Sunday 21 February 2016

Timeline

Making a timeline of events in your family is very helpful especially if the family moved around a bit.

My own great grandparents were in Cumnock in Ayrshire, Scotland in 1871 and 1881 but the 1881 census revealed that children in the 1870s were born in England. This puzzled me a lot and the only way I could make sense of it was to do a timeline. My great grandfather and his father were miners from the Dudley area in Staffordshire.

I even colour coded the timeline for places. You can really see how much they moved about to find work.

James Rolinson (great grandfather)
1852 born in Dudley, Staffordshire
1861 census Darlaston
1871 census Cumnock, Ayrshire
1873 married In Dudley
1874 Alice born Tipton
1877 Jessie born Dudley
1880 Delilah born Cumnock
1881 census Cumnock
1883 James born Rotherham, Yorkshire
1885 Frank born Rotherham
1886 Rachel born and Frank died Rotherham
1890 in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire (father John’s death cert)
1890 Frederick born and died Cambuslang 
1891 census in Calderbank, Lanarkshire
1891 Herbert born Calderbank
1892 mother Jane Holmes died Calderbank
1893 Herbert died Calderbank
1894 Clifford born Calderbank
1901 census Jacks Land, Holytown, Lanarkshire
1911 census Stone Row Calderbank
1920 valuation roll Stone Row Calderbank
1925 valuation roll 61 Main St Calderbank
1930 James died 61 Main st Calderbank
1931 widow Emma Ball died Calderbank

Saturday 13 February 2016

free census

As well as familysearch.org there are some other good free sites such as

freecen.org.uk

This has transcriptions of UK censuses. In Scotland there are mainly only 1841 and some 1851 ones available.

I use it a lot for 1841 and I like it because you can click on the previous or subsequent households to check out the neighbours and neighbouring addresses.

Search either on Census Place or Census County.

You can also try searching on street name if you don't get a result using the surname.




Monday 8 February 2016

Scottish Naming Patterns

In the not too distant past the following conventions were followed by Scottish parents. This still happened in the early 20th century. Scots who went abroad often stuck to it too.

This practice is very helpful to family historians!

First born son named after paternal grandfather
First born daughter named after maternal grandmother
Second born son named after maternal grandfather
Second born daughter named after paternal grandmother

So it is possible to deduce what the parents in the previous generation were called.

2 children with same name usually indicates the first one died and the next child born of the right sex is given the same name.

Here are some examples from my tree




Thomas's father should be James Murdoch and his mother Ann Gibson and indeed they are. Middle names are not all that common, but where they are given it is usually a surname, as in this case. 




Wife Isabella's mother should be Agnes and her father Robert. 



The subsequent children should be named after the father/mother then great grandparents and so on. Less reliable.

Other names given to children could be an aunt or uncle or local dignitary, very often the minister.

Because of the practice of naming children after a grandparent there are often several children in an extended family of the same name. They will be cousins.

Can you deduce the wife of Thomas Burley?


Yes it's Amelia Clary and I have recently found a third Amelia Clary Burley born in 1910 in Michigan, another cousin. There may be more!

Further reading



Sunday 7 February 2016

family search Batch Numbers

Batch numbers refer to the film of the records.

If you know that your ancestor was born in say Old Cumnock and the rough date you can get in to the records to browse them via the Batch Number. This is also very helpful when the name was spelt or transcribed differently from expected.

Go to Wallis Batch numbers for the Batch numbers for all of Scotland. They were prepared by Hugh Wallis some time ago. Familysearch changed its site hierarchy and the links are no longer valid, but you can copy and paste the link in.

Here are the Batch numbers for Old Cumnock. You'll see that they go up to 1875.
C refers to Baptisms and Births and Mrefers to marriages

C116101 refers to statutory births and C116102, and C116104 refer to old parish records. Note that they are not complete and I have found records in the OPRs on scotlandspeople that aren't on here. But it's always worth trying here first as they are free to search!

Don't click on the blue link, as I said it is no longer valid, but go instead  to https://familysearch.org/search/

click on Batch Number and paste the number in the box which appears.



You don't need to put in any place information, just put in a name and a date range. You can even leave it completely blank. 



and see your results. Note the varying spelling of the mother's name.




Tuesday 2 February 2016

Familysearch

https://familysearch.org is the site of the Mormon church (church of the Latter Day Saints) and a fantastic worldwide resource and it's FREE.

Once you get your line back to 1875 you can find births and marriages on familysearch for free. You don't get to see the original documents but the way the search works is better than scotlandpeople, in my opinion.

For example:
  • it will recognise similar names so you don't need to have the spelling absolutely correct
  • you can do a parent search
  • the results give you the parents where the search results on SP just give you the name so you have to pay even more credits to get the document which may turn out to be  the wrong person.
  • you can also search by Batch Number more on this next time



Monday 1 February 2016

Birth records prior to 1855

Before statutory recording was enforced in 1855, the  birth records that exist would be baptism records kept by the minister. They are on Scotlandspeople under Old Parish Registers.

They do exist in microfiche as well. The Carnegie Library in Ayr appears to have them and there will be other centres who have them, so do ask locally.

They vary in detail and style. The wording might be along the lines of
John, lawful son of John Brown weaver in Cumnock and his spouse Mary Smith was born on 15 March and baptised by my on the 18th
or the more colourful
Jean Black daughter in fornication of John Black smith in Glasgow and Jean White in this parish was born on 3rd April and baptised on the 18th May.

"natural" is another word for illegitimate as in "natural son of " slightly kinder than the previous wording.

Not everyone had their child baptised and not all ministers were very organised with their record keeping and not all of the parish records have survived so you may never find a birth record for your ancestor.

However if they were alive on or after 6 June 1841 they should be present in the censuses so you will have an idea of the year and place of birth.

If they married or died 1855 onwards you will get an age.

Otherwise a gravestone may give you a date and or and age.

A newspaper may give you a death notice or an obituary. Some newspapers have been digitised, and can be searched. Most sites require a subscription.

We'll look at illegitimate births in a future post.