Hi, folks,
When I was researching in the Manx Museum, I found a marriage between Captain John Stevenson (1655-1718) and Ellin Galloway at Malew on 18 May 1676, their children including Amy Stevenson. baptised 9 Feb1683/84. Amy, was my Great x 6 Grand mother, ie 8 generations back, and Jeffrey Gallowey would be a further three generations back, as Ellin G was his grand daughter.

When I was chatting to Roger Sims at the Museum, I said I was having trouble with some families and he asked which, and I mentioned Galloway, which brought an immediate response as he had spotted a shop inventory of 1610, and suggested Galloway as a research topic.

The result was a superb article in the IOM Family History Society Magazine , "Jeffrey Galloway - Merchant of Castletown, anyone's ancestor ?"

In answer to that question, YES Jeffrey is someone's ancestor - MINE.

Moving on to research elements.

A) According to the article, Jeffrey had perhaps settled on the Island in the 1590s, marrying the daughter of a Castletown man, William Cooke. Wher did he come from ? Galloway is the name of the area of Scotland closest to the IOM, but it is also a family name that was found in that part of Scotland as well. Does anyone have any idea of when Jeffrey arrived in the IOM, and where he came from. There is one striking coincidence. When I was little, my mother would point to the Galloway coast when we were at the Point of Ayre, and say, "One branch of the family came from Galloway". Given two other legends that survived from the 1600s, both of which turned out to be true, I wonder if "the family came from Galloway" was a corruption of "the Galloway family". Galloway was the only PART of Scotland that my mother said we were in some way associated with, and that we should have a "family Galloway" association strikes me as too much of a coincidence not to have had some roots to it.

B) "Coincidences Coincidences" In my research so far I have encountered many amazing coincidences, but there is one very peculiar one. Jeffrey Gallowey seemingly had three children, a daughter Ursula, and sons John and William. When John Galloway grew up he married a Miss Watterson, and guess what her first name was - URSULA.

If John Galloway's sister had been Mary, Annie, Issable, Jane, or a hundred other names, and his wife had the same name, I would not bat an eyelid, but Ursula was a rare name on the Island and it seems an uncanny co-incidence that he should have a sister Ursula and a wife Ursula, but I checked back to the Malew burial records and they seem to confirm a married Ursula G who died in 1685 and a spinster Ursula G who died in 1688.

The coincidence still puzzles me,so does anyone have any thoughts on this, other than that John had an Ursula fetish, and scoured the island to find a wife of this name. That is unlikely to say the least, but any other explanation is even less plausible.

So, the queries are Jeffrey Gallowey before the 1590s when he came to the Island, and the Ursula coincidence.

Robert