This website was originated by Peter McWhirter, who died peacefully at home on 28th December 2024. The information on this website is here as a result of the research into the genealogy of families related to Peter McWhirter. Many people have contributed to this research and they are acknowledged at appropriate places in the text.

Joy and Peter McWhirter on the occasion of Joys 80th birthday celebration (April 2015)

My name is Peter McWhirter and I am a retired physicist living with my wife Joy in a village a few miles from Oxford, UK. My father spent much of his last years researching the history of his and my mother’s (MacMorland) families. Both families were firmly rooted in Southern Ayrshire, Scotland. Joy’s father (Edward Willis-Fleming) on the other hand was descended from established English landed gentry going back to Thomas Willis (1621-1675) who was a famous neurosurgeon and to Sir Thomas Fleming (1544-1613) one of the Commissioners at the trial of Guy Fawkes of gunpowder plot fame. Joy’s mother’s first husband, Ralf Ruck Keene, also descended from English country gentry, was killed in the First World War. Her mother, Christina de la Paz Garsia, claimed descent from the Count or Duke of Burgos in Spain. A large part of the research reported here is into this branch of the family which we have been able to trace back to Aaron Garsia (1785-1848) and his father Jacob Garsia de Paz. Aaron was a doctor in Kingston, Jamaica, where he fathered at least nineteen children. In 1830 he married Sarah Ann Melhado (1810-1888) and she bore him ten of the nineteen.

In order to include all the known members of these families this website will be arranged to provide access to each of the five main branches. Clicking on these names will take you to the earliest known member of that branch with their descendants listed in ‘report’ format. Where our information about a particular individual can be presented in a fairly compact manner it is included in this report format; otherwise it is allocated to a separate page devoted to that individual and accessed by clicking on his or her name.

Because of Aaron’s sexual prowess the Garsias will be given special treatment. The Garcia branch page has links to

• each of the children born to Aaron before he married Sarah and their descendants
• each of the children born to Aaron and Sarah and their descendants.