Advice before editing this pre-1700 Wemyss profile?

Question

I have information to contribute to the profile of James Wemyss. This is what I can add:

• In addition to the children of James, Lord Burntisland and Margaret Countess of Wemyss, I would like to add a third son (WikiTree lists David; there is a 2nd son John, unlisted, about whom little is known):
• Col. William Wemyss (d. 12 Nov 1715) who married Elizabeth Loch, sister of Dr. William Loch, and therefore father of James Loch (Wemyss-280), David (wemyss-281), and Williamina (wemyss-133) who were brought to Maryland by their uncle after the death of their father and who are the ancestors of the Weems family in America. The James Wemyss (Wemyss-134) appears to be an error. 

These are the sources I am using:

• "Weems Family in America is in Direct Descent from Clan MacDuff", Weemsana (Official Newspaper of the G. H. Weems Educational Fund), Waverly, Tennessee, Vol. XXIII, No. 1, Jul 1977. Pages 4-5.
• "Weems Family History Traced from the Immigrant Ancestor in 1715", Weemsana (Official Newspaper of the G. H. Weems Educational Fund), Waverly, Tennessee, Vol. XXIV, No. 1, Jul 1978. Page 1. 

Should I contact one of the pre-1700 projects or know about any style guidelines before proceeding? Thank you!

Answer 1

As, at least one of the PMs are active, you might like to add the above info as a comment on the profile so they have a chance to review it, and co-operate with you on this.

Answer 2

Hi Smitty, I've added a couple of extra tags to your question, particularly Scotland as that is the project that needs to be contacted about this issue.

Whether Col. William Wemyss is the father of the three immigrant children or James Wemyss I don't know, the profile for James doesn't seem to cite any sources (though someone has just added some research notes) nor does the profile for Elizabeth Loch

Although its not my project, I would want to see what sources are cited by the two Weemsana articles before contemplating any connection between either William or James Weems/Wemyss and James Wemyss, Lord Burnitisland and his wife Margaret Wemyss.  There is definitely no indication of a third son in The Scots Peerage  which is a reliable source.

Answer 3

Afternoon Smitty,

I have had a quick look and also checked my own records. I cannot say your sources are incorrect because every now and again a "long lost" descendant in another part of the world legitimately pops up for a noble family and is able to provide exemplary evidence of the family line. However I have often seen innocent but wholly inaccurate attributions. I would like to see either a Scottish or English source confirm the existence of another son before I would be inclined to accept it.

I suggest you try and identify the sources the authors relied on for their books.

Happy to look at anything you find.

Mark

Leader: Scottish Nobility sub-project within the Scotland project.

Comments

I quote will quote at length from the 1977 Weemsana newsletter:

"Margaret, Countess of Wemyss and James, Lord Burntisland had at least six children and possibly more. Three sons and three daughters are known.

"David the eldest, baptized Apr. 29, 1678, became the 3rd Earl of Wemyss (4th if Margaret is counted)… [etc.]

"John the second son was baptized October 14, 1680, but no further information is available on John.

"William is believed to be the third son though no baptismal evidence has come to light. However, a letter written in April 1700 from the 1st Earl of Cromarti, who married Countess Wemyss after the death of Lord Burntisland, to George, 1st Earl of Melville states: 'I hope that I may have the honor to see you heer ether on Wednesday or Thursday. My Lady (Countess) Wemyss expects her three sonnes heer that day, I mean Thursday.' This letter has been accepted as definite evidence that Margaret, Countess of Wemyss, had three sons, as a letter from Lord Lyon, Register House, Edinburg, dated Aug. 3, 1962 attests: 'You do produce evidence now in the Cromarty letters that Lady Wemyss had three sons of whom only two are so far named.'

"William the third an youngest son of Margaret, Countess of Wemyss and Lord Burntisland, probably because of the British law of primogeniture, received no title or lands but became a colonel in the service of James Stuart, son of James II of Great Britain…. Colonel William Wemyss, father of our emigrant ancestor, was killed in the Battle of Preston on Nov. 12, 1715."

Was there a Col. William Wemyss fighting at Preston with the Jacobites? I'm not sure I have the resources to find out.

Register House, Edinburg, is listed as a source, among many sources for the article which traces the Wemyss family back to its origins.  

 

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Very interesting the reference in the Cromartie papers. I have checked the 2 excellent small books I have on the Jacobites of the '15 by David Dobson and Frances McDonnell and neither mentions anyone by the name of Wemyss.

Interestingly I have also looked at my copy of "Elcho of the '45" by Alice Wemyss, with the foreward by the Earl of Wemyss, both descended from Lord Elcho's brothers. In it she refers to Margaret, Countess of Wemyss having "an only son" David 4th Earl, father of Lord Elcho. Strange that 2 members of the current generation of the Wemyss family in a historically accurate biography only refer to Margaret having one son! I would expect them to have known. We obviously have Wemyss family members in the Sutherland family and I had certainly never heard anyone mention a Colonel William Wemyss who fought at Preston. Might he have been an illegitimate son of either Lord Burntisland or his father-in-law David 2nd Earl?

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Thank you for clarifying this. After receiving your last comment I stumbled on a correction by Harris Bateman (Bateman-2675), another Wemyss/Weems descendant, who used the Weemsana material in his "Bateman Family Genealogy," 1979. The correction comes from an un-indexed appendix to a 1985 supplement. He writes that in 1980 he was in communication with Francis David Charteris, 12th Earl  of Wemyss who "was able to prove conclusively that William Wemyss who was killed at Preston in Lancashire in 1715 could not have been a legitimate son of any of the Earls or Countesses of Wemyss….

"So I must conclude that our Scottish ancestors who came to Maryland in 1716, and before long began to spell their name WEEMS, were not in the direct succession to the Earldom, even though they may have been near kin."

So I will not try to link these early ancestors to the Earl of Wemyss, but may say in research notes that "family tradition" unsubstantiated by any written documentation, links them to the house of Wemyss.

Thanks again for your help. I hope our correspondence will alert future genealogists to avoid making the same mistake I did.

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I am always available to try and help. We have a similar situation with one of our earliest Sutherlands to land in the American colonies in the mid 1600s. People keep wrongly attributing him to someone who never existed and conflate parts of the biography of 3 real living men from approximately the same date. It was a normal practice for a Laird or aristocrat to set his illegitimate children up in life, contrary to what you may have heard or believed and for sons that was often purchasing them an army commission.