El' of a good find

After introducing you all to our Robert's immediate family last night I wanted to see if I could find more information about them - perhaps find a sibling's spouse, a marriage date or even confirm a date of death. Add more leaves to the tree, so to speak...

What I wasn't expecting to find was another sibling: confirmed evidence of the elusive "Elizabeth" recorded as a member of the Cramond / Cameron household in the 1841 Census but none following (I referred to my inability to find more about her in an earlier post).

Entering Cramond and Cameron into the "name of parent" box on FamilySearch.org, a new site in my arsenal, among the random offspring of other Cameron / Cramond pairings (of which there are quite a few!) and the already identified siblings of our Robert, lay an "Elspet Cameron"  - born 10th December 1829, smack between Robert's birth in 1827 and John's in 1831.

My heart beat a little faster and I put off going to sleep a few more minutes as I sought out even more evidence because, just like chocolate, one piece is never enough...

Back to Scotland's People I went, the site that introduced me to Alex and Janet and provided the birth dates and baptism records for all the other Camerons listed on the census above. But now I was searching for an Elspet rather than an Elizabeth, imagining that when Janet answered his questions as to who was home that night of the 6th June back in 1841, the Census collector thought she was giving him pet names for her daughters. As a result he wrote them as they could have been, not as they were - confusion caused by the fact that, just as Jessie was often short for Janet, Elspet is often the diminutive of Elizabeth.

And EUREKA - there she was 'Elspet, lawful daughter to Alexander Cameron & Janet Cramond in Garmouth'!

Welcome to the Family, Elsie...