compiled by Steve Wilson,
last updated August 29, 2016.
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Here is our reasoning regarding the relationships of the Mandersons of Innerwick in the period before 1700.
The name Thomas Manderson appears as the spouse of Elizabeth Denholm (1669-1680), as the spouse of Christian Dickson (1680-1688), and in 1682 as the deceased whose mortcloth fee indicates that he was an adult. Certainly the burial does not refer to the spouse of Christian Dickson, who was still alive after that date. Therefore the burial is either of the spouse of Elizabeth Denholm, or a third Thomas Manderson not yet recognized. But if a third Thomas was assumed, we would find that there are no other records of that third Thomas appearing in the Innerwick records for the 19 years prior to his burial, which makes that hypothesis unlikely. Therefore, we conclude that the burial is for the spouse of Elizabeth Denholm. Since Thomas Manderson and Elizabeth Denholm were married in 1669, and Elizabeth's baptism is recorded in 1646, and the Innerwick records are missing from late 1646 to early 1663, and Thomas's baptism is nowhere to be found, we are estimating his birth at about 1648. As for the other Thomas Manderson, spouse of Christian Dickson, we have no clue.
The name Adam Manderson appears frequently in the records of Innerwick. Besides numerous infants, there is the Adam Manderson who was married to Jean Guild from before 1663 to at least 1674, and also the Adam Manderson who was an elder in the Innerwick church from 1691 (or before) to 1706 (or later). We believe those two Adam Mandersons are identical. A major reason for such a conclusion is that for the literally hundreds of appearances of the name during the period from 1663 through May 1706, there is no indication of a need to hypothesize a second Adam Manderson. Not until 25 Jan. 1708 do we see an entry requiring a second Adam Manderson, who we believe to be the kirk elder's grandson.
As for the children of Adam Manderson (the kirk elder) and Jean Guild, five had their baptisms recorded in Innerwick between 1663 and 1674 (James, Adam, Janet, William, and George). Thomas, the spouse of Elizabeth Denholm, was identified as the son of Adam in the baptism of Jean Manderson recorded on 3 Oct. 1670 in Innerwick, whose birth we estimated above as about 1648. So is it possible that Adam Manderson and Jean Guild could have had children over a 26-year period? We believe so, if we estimate that Adam and his wife Jean were born about 1628. With that hypothesis, the parents were aged about 20 when their son Thomas was born, and about 46 when their youngest child George was born. And at our last sighting of Adam Manderson, in 1708, he would have been 80 years old.
Between the births of Thomas (about 1648?) and James (1663), many more children could have been born, and since the Innerwick records are missing for that period of time, we have no way of confirming those births. But there are yet additional identifications to be made in the records. On 18 July 1731, George Manderson was identified as an uncle to George Douglass, who also had brothers Adam and William. We find those three individuals were the sons of James Douglas and Mary Manderson, who were married in 1682 in Innerwick. This makes Mary the daughter of Adam, and we estimate her birth at about 1661. On 21 Sep. 1686, Andrew Alison and Margaret Manderson had a child baptised, and the three witnesses were Adam, James, and George Manderson. Therefore Margaret must be part of this family, and given that she was married in Innerwick in 1677, we believe that she was also a daughter of Adam and born about 1657. And there is a burial record of John Manderson, the son of Adam, in 1673. Unfortunately, we have no clue when he might have been born, but it was undoubtedly in that same period of time. One other daughter of Adam is possible, Helen Manderson, spouse of Thomas Thomson, since Adam Manderson was a witness at the baptism of one at least of her children.
So who is currently unaccounted for? We already mentioned above Thomas Manderson, the spouse of Christian Dickson. There is a John Manderson in the records in 1679 and 1689, and since we have already noted that Adam's son John was buried in 1673, this John is from a different family. We also have a James Manderson who is a witness at two baptisms in 1679-1680, which would be rather young to be the James born in 1663. (Admittedly, we did decide that George, the witness of 1686, was the son born in 1674, but there are no other indications of a second George.) A Janet Manderson is also in the records, spouse of Robert Wood and Patrick Dods. Since it appears that she was married in 1685, if she was the daughter of Adam (born 1668), she would have been only 17 years of age. But her sons were named Patrick and Alexander (no Adam), so it seems she may have a different father. Also, the burial record in 1672 of Adam and Janet Manderson easily fits the children of Adam born in 1665 and 1668, otherwise one would have to explain why they were recorded together if they were from different families. And from before the break in the Innerwick records, there are two Alexander Mandersons, a spouse of Margaret Ramsay (with children 1628-1634) and a spouse of Margaret Fender (married 1645). However, since we have no indication that Adam had any children named Alexander, making it difficult to identify him as a relative.
Interestingly, testaments of several Mandersons who were residents of Hartside (in the hills well above the village of Spott) during the period 1569-1652, are preserved in the Scottish records. Three of them also had the name Adam, and given that Scottish parents frequently named their children after their own parents, we suspect these are also relatives. The list of those testaments (with two others from the area) is as follows:
Since we have conjectured that our Adam Manderson was born about 1628, we might hope that James Manderson of Hartside was his father. But the 1652 testament dative (which, in the absence of a will, the court names an executor) identifies his son Robert Manderson as executor, another name that is completely foreign to our family.
We shall make one last observation, more as a caution. There was a John Manderston who was canon of the collegiate church in Dunbar in 1567, and played a major role when Bothwell divorced his wife to marry Mary Queen of Scots (Miller, James, The History of Dunbar, 1859, p. 128). But Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae (p. 406) says that this John Manderston, already in Dunbar by 1560, was "perhaps more properly John Home, of the family of Manderston".
