Guest Post: The Name Was Wrong, but the Address Was Right: Solving a Scottish Genealogy Mystery, By Terry Donlan

I received this article from Terry Donlan, who writes the Irish Scottish Roots blog, and agreed to post it on Genea-Musings. 

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The Name Was Wrong, but the Address Was Right: Solving a Scottish Genealogy Mystery

By Terry Donlan

Family stories do not need to be completely accurate to be valuable. Sometimes the mistake itself becomes the clue that leads you to the truth.

For years, my family believed that my uncle, John Donlan Jr., had died in Fife, Scotland, in 1905. John was the first child of my grandparents, John Donlan Sr. and Isabel Fraser. He was born before my father, Hugh Donlan, but his short life had gradually disappeared from the family story.

I knew that John had existed, but I did not know where he was buried. Other family members knew even less about him. The information that survived suggested that he had died in 1905, the same year my father was born.

During a 2026 research trip to Scotland, my wife Deborah and I began discussing the Donlan family while staying in Cowdenbeath. That conversation exposed how little we actually knew about John. It also gave us a clear research question:

What happened to John Donlan Jr., and where was he buried?

The Birth Record Established His Identity

The first step was obtaining John’s Scottish birth record.

The record showed that his full registered name was John Smith Donlan. He was born on May 21, 1903, at 66 Glencraig Cottages in Auchterderran, Fife. His parents were identified as John Donlan, a coal miner, and Isabel Fraser. His father reported the birth.

This record established several important facts at once:

• John’s complete name

• His exact birth date

• His parents’ name

• His father’s occupation

• The family’s address

• The identity of the person who registered the birth

The middle name “Smith” was unexpected. We had not previously known that John had a middle name. Later research found two other members of Isabel Fraser’s family who also carried Smith as a middle name. I have not yet established why the name appeared repeatedly, so that remains a separate research question.

The birth certificate nevertheless gave us a firm starting point. We now had more than a name and an estimated year. We had a documented child living with the correct parents at a specific address in a Fife mining community.

The Death Record Corrected the Family Story

The death record produced the biggest surprise.

John had not died in 1905. He died on December 26, 1909, at 62 Glencraig Cottages in Lochgelly. He was six years old.

His father, John Donlan Sr., registered the death. The recorded causes were microcephalus and cardiac failure.

Correcting the death year changed our understanding of John’s life. If he had died in 1905, he would have been about two years old. Instead, he lived until age six. He was part of the household while several younger siblings were born, including my father. Some family members may have remembered him personally, while others probably learned about him through stories that became less precise with each generation.

The inherited story was wrong about the year, but it had preserved the essential truth that another child existed and died young in Scotland.

That is why family stories should be investigated rather than automatically accepted or dismissed.

Why “John Donlin” Was Still John Donlan

The death certificate presented another complication. The child’s surname appeared as “Donlin,” not “Donlan.”

A researcher relying only on an exact-name search might reject the record or fail to find it at all. However, identity should not be decided by one spelling variation.

The death record contained a combination of matching evidence:

• The child’s given name was John.

• His age agreed with the May 1903 birth.

• His father was John Donlan.

• His mother was Isabel Fraser.

• His father was a coal miner.

• The family remained at Glencraig Cottages.

• His father served as the informant.

Taken together, these details demonstrate that John Donlin and John Smith Donlan were the same child.

Surname spellings frequently changed in historical records. Clerks and registrars sometimes wrote what they heard. Accents, handwriting, literacy, transcription errors, and inconsistent family usage could all produce variations.

The spelling difference mattered, but it did not outweigh the complete body of evidence. The parents, age, occupation, address, and informant created a much stronger identification than the surname spelling alone.

From the Death Record to Lochgelly Cemetery

The death certificate established when and where John died, but it did not tell us where he was buried.

We contacted Fife Bereavement Services and supplied the identifying information from the birth and death records. The service located John’s burial entry and identified his resting place as Lochgelly Cemetery, Lair 20.

In Scottish cemetery records, a lair is a burial plot or grave space. A lair can contain one person, members of a family, or unrelated people buried at different times.

Fife Bereavement Services also provided information about two other people buried in Lair 20. Joan Richardson, age 52, was buried there in 1925, and Mary Richardson, age 33, followed in 1930. I found no documented relationship between the Richardson and Donlan families.

The unrelated burials suggest that Lair 20 was not maintained exclusively as a Donlan family plot. It may have been a shared burial space or may have been reused later. However, the available records do not formally describe it as a common lair, so I cannot state that as a proven fact.

Fife Bereavement Services provided a cemetery map that allowed Deborah and me to locate Lair 20. The grave was unmarked. Without the burial register, lair number, and map, we would have had no reliable way to identify the location.

The complete illustrated account of the records, cemetery search, and eventual memorial can be found in Solving a Family Genealogy Mystery in a Fife Cemetery.

Five Lessons for Your Own Genealogy Research

John’s story produced five lessons that can be applied to many family-history mysteries.

1. Treat family stories as clues, not conclusions

Write down the story as it was told, including uncertain dates and conflicting details. Oral history may preserve the correct person or event while getting the date, place, or circumstances wrong.

2. Examine original records

Do not rely exclusively on online family trees, indexes, or transcriptions. Original birth, marriage, and death records can reveal addresses, occupations, parents, witnesses, informants, and spelling variations that an index omits.

3. Establish identity from multiple facts

A spelling difference does not automatically indicate a different person. Compare ages, relatives, occupations, addresses, dates, and informants. Identity is strongest when several independent details agree.

4. Contact the authority responsible for the records

Cemetery offices, local councils, churches, archives, and bereavement services may hold burial registers and maps that are unavailable online. Ask specifically for the burial date, cemetery, section, lair or plot number, other occupants, and a location map.

5. Separate documentation from interpretation

Record what the evidence proves, what it suggests, and what remains unknown. This prevents a reasonable possibility, such as a shared or common grave, from becoming an unsupported family “fact.”

Researchers beginning similar work can find additional record sources and planning advice in the Beginner’s Guide to Irish and Scottish Genealogy.

John Smith Donlan was no longer just a child attached to an incorrect date. The records restored his full name, his six years of life, his place within the family, and the location where he was buried.

That is one of genealogy’s quietest but most meaningful accomplishments. A family story leads to a record. A record leads to a grave. And a person almost lost to memory becomes part of the family again.

About the Author

Terry Donlan is the founder of Irish Scottish Roots and has researched his Irish and Scottish family history since 1985. He has made six research trips to Ireland and Scotland. He writes about genealogy, heritage travel, historical records, and the people and places that shaped Irish and Scottish family stories.

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I was contacted by Terry Donlan, who is the writer of  the Irish Scottish Roots blog, recently and I  agreed to publish a guest post. If Irish and Scottish genealogy and family history is of interest to you, you should subscribe to (or visit it often) Terry's blog.  

 I welcome Guest Posts on Genealogy and Family History topics.  

Disclosure: I have received no remuneration to publish this blog post or to use and describe this product. 

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