Looking to find family...

[BallantineNorth]

Hello All...

I thought I would come in here and see if any of you could help me and tell me exactly what clan I come from.

Lets see...it is all a little sketchy.

I know that Both my Great-Grand parents on my Grandmother side were from Edinburgh, Scotland. Now I do not think they were both born there and I am not sure what their names were at the moment...

I do know Robert and John Ballantine (my families proper spelling) were brothers and they left Scotland because of bickering.
I am a decendent of Roberts side.
Robert owned a Cabinet Shop in Preston, Ontario.
He married Mary Jane Miller and they moved to Grasmere, Ontario. Where that lived on 400 acres of land.

Between 1868-69 My Great-Grandfather John Ballantine was born.
My Great-Grandfather Ballantine married Jeanette Flintoff (unsure will check back with you on that one...75 % sure that was her last name) They were married from 1918 -1941. I am sure that is when My G-Grandfather Ballantine passed on. I think Jeanette was about 20 years younger than John.

They had children and one of them was my Grandmother. Mary Ballantine (Born in 1921 - still living). She was raised just outside of Huntsville, Ontario. She married Alfred Manary and had 6 children.

Does this help? I do not know...It seems like a jumbled up mess to me. I am interested in my family history just not that good with Names and dates. This is just all off the top of my head.

Thanks for any help you all could give me.

[aNonnyMoose]

Sounds like you have made a good start, you have a fair trail back on the Canadian side. But for anyone here in Scotland to help, you're going to have to track the Canadians right back to where the first immigrant appears (Robert, if I've read your history correctly). If you can get his death certificate, then hopefully it will have his date and place of birth on it - even a DOB would be helpful, as you could then log on to General Register Office for Scotland and try to find his birth certificate. Scottish birth certificates contain not only the parent's names, but also the date and place of their marriage - which will lead you to their marriage certificate. These list the names of their parents and whether or not they were still alive at that date... all, of course, assuming these events were post-1855. Events earlier than this are logged (hopefully) in the OPRs or Old Parish Records.

You have a bit of work ahead of you but best of luck in the search. I'm sure that other Canadian posters here can assist with sites containing ships records of immigration etc.

[Polwarth]

It may also pay you to look at alternative spellings of the name. The more common way of spelling the name in Scotland is Ballantyne and this may be the case in your family's records, too.

[BallantineNorth]

From what my current discussion with my Grandmother produced..."Ballantine" is the proper spelling...[not the '-tyne' spelling]... of her side of the family.

Also, I found out that Mary Jane Miller, the one that Robert went back to Scotland for, was born in Claighorn or Craighorn on the West side of Scotland.
This would be in the 1800's.

-That Robert and John Ballantine were directly decended from Scotland.
-That Robert had and older son Tom. That John (my grandmothers father) is his younger brother.

-Also found out that My Great Grandmothers proper name before marrage was Jennett May Flintoff.


I found their records on ...

John Ballantine born in Ontario and died in Ontario in 1941 - Ancestry.com

It is the fifth one down.
-Name: John Miller Ballantine
Spouse: Jennet May Flintoff

Thing is...on every single site I come to I have to pay to get the information. What kinda crock is that?

I am sorry but I am poor as a church mouse and even chuch mice have a right to find out who they are related to or in this case what clan...

Sorry...wee rant over.

Now, I also found out that Tom Ballantine moved to BC, Canada in early 1900's
With his Saw Mill and he never came back to Ontario.
My Grandma said she wanted to save up money to go see her Uncle Tom, but then the Depression hit and she could not save up enough money to do so.

I hope that is a little more information.

[Polwarth]

You don't seem to have understood my point. Until very recently, name-spellings were fluid... Yours may have a predominant use of the TINE rather than TYNE, but all I'm trying to say is: don't restrict it to the one spelling. My surname is Stewart - but we have Stuarts, Stewards, Steurts in the family, often in the same generation!

[ScotSites]

Another point about the spelling of names is that, while your family might have always used one spelling, a different spelling might have been used when the name has been written down; people would have tended to use the spelling they are most familiar with... or even just spell it how it sounds, so Ballantine/Ballantyne could even become Balantine/Balantyne!

[BallantineNorth]

Believe me I did understand exactly what you all are talking about..I was just clairifying tis all.