Re: Hermanston

[Niven Sinclair <niven@niven.co.uk>]

At 19:54 09/10/00 -0400, you wrote:
>Niven,
>
>     Thanks again for the information.  Loving a good risk myself, I 
> especially
>enjoyed the last paragraph.  Perhaps one day, far as it may be, I shall own a
>little piece of land here in the States, or maybe in Scotland.  I have a 
>slight
>belief, although supported by nothing but names and dates, that my 
>ancestors came
>from Dundee, Angus.  I traced that family back to a James Sinclair b. 1645 
>as the
>son of John Sinclair.  James was born in Dundee, but there is no record of 
>a John
>Sinclair being born in Dundee.  Do you know anything about a John Sinclair 
>b. 1620
>in Haddington?  I'm not sure, but the Angus family may be related to a 
>Robert b.
>1619 and John Sinclair b. 1635 in Glasgow.  They were the sons of a Robert St.
>Clair.  I was wondering if John of Haddington's possible father, John St. 
>Clair
>b.1601 and Robert of Glasgow b.1602 could be the sons of John St. Clair of
>Herdmanston.


I would need much more information than is currently available to me to 
determine
whether any of the Sinclairs you mention could be the sons of John St Clair of
Haddington.  It is very unusual for a Sinclair to change his name back to 
St Clair
and unheard of for a St Clair to change his name to Sinclair - a name which 
arose
purely from its phonetic association with St Clair at a time when people wrote
down what they heard or what they thought they heard - hence Singler, Sinkler,
Sancleer etc etc.

John, with Mathew, William, Robert and Henry, were common Christian names 
with the
St Clairs of Hermanston but one could say that of practically any of the 
Sinclair
lines (as well as that of William' the Conqueror' whose sons were Robert, 
Henry
and William).

Niven Sinclair

>[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@mids.org
>[ To get off or on the list, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html


[ This is the Sinclair family discussion list, sinclair@mids.org
[ To get off or on the list, see http://www.mids.org/sinclair/list.html