St. Clair/Sinkler Ancestry

I am so excited, for on Wednesday I got a phone call and an email from a man by the name of Steve St. Clair. I had actually contacted him regarding our St. Clair line, I had noticed on the St. Clair website that they are doing DNA testing of the family and I had a couple of questions. It turns out that Steve is a cousin of sorts, we are both descendants of Alexander Sinkler who came here in 1698 from Scotland. We both descend through his grandson Robert St. Clair. I have added the link to the DNA research project on on this blog so please visit and follow his instruction to sign in below.


On the left you'll see a link called "Our YDNA"
When you click you'll be prompted for user name and password.
user name - dnast
password - r3search200



Once your in this website click on Research and there you can run a query below are some suggestions;


Prince William County
Virginia
Sinclair
Sinkler
Maryland
Scotland
Ireland
Richmond County
Rosslyn

Loyalty



We need any male in the family to participate in the research but there is a cost for the lab test of $199.00. I hope someone out there will be willing to donate DNA and maybe we can get several of us to help with the cost. Tell me what you think.



You must be a male over the age of 18 and be a descendant of my father Richard Yeates, the Sinkler line comes in through his mother - Ridgeway, Waldron, Sinkler.



Here is some of the information that I have copied from the website.



A whole new theory on why Alexander came to America. Source - A History of the Scottish People, 1560-1830 - T.C. Smout, Fontana Press, '85
Scottish people of the 1600's relied heavily on the oat crop. It was the staff of life. Oats could be mixed with milk to make porridge, with water to make gruel, or made into a paste and baked into oatbread or bannocks.
In this society which relied so heavily on a single grain, failure of the oat crop even on a local scale could lead to a situation in which the peasants dropped from their normal plateau of rough plenty into a deep trough of deprivation, even of famine. There were 17 bad years before 1660, many of them concentrated in the period between 1630 and 1650. Then, apparently quite suddenly, there was an improvement. Between 1660 and 1695 only four seasons, and they were marked by high prices (signaling a scarcity of oats). But, then, between 1695 and 1699, four successive years of serious scarcity followed by a murrain among the cattle, causing perhaps the heaviest famine mortality for a century.



The catastrophe of the 1690's was presumably an accident of the climate (particularly in the early spring) with it's effects accentuated, perhaps, by increases of population in the 3 good decades that preceded it.


The peasants in time of scarcity attempted first to fall back on other goods. The Highlanders tried to live off cheese, the Lowlanders off herring; excessive consumption of either could lead to serious and unpleasant bowel diseases.


The minister of Torryburn said that the number of burials in the parish rose from an average of about 21 a year to 114 in 1697 and to 81 in 1699. In the large parish of Old Machar, the average number of burials was half as high again between 1696 - 1698 as it had been in the previous decade. In some counties it was said that a third or even a half of the population died or emigrated.


There are many other descriptions of the horrors of these years, of the bodies lying at the roadsides with grass in their mouths, and people dragging themselves towards the graveyards to be sure of a Christian burial. One theory that's been raised by one of us is that perhaps Alexander's wife died that year. Perhaps some of his children. And, with no connections left, he decided to start over again in the new world. We can begin to look for Margaret and Mary Sinclair in the OPR records who may have died about 1697-98.



Alexander came to America in the fall of 1698 as an indentured servant.



I have also posted a link to the Sinclair USA website. There are pictures of some of the family properties and castles and more links to other websites such as the Roslyn Chapel. They are planning another trip to Scotland for 2009, if you want to sign up you will find the information on this website.



If you want more information on the family I have tons of it so just contact me.



Have fun exploring your family's past.