who have not done their library work and documented their blood line as far back in time as 1680's.

"if Kent's paternal ancestry can be tied to our Mackay family it would probably be from a slave"

I would not wander down that path, unless someone can show some evidence of that have been the case. Nor using the idea of adoption or illegitmate birth to try to cover up the fact that the library work has not been done.

Has Mr. Smith contacted some of the other researchers--"Bibby McKay", Mr. Bob Scott & Connie Steinmetz (she has documented Robert Sr.'s parentage)?

"I knew things like this would crop up when started doing DNA testing"

I am sure you will have more surprises in the future.

In the end "we" can continue to exchange these e-mail and none of this effort will solve the problem. That can only be done by Mr. Smith doing work in the library.