Roots, shoots and stories

So .... in the future one of your descendants wants to delve into their family history. Let's imagine they are really good at tracing records such as birth, marriage, deaths and censuses. They find you - but what do they really know about you, apart from those crucial dates, places and your job? (Of course, we don't know how far your imprint on today's social media will transfer through the generations, so they might very well find out what you had for lunch and where yesterday, but we don't know that for certain.) There may well be some older relative who remembers you and you may get lucky if they knew you well enough to tell them what kind of a person you were and some stories about you. But most people will likely remain unknown, existing as a name and relevant dates. That's quite sad really, as everyone has their story to tell. A story that I have been luckily enough to piece together, and, which I have written about before, is that of my 3 x great granduncle, ...

My husband's paternal grandmother, Janina Ciupka, was born in 1902 in a small town, Nieszawa, north of Warsaw, Poland, on the banks of the River Vistula. She was the youngest of 12 children, only 8 of whom survived to adulthood. At this time Poland had been occupied by their three neighbours, Germany, Russia and Austria and Warsaw was under Russian control.  Her family were very wealthy, owning granaries, bakeries, brick factories and carriage factories and they also bred white horses for the Russian Tzars. As with her elder siblings, Janina was taught by a private governess and the family had many servants, including cooks and cleaners. She obviously was leading a very privileged life. There was little known about the  period of her life from about 1909-1919, The family had moved south eastwards to Haczow around 1909. The reasons for the move seems to have been a combination of business and politics, as Haczow was under Austrian rule, considered more liberal than that of the ...

 My mum, Helen Young Anderson was born on the 27th of June 1915, the second eldest daughter of John Anderson and Margaret Keir Adams. Her father John had originally worked as a tinsmith and was a steelworker at the time of my mum's birth, an occupation that had exempted him from serving in WW1. John and Margaret had only married four months before my mum was born and their ceremony, conducted at Hope Street Registry Office in Glasgow was an 'irregular marriage', one not conducted by a church minister (and therefore not approved by the Church) but one the Church accepted as alternative to a couple 'living in sin'. The reason for this probably being that Margaret was already pregnant with my mum and had already had another child by John, my aunt Meg, who by this time was six years old, being brought up by Margaret's parents, my great grandparents, James Adams and Margaret Keir. John and Margaret went on to have three more children over the next eight years - Anne,...

When I'm looking at census records I find it useful to look at other records on the page other than those of the family I'm searching for. One day in September I was checking out census records for my 4 x great grandfather James Somerville. I know he was a medical doctor and that he studied at the University of Edinburgh and that he came to live in Cambusnethan Parish in Lanarkshire. I have his marriage, his children, but no death locally. Nor can I find that of his wife, Janet Telfer. It made sense therefore to check further afield, so I was looking over 1841 census details of three James Somervilles in other parts of Scotland, when something - or should I say - someone else caught my eye in the census for Drumelzie in Peeblesshire. Further up the page, lodging with a farmer was a man named Charles Mackay, aged 50 who was a ... comedian by trade! Really??? A comedian in 1841? I'd never come across such a thing before. Maybe the person giving the census responses was being ...

A lot of the time, when I start investigating some direct ancestor, I find myself following their siblings and their descendants and finding some pretty interesting people! I am lucky that on my direct paternal line, I can trace my ancestors back to Edinburgh, and to the Canongate, to be specific. Lucky in that records from the 17th century there have been preserved and this is where this story starts, with my 7 x great grandfather, Patrick Mcarra, who was a Baillie in the Canongate. I have written about him and his position previously  here. I descend from Patrick and his second wife, Helen Wilkie. His first wife had died leaving him with two daughters, Mary and Margaret. Mary did well for herself. In 1698, she married the Reverend John Andersone, minister at West Calder. Now, normally I might have left Mary and John alone at this point, but I was intrigued by the pairing, simply because my dad  (McAra) had married my mum, an Anderson! So I kept investigating! They had a daug...

 A recurring name in my paternal line is that of John McAra. That was my dad's name. It was also the name of his father, his grandfather, his great grandfather - and then there's a break - then his 2 x great grandfather - a break - and his 4 x great grandfather! The reason for the two 'breaks' is down to the Scottish naming tradition of naming the firstborn son after the father's father. The two breaks in the line are where my direct ancestor was not the firstborn son and therefore given a name other than John. (If he had been second born, he would have been given that of the mother's father.) But .... my dad was the youngest child born in a family of  12 children! When I first started my family research, I found out that he was actually the second 'John'. The first John had indeed been the first son, born some 26 years before my dad! Sadly he had passed away at the age of 8 from what appears to have been a cerebral haemorrhage. My grandparents decided t...

 Some families seem to be disproportionately affected by tragedy. One such family in a corner of my tree is that of Margaret Johnstone (1812-1894) and her husband John Craig (1811-1872). This couple were a merging of both sides of my family, Margaret from my paternal side and John from my maternal side ( though not from the same generation which makes things complicated!) They married in January 1834 in Shotts, Lanarkshire and had their first child, John, that same year. Unfortunately John did not make it past his third birthday and the couple's next two children, another John and a girl, Elizabeth, both died in 1839 and like families did in those days, they went on to have more children - a total of 12 more over the next 19 years, in fact. At the start of 1854, they had eight children, but that was all about to change in the most terrible of circumstances. This newspaper article from the Glasgow Herald on the 11th of January gives the dreadful details: Article from the Glasgow Her...