Is anybody here descended from Scottish families who left Scotland because of

[csziggy]

1. We're not sure about our Scottish ancestors

Because we have not found them actually IN Scotland. They were Stewart/Stuart so of course the lore was that they were poor relatives of the king. But there is no evidence that ties them to any royalty.

Our Stewart ancestor is a bit of a mystery - he supposedly was born in Scotland or Ireland in 1713, showed up in North Carolina and married in 1754, had a slew of kids, then died in either 1812 or maybe 1824!

From my research, I suspect that his ancestors may been Quakers that came from Ireland with another branch of the family (that his daughter married into) in the 1680s to Pennsylvania and then he came with that family to North Carolina in 1753. He could easily NOT be Scottish at all or a generation or two removed from Scotland.

I seriously doubt the 1713 birthdate - that tale came from one grandson who wrote a family history over a hundred years ago and there is no verification for either birth or death date. And even the obituary he quotes for the 1824 death date says that the 111 age is for an in law, not this ancestor, but the grandson claims - with NO VERIFIABLE PROOF - that that was a mistake. And no one has found what newspaper that obituary came out of or found any evidence other than the quote in that book!

Our Stewart does show up in the legal and land records, and census in Chatham County, North Carolina from 1766 through 1811, though it is hard to sort out since there were several Stuarts with the same first name including his own son - whose wife had the same first name as our ancestor.

There is a 1812 record in Georgia for a Stewart with the same first name whose probate was handled by his wife with the same first name. But the alleged 1824 death was in South Carolina and I have no records proving our guy ever lived there, though several of his children did move there, including the daughter who is my ancestor.

So our "Scottish" ancestor may not actually be Scottish!