Somebody Dixon¹

• (Witness) Anecdote forWeb: Somebody Dixon was a witness Cathreen says:
  I have been looking at my father’s side again. Quite a few years since I looked at it.
  He was born in Blantyre Lanarkshire. His grandparents were Sarah McKenna and James McGhie (Magee). I have discovered that Sarah’s mother was Sarah Dixon married to John McKenna. Her brother was Joseph Dixon who went to Maynooth in Dublin. It was the training college for priests. He worked for the pope before being appointed Archbishop of Armagh and Primate of all Ireland. The Dixons were all R,C, Joseph was responsible for the R,C, cathedral being built in Armagh. Sarah’s sister married outside the church also. The Dixons were all born in Ireland. James McGhie was a staunch Scottsh Presbyterian. There was a terrible split up in the Dixon family at this time.
  
  I found the 1851 census of the McKenna family in Scotland . It told me that John McKenna had gone to Scotland from Ireland with his 3 children. No mention of their mother—Sarah Dixon. Presume she had died in Ireland. One of the McKenna children was Sarah who later married James McGhie. I eventually found the record of the death of John McKenna in 1858 aged 48. His death was caused by the passage of a cart that ran over his body. I was even more surprised to see that the informant for the information on the death certificate to be none other than James McGhie (Magee) son in law. .I was even more surprised to find that where the place for the parents of the deceased was written Unknown by the Informant!!!!! I cannot imagine that James’s wife did not know who her grandparents were!!!! I now have all the certificates that give me all the informtion I needed to know that this is indeed in my ancestry. When I got the death record of the death of James’s wife, Sarah, her mother is Sarah Dixon. James and Sarah had 13 children. The 1st was my grandfather, Henry. A lot of the children of Sarah and James have Dixon as a middle name. One son was named Joseph Dixon and he died aged 7.¹