It’s time for the Saturday Night Genealogy Fun drum roll with Randy Seaver on Genea-Musings.

Here is this week’s challenge:

1)  We all have “elusive ancestors” that we cannot find a name for, or one that absolutely eludes us, but we know some details about their spouse and/or children.

2)  Tell us about one of them – how are you related?  What do you know about them? Where did they live? etc.

I have to admit it’s tough to choose just one elusive ancestor because there are a handful in both my and my husband’s family tree. Actually, his tree has many more elusive people than mine because they lived on the frontier.

Although I’ve written about Loyalist Robert Carlisle and his wife, Catherine (MNU) many times in the past, I am highlighting Catherine once again as an elusive ancestor.

What is most annoying is that I actually know a lot about her – her widow’s pension filed in Canada gave me her year of birth – c1761 – and I know that she died after 1843, when she last received a pension payment.

Although there is no marriage record, she and Robert married in the summer of 1785, based on land deeds before and after when Robert sold one piece of land with no wife releasing dower and a second piece of land a few months later whereby Catherine did release her rights. That also corresponds with the birth of their first known child c1786.

I also know a lot about all of their children – 8 of them, to be exact.

However, what I don’t know is anything at all about her parents or possible siblings.

I’ve followed witnesses in land deeds, I’ve looked at records in New Brunswick, Canada and Washington County, Maine. I’ve researched the two middle names of their grandchildren that are surnames, to no avail.

I’ve even purchased a couple of books listing all the early residents of Parr Town (today St. John), where Robert and Catherine lived in 1785, and researched all the Catherines, married and unmarried, looking for a possible family for her.

I’ve even visited the Nova Scotia Archives and researched there because, although Robert is classified as a Loyalist, I have no evidence that he ever lived in any of the American colonies. His military service was at Fort Cumberland in Canada.

I figured it was possible that Catherine wasn’t part of the Loyalist contingent in Parr Town, but might have been a local Nova Scotia girl who Robert married.

All of my research has come to naught. I haven’t single clue as to Catherine’s maiden name or possible siblings.

Actually, i don’t have any clues about Robert Carlisle’s family either.

Maybe they both jumped off a martian spaceship!