Donald Innes

  General Notes:

Is this the same couple - 8 years before the marriage?

[PTG] Kirkmichael was an underpopulated indigent parish. This was eight years before our Nellie's marriage. I suspect Donald's parents may be a completely different couple but it remains a mystery.

[RJB] On viewing the OPR for Donald's baptism there now seems a reasonable case for Donald being the son of the Alexander Innes and Helen Grant. Helen is recorded not as Alexander's spouse or wife but as "his Party" suggesting that the couple were not married. If we accept that Helen is the daughter of George Grant and that the list of his children on the Rathven Session Minutes website is in birth order then this would have Helen aged between 16 and 20 at the time of Donald's birth, possibly too young too be married. But why Kirkmichael? By 1755 Nellie would probably have been living with her family in Rathven but before 1752 she lived in Boharm still a distance from Kirkmichael. Was this baptism of the illegitimate son of a shoemaker';s son and the minister's daughter hidden in a far corner of Banffshire?