Finding the Murray Honeys

The Murray Honeys are one of the families which Dad used to talk about when we were young. Like most of the families he spoke about I couldn't quite fit them into the overall picture of the family tree. Over the last couple of years, as I’ve investigated the various branches of the family, I’ve surmised that they were probably the family of Dad’s maternal Grandmother Sophy Robertson-Ross.

A couple of Murray Honey artifacts have been passed down through the family. The first is a picture of “Miss Honey” which my father left me as a specific bequest on his death (now nearly a quarter of century ago), which I have hung for the first time only within the last year in the house I share with my fiance. The somewhat garbled family story is that her fiance was killed whilst she was pregnant and had she not been bereaved her child would have been heir to some estate. The second is a small brown picture of “John Honey” rescuing seamen from a wreck. The story that I remember Dad telling was that this John Honey swam out to a sinking ship tied to a barrel and trailing a rope to the shore.

Over the last couple of months I’ve started to use ancestry.co.uk to investigate the Robertson-Rosses. The absence of any mention of the name Murray Honey, combined with the fact that there is no family record of Sophy Robertson-Ross’ maiden name made me suspect that she was the connection, which must be quite recent for Dad to be telling family stories about the family. Searches using ancestry.co.uk had been fruitless but I came across ScotlandsPeople and was able to find a 1971 census which listed a 6 year old Sophia A Honey. (Sophy Robertson-Ross had the middle name Ann and was born in 1865) Sophia M Honey was the daughter of James M Honey, a solicitor and notary public. She was the middle of three children, having an older brother, also James M Honey and a younger sister, Mary A Honey. Her mother was listed as Mary A Honey, and the address as Springfield Cottage, Scone

By 1881 her mother was listed as head of house and widow, and a fourth brother, Frederick M, older than James is listed; a brother presumably absent from the house when the previous census was done. James M Honey (1871) was listed as I Murray Honey. However the record was a transcript and it is easy to imaging a J being transliterated as an I. This is the first record which explicitly uses the name Murray.