Genealogy of the DOBIE, MEIKLE, COATSWORTH, MILNE, CARLSON & Connected Families.

This website is an over­view of my part­ic­ular branch of the Dobie family – a branch whose tree is rooted in the tiny village of Tinwald, now little more than a church and a grave­yard a few miles north of Dumfries, Scot­land. The photo at right was taken by Robert Dobie in 2002.

There well may be early Dobie records on the Scot­lands­people web­site, but I haven't paid to look at them. For me, it's far too expensive. So I've limited myself to the free records on family­search.org, and to corres­pond­ence with researchers and family members over the years. Because of this my research is mostly limited to my connected family branches in Canada and the United States.

Revised April 18, 2024.

Researching These Families:

Click on any link below to see more info on that family.

BAINBRIDGE, (Middleton-in-Teesdale, Durham, England). There were many marriages between them and the COATS­WORTH family in Durham, back into the 1600's. The Coats­worth family tree, as detailed in the book "The Descend­ants of Thomas Coats­worth and Mary Bain­bridge", by Eva M. Coats­worth, starts with the marriage of Thomas Coats­worth and Mary Bain­bridge, in 1691.

BOWMAN, (emigrated from County Down, Ireland, to Albany, New York, circa 1770). There is a wealth of legal documents left by Samuel Bowman in his battle to receive his army pension. Soon after the family settled in or near Albany, N.Y., he was drafted, as a young teenager, into the Cont­inental Army to fight the British. After he was released from the Army his release doc­u­ments were stolen. Years later he had to go to court to get his pension. Even though the legal procedings left a huge paper trail, basic questions about him and his ancestry remain unanswered. Samuel Bowman's wife was Dorothy SMOKE or SMOAK, which was reputedly a "Penn­syl­vania Dutch" family, but I can find no records of her family or of this marriage.

CARLSON, (from Skara­borgs Lan, Sweden). They are my mother's ancestors. Her grand­father, Frans (Frank) Karlsson, brought his family from Sweden to North Dakota in 1888. In Sweden, because of Swedish naming convention, his children had the legal surname of Fransson, but they took on the surname Carlson in America. Prior to that, the research gets compli­cated as Swedish records are in Swedish and/or Latin.

CARLSON Connection to DOBIE: (dates are of marriages).

COATSWORTH, (Middleton-in-Teesdale, Durham, England). This family has been in Durham since medieval times and appears in the records with many different spellings. Our line emigrated from Durham to West Virginia, circa 1835, then to Missouri for a few years, then to Bruce Mines, Ontario.

COATSWORTH Connection to DOBIE: (dates are of marriages).

COULTHARD, (from Dumfries, Scotland). This is a peripheral line to my Dobie family. Coulthards emigrated from Dumfries­shire to Canada in the 1830's about the same time as many of my distant Dobie cousins, and there were several Coulthard - Dobie marriages in Canada and the United States after that. I don't have any of this info on this website because they aren't direct ancestors.

COULTHARD, (from Durham, England). Connected by marriage in the 1700's to my COATSWORTH family in Middleton-Teesdale, Durham, England. See the connec­tion to Dobie in the Coats­worth paragraph above.

DOBBIE, (Lanark County, Ontario). Not related to our Dobie family although I did find one side connec­tion by marriage. Several Dobie or Dobbie families emigrated from Scotland and Ireland around 1820 and settled in Lanark County. I researched them in the early days to see if we are connected. They started out with one "B" but added a second in the late 1800's. I've seen the name spelled both ways in the same document.

DOBIE, (from Tinwald, Dumfries­shire, Scotland). Our early Dobie ancestors were farmers at least since the 1500's. My great-great grand­father, John David Dobie, was a stone-cutter and farmer. Born in Dumfries, he moved to Liver­pool where he worked building the docks. He then moved his family to Ontario in 1849, where he worked as a stone-cutter and mason in and near Toronto, then as a farmer in Chats­worth, near Owen Sound. Many of his Dobie cousins had preceeded him and were farmers in and around Ekfrid, Ontario (near Stratford). Families connected to my DOBIE line in Dumfries­shire before they emigrated to Canada include: GLOVER, MURDOCK, RUSSELL. Revised Dec. 17, 2023.

GREENSHIELDS, (from Lanark­shire, Scotland). They have been in Lanark­shire since the middle ages. Our Green­shields ancestors emigrated from Glasgow to Montreal, about 1830. The family was prominent in law and business in Montreal up to nearly the end of the 1900's. Connected to our Dobies by marriage into the MEIKLE family.

INGLIS, (from Moray­shire, Scotland). Not well researched because of the huge number of similar looking records on familysearch.org. Connected to our Dobies through marriage into the MILNE family.

LONG (from Sweden). This is most likely a Swedish military name – one taken during military service to differentiate a soldier from all the similar '-son' names in his regiment. Solomon Long and his wife Anna LINDBERG, appear in Princeton, Minnesota in 1870. He was a shoemaker and owned a shoe store in Princeton up to about 1920. They were the adoptive parents of my mother's mother, Anna Long, whose origins are a complete mystery. It was an un-registered private adoption and Anna was never told who her birth parents were. Comparing my recent (March, 2024) DNA results from ancestry.com, to the results of my 1st cousins on my mother's side, indicate someone in Anna Long's birth family had a connection to early settlers in Virginia. (Revised April 18, 2024).

LOVELL, (from Harbour Hill, Cork, Ireland). Although well doc­u­mented in Canada, this family is almost a blank in Ireland. They were Pro­testant, so their roots may be in England or Scotland. Robert Lovell and his wife Jane BEASLY emigrated from Ireland to Montreal in 1820. This family founded a publishing dynasty in Montreal which is still flourishing. See the MEIKLE family below for the Lovell connection to Dobie. Revised January 19, 2020.

MEIKLE, (from Glasgow, Scotland). Not much is known about the family before they lived in Glasgow in the latter part of the 1700's, except that they originated in Ayrshire, Scotland. They moved from Glasgow to Lachute, Quebec in the early 1840's, and their children moved on to various parts of Ontario and western Canada. Many of the families were large, with 10 or more children, many of whom in turn had 10 or more children, so the number of people to keep track of is daunting.

MEIKLE Connection to DOBIE: (dates are of marriages).

MILNE, (from Moray­shire, Scotland). The Milne name is one of the most common in Scotland, so there is an abundance of records, most of which look the same. Early records place them in Dyke and Spey­mouth, Moray­shire. Alex­ander Milne and his wife, Isabella INGLIS, emigrated to Canada in 1860 with their ten children, and settled in Owen Sound, Ontario. Some of the children went to Victoria, BC and resided there from the 1880's to the 1930's.

WALLACE, (from Drumcliffe, County Sligo, Ireland). These are ancestors of my two nieces and their father, George RUST-D'EYE. Nathaniel Wallace emigrated to Canada in 1834, establishing a cooperage in Woodbridge, Ontario, north of Toronto. His several sons and their descendants were active in law and politics well into the 1900's.

The Tiny Tafel of all of my families :

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| My Photos on Flickr | | Atikokan Ontario History | | V-town & Kearns, Ontario History | | Canadian Navy History | | Ontario Local Histories |

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