Unsubstantiated Gossip

Every family historian secretly wants it--that tie to a famous person, preferably royalty, but anyone high-profile will do in a pinch.  There is a certain glamour in being able to claim that you are descended from Charlemagne or Michaelangelo (by the way, there are many serious genealogists who believe that almost everyone of European origin alive today is a descendant of Charlemagne).  And on a more practical note, it's much easier to research prominent people than it is to find out about, say, a farmer in Poland three hundred years ago.

So you can imagine how chuffed I was when I read this letter on my recent trip to the local archives.  It was written by Edith Kilgour Bain to Mary E. Oliphant (these ladies were cousins, both grandchildren of David Oliphant Sr. and Sophia Watt).  Edith seems to know a little about her grandparents' (particularly Sophia's) early life in Scotland.

"His wife, Sophia Watt, was born in 1783 in London, but both were brought up in St. Andrews, Scotland.  She was of better family than the Oliphants and incurred the great displeasure of her family, first by joining the Haldane movement and then by marrying David Oliphant, whom she met at the chapel.  There is a persistent tradition in the family that she was a near relative of James Watt, of steam engine fame, but just what I don't know.  But the family seems to have been very well-to-do and well connected in St. Andrews".  

Edith also goes on to mention that she thought the Watt family had a possible connection with the West Indies, and that one of Sophia Watt's other relatives was a Librarian of St. Andrew's University.  (Rueben Butchart fonds, Victoria College Archives, University of Toronto, F52, Box 4, File 1.)

Could the Rutherfords have a connection to James Watt through the Oliphant/Watt line?  Well, if we do, it's not a direct connection--James Watt's children are documented and Sophia isn't one of them.

Sophia Watt, Undated, Wellington County Museums and Archives

Could Sophia be a niece or cousin of the famous inventor?  It may be possible, but annoyingly, I don't know the names of her parents.  Her marriage record just shows her own name (now if she'd been married in Poland, the record would have her name, her parents names and probably her grandparent's names as well!).  It's not really much help.

 (12th of August 1809 were contracted David Oliphant, shoemaker, and Sophia Watt, b. mem. this parish--proclaimed and married 20th [August].)

The other gossipy bits of this letter are equally interesting, I think (and somewhat easier to believe).  Sophia and David must have been deeply in love for her to marry him despite her family's "great displeasure", and I'll bet there's a dramatic story around her becoming a Baptist in spite of family protest.  To go from a daughter of a well-to-do family in a University town in Scotland to basically becoming a pioneer wife in rural Ontario sounds very Susannah Moodie-ish.  This little snippet just makes me want to know more about her!