Hi Michele

The Robert William Langlands (born 1853 in Montrose to parents William and Mary) in your tree certainly looks like a good candidate for the RWL who was the father of Catherine Lace’s son, Robert Philip Langlands b 1884. Railway clerk to accountant seems like a good match.

I’ve been doing a bit of digging around, looking for those elusive records. As you show in your tree, the 17 yr old RL in Aberdeenshire with his parents in 1871 is the same person as the 32 year old RL in Dumfriesshire in 1881 with his wife Elizabeth Lockie age 41 ( railway clerk b Montrose in both censuses). It looks as though he inflated his age from 27 to 32 because his wife was so much older. I’m no expert on the scotlandspeople website, but, using the limited free search facility, I’ve found a match in 1878 for a marriage of a Robert William Langlands, and then as a separate search, there’s a match for an 1878 marriage of an Elizabeth Lockie. There’s no way of knowing if they married each other though.

Following up on James Langlands b 1880 in Kirkpatrick Juxta (son of RWL and Elizabeth Lockie), he’s with his mother Elizabeth in 1891 in Moffat, Dumfriesshire. So if RWL went through a marriage ceremony with Catherine Lace, it would have been bigamous.

I found a Catherine Lace b IOM in Cumberland in 1881, but age 35. Ancestry has transcribed her as Jace. She’s a domestic servant to 2 Simpson spinster sisters who describe themselves as “lady”. If the information for the census was supplied by the employer, it’s possible that they guessed Catherine Lace’s age ---- perhaps after a harrowing few years she looked older than her 30 years. Geographically, if it’s the correct Cath Lace, it puts her not too far away from the rascally RWL who could have abandoned his wife and child and hopped across to the IOM with a new partner.

Jean C