Roots, shoots and stories

 My husband Martin has already published a book about his father's life before he came to Scotland in 1946 ( Jan Stepek: Gulag to Glasgow  ).He is now writing a sequel to that book detailing his life in Scotland as a well known businessman and father to ten children. Martin was therefore fortunate in that he had his many siblings to ask for memories and information about his dad. Lots of conversations took place that filled gaps in the story of his dad's life as the siblings each recalled personal and shared memories of a father who had been through so much. Martin's eldest brother John was living in Portugal and so their 'conversations' took place over e-mail. John was also the one with the most knowledge about their father for two reasons. One, he was the eldest and two, he was the successor to his father as managing director of the family business and so dealt with him on a daily basis. In one of these e-mails early in 2023, John had written, "I don't kn...

My direct ancestors on both sides of my family mainly stayed in the area of Scotland where they were born. Those that did move away tended not to move too far, staying in the neighbouring parishes or counties. However, their siblings tended to be more adventurous! The exceptions to this are my two Irish ancestors - a 2 x great grandmother and a 3 x great grandmother, about whom I've written before, (see  Irish ancestors ), my 3 x great grandfather Joseph Gregory who moved from England to Scotland, and those who moved temporarily for work from Scotland to England like my great grandfather, John McAra (1827-1910) John McAra was an iron puddler by trade and shortly after he was married he moved, presumably with his wife, and spent the best part of ten years working down in Durham in the north of England in the iron and steel industry there, before moving back to where he he was born in Lanarkshire. His two daughters were born in Durham and his one surviving son, my grandfather, was bo...

 Although we have no historic diaries in the family, we are in possession of letters sent by Janina Stepek, my husband's grandmother, from the slave labour camp in Siberia, where she and her children had been taken by the Soviet Red Army from their home in Poland in 1940. Dated 22 May 1940, Janina wrote the following to her husband, Wladyslaw, two months after they had arrived in the labour camp: " Henrik ( Janina's brother )  wrote from Lwow. He thought you'd have received a letter from him by now explaining what happened to us. We are all alive, but I'm already down to 50 kilograms ( Janina had lost a third of her weight in three months ). We were taken away on the tenth of February and arrived at this camp on the tenth of March. We are 450 kilometres from Archangel. I can't write about everything as you can imagine the situation here. How are you? I hope you are coping." We have another letter Janina sent to her husband in the August of the same year: ...

 You never know what you will find when you are researching. Fortunately my 'surprises' have been good ones. My friend Allison, like me, has been researching her family history since the 1980s. We even knew each other back then! However, it was only recently that we both got a big surprise - and found that we are related. Allison is my fourth cousin once removed, with our common ancestors being James Sommerville and Mary Telfer, my fourth great grandparents and Allison's third great grandparents. It was fun to find that out, especially since our children grew up together as well and now find out that they are 'cousins'. We do not seem to share any DNA however. DNA research threw up another surprise a few years ago. I had been researching my friend Margaret's unknown set of grandparents (her father had been adopted at birth). During the course of that research, I found that we had a shared DNA match in common! We are not related to each other in any way, but ther...

 I have previously written about a huge group of DNA matches that I am struggling to link back to anyone in my family tree ( So many descendants ), a so-called 'Unlinked Family Cluster'. I have spent so, so many hours on trying to solve what I term my 'Mormon' puzzle and getting nowhere. I have identified many of these individuals as descendants of a Scottish couple living in Lanarkshire, Scotland, Elizabeth Russell and Thomas Archibald, who became Mormons.  After Thomas died, Elizabeth set out for America with her children, arriving in Utah in 1862. By the time of her death, Elizabeth had 118 grandchildren and 277 great grandchildren. It is no wonder that I have such a huge number of DNA matches whose paper trail lead back to her. Some of my groups from Ancestry. You can see how the huge Archibald group stands out. Identifying Elizabeth and her her husband as the common ancestral couple for a lot of these DNA matches was a step in the right direction, but only the firs...

 The topic 'Overlooked' is a strange one. How do you know who you have overlooked??? There will certainly be occasions when I have overlooked a certain record, maybe because I was looking for the wrong name or in the wrong place or even made a typo in the search parameters, but how do you know if you have overlooked a person? So I am going to treat this topic by looking at a set of great grandparents that I have largely ignored - yes, I have their relevant dates and family, but do I have their 'story'? Have I stopped to think at all about the life they led? I don't think I have. So here's what I can put together. My mum's maternal grandparents were James Adams and Margaret Keir. James was born in 1850 in Carfin, Lanarkshire, Scotland, the only surviving son of a coalminer, though he had two elder sisters. At age 11 he was following in his father's footsteps down the mine as can be seen in the 1861 census. 1861 Census for James Adams   Source: Scotlands P...

 My husband Martin and six of his brothers were sent off to boarding school in Dumfries in southern Scotland when they were between the ages of 10 and 18. The second eldest, James, known as Jimmy, was nicknamed Jasa by his classmates, presumably because someone saw Jas. Stepek on some school document. Not only was that nickname given to him, but following a tradition at the school, all the younger brothers were given Jimmy's nickname of Jasa too. At one time there were three brothers at the school at the same time, all called Jasa!  Family photo of David, the fifth 'Jasa' This could cause a little confusion when someone shouted "Jasa!" as all three would turn round thinking they were being called. Most of the brothers enjoyed their time at St Joseph's although they would have preferred to have attended a local school, closer to home. T  St Joseph's College Source:www.stjosephscollege.com