The Steedmans of Scotland and Kinross

 General Interest, News  4 Responses »
Dec 112015
 

Followers of my Stedman work over the years will note that I have avoided doing a lot of the Stedman genealogies in Scotland. This is in part because I do not have good access to primary documentation from Scotland without paying the outrageous fees requested by Scotland’s people. (I am half Scottish myself…)

A primary work that I have tried to transcribe into this genealogy has been the 1858 Barton-Steadman genealogy by John Stedman of Bath. This work has many critics. From that, several trees have been drawn. I have made a PDF of a tree I was sent about 2005 and you can view it here :

Barton-Steadman Family Tree.

I have received a number of other documents on the Genealogy of the various Steedman families in Scotland. An important recent addition has been extracted from David Marshall’s “Kinross-shire and Its Owners” that is in the Kinross library. I have received a photocopy of that document from my colleague David Stedman in Wales. This work presents some serious differences to the 1858 John Stedman of Bath (JoB) work. I have not yet been able to process this at all and convert it into a modern genealogy I can present to you on this web site, but at least I can share the source material and welcome your help in sorting this out. Kinross-shire and its Owners by David Marshall.

Lastly, I have documented a link that I am sure is wrong. Hopefully, this last work will help sort this out correctly. Robert Steedman, son of James Steedman and his cousin Janet Steedman was probably not the husband of Margaret Lambert, as published in many genealogies. We now believe that it was another Robert Steedman. There is evidence suggesting that Robert, son of James and Janet, died young. He was also part of the Barton-Steadman family (if you believe JoB…). DNA evidence from two Steedman men (one in Canada and one in New Zealand) gives them different DNA from what we see for presumed Barton-Steadman descendants. (Hopefully, David will elaborate on that comment…) We have another DNA match to this family that I still have not been able to connect into this family and may come in from an earlier generation.

As you may deduce from the additions I am making to the UK Stedman/etc genealogies, my current interest is in fully documenting the UK Stedman families of the 19th and 20th centuries. That way I can determine how many lines trail back to the 1700s where sorting out families is more difficult. I want your help with your research, especially into the Scottish families, to try to make sense of what now seems to be a jumble.

Thanks for reading…

john.

Major Update to UK Stedman/Steadman/Steedman Genealogy

 News  No Responses »
Dec 112015
 

My much delayed UK Stedman/Steadman/Steedman genealogies was just been updated. Almost 6000 new names have been added since the last update. At least as many existing individuals have been updated.

I am continuing to assure that more of the members of the Stedman DNA project are included. I still have several more, especially more recent members, to include in this extended family tree.

I have added a large number of Scottish Steedmans/etc. I know this just barely scratches the surface and several of the family links are considered by me to be somewhat tentative. I hope to get more comments and updates in the upcoming months about Scottish families.

As part of the Scot effort, I added hundreds of Scot Steedmans who went to New Zealand. I am looking for feedback on these families as I still have a number of loose ends. I have also done a lot of work on other Stedmans and Steadmans in bother New Zealand and Australia.

I have been continuing to try to sort our the Stedman/etc. families who lived in Birmingham and Manchester regions. These folks turn out to be very difficult and a lot of existing on-line trees are just plain wrong.

I have added several more Stedman/etc families who migrated to Canada in the 19th and early 20th century from UK and Ireland. This is still a work in progress.

I have done a couple more of my given name studies – that is where I look for everyone with a certain given name as part of their given name. The most extensive was for the given name Leonard. I have identified almost 100 Stedman/etc men in the UK with Leonard as part of their given name. For most, I have traced their origins to an existing family or to an ancestor born before 1810. I have also tried to trace their extended families, meaning descendants and the family lines of their Stedman/etc. siblings and cousins.

These are just some of the recent highlights that I worked on.

If you search the trees and do not find your Stedman/etc. ancestor, I want to hear from you as updates from direct family members are the lifeblood of this project. Just a note: I prioritize research on people who currently have a Stedman/etc surname. I expect more assistance if you are from a daughter line where the Stedman ancestor was 100-200-300 years ago.

As always, I need your corrections. I try to document everyone correctly, but I use a proof standard based on the “preponderance of evidence”, meaning I use all of the data I can find to arrive at a conclusion, but I accept that additional evidence could lead to a different conclusion.

Happy Searching,

john.