Roots, shoots and stories

Nowadays we are accustomed to see the scandals of the rich and famous played out before our eyes on social media. Those of our neighbours not so much. You would think that in the absence of X, Facebook and Instagram that the scandalous lives of our ancestors would have been conducted in private, but this was not necessarily the case.  Take my 2 x great grandmother, Jane Gregory, for example. She was baptised in Carnwath, Lanarkshire in early September 1810, daughter of an English iron worker. Her family moved to New Monklands Parish (Airdrie) when she was young, where her father continued to work as a shingler in the ironworks. At the age of 15, young Jane falls pregnant. The father, a 25 year old iron worker named John McAra. The baby, when born, would go on to become my great grandfather. It is hard to imagine what Jane felt at the time. She was certainly made to feel ashamed. Her scandal was made public at the Airdrie Kirk Session Council meeting on the 4th of December 1826 as t...

 I have written about my 2 x great grandparents, William Boag and Sarah Diamond, on previous occasions. Irish born Sarah had always been a bit of a mystery, since her origins were obscure and the fact that she disappears from records after 1841. Her husband William remarried and I have his death certificate, certified by his second 'wife' (more missing records as I can't find any record of this marriage either!), who supplied the names of both of William's parents (Thomas Boag and Mary McNeil) and his father's profession - Royal Navy Seaman. William had been born in Greenock in the late 1700s. The name Boag is quite a common one in and around that area and names like William and Thomas were common too. There is no record of a marriage between a Thomas Boag (and various spellings) and a Mary McNeil anywhere in Scotland. However, there is one William who seems to be born around the right time to a Thomas Boag and a Janet Alexander.  So various scenarios are possible i...

 My great-grandfather, John McAra, was born on the 19th of February 1827, the illegitimate son of John McAra (27), a hammerman at the local ironworks and Jane Gregory, aged 17. John and Jane never married - nor could they, as John had gotten married three months earlier to an Elizabeth Gray! Elizabeth herself gave birth to a daughter, Mary, in the May of 1827. It does not take a mathematician to work out that Jane and Elizabeth were both pregnant at the same time! It is easy to build a narrative around the circumstances that John found himself in - two women expecting his child, marrying one of them while both were pregnant. Was he coerced into the marriage, with or without Elizabeth's parents knowing about Jane? Whatever situation he found himself in, he did not shy away away from it. He is named as the father to my great grandfather on the parish baptismal record and who of course, carries his name. Interestingly, John's brother Thomas, married Elizabeth Gray's sister Mar...

 My Aunt Meg was born Margaret Keir Anderson in May 1909, the daughter of Margaret Keir Adams and John Anderson, as yet unmarried. Young Meg was therefore brought up by her maternal grandparents, Margaret and James Adams. We find her there in the 1911 census with her mum, Margaret, her grandparents and three of her mother's younger siblings. In that census, her mother has no occupation listed, so presumably she was looking after Meg and not just expecting her own mother to do that for her. Despite being an unmarried mother, Margaret must have continued to see John Anderson as, four years later, in 1915, Margaret gave birth to a sister for Meg, my own mum Helen Young Anderson. They had actually got married a few months before this event. It was what was termed an 'irregular' marriage, a marriage of declaration in front of two witnesses, a type of marriage legal in Scotland until 1940. So around this time, young Meg and her mother would have moved out of the Adams family home...

My great grandmother, Helen Young (1843-1917). My mother was born on the 27th of June 1915, second daughter to John Anderson and Margaret Adams. Following Scottish naming traditions, her elder sister had been named Margaret after her mother's mother and she was named after her father's mother, Helen Young. My mother's full name was therefore Helen Young Anderson. My mum was not the only one of Helen's descendants to carry on her name. Helen Young's name was preserved down the generations - Helen Young Robertson, Helen (Nellie)Young Danks, Helen (Nellie) Young Hastie, Helen Young .... were all my mother's cousins and Helen's grandchildren. She also had great grandchildren who had 'Helen Young' as part of their  names and at least one great great grandchild whose middle name is Helen. Multiple descendants carrying her name.  I do not know how much my mum knew about the grandmother she had been named after as Helen Young died when my mum was only two ye...

 Living in Scotland as I do, there is one ancestor who stays with me, in the sense of it's hard to get away from him.  I am one of the thousands upon thousands of people descended from Robert I, King of Scotland, otherwise known as Robert the Bruce! Statue of Robert the Bruce, King of Scotland at Stirling Castle I tend to take this lightheartedly. He is my 21 x great grandfather. Who know how many illegitimacies there can have been on the long descent from him to me, but following a paper trail I believe I can claim him, though claiming descendancy from royalty was not something I had intended to find myself doing. My immediate ancestry is very working class - miners, labourers, metalworkers, farmers etc. What I have noticed in my research is that is is usually a daughter of a church minister who can act as a 'gateway' ancestor to the gentry and nobility, as many a minister's daughter was married to the younger sons of land owning gentry.  It was only when I followed my...

 Growing up, Christmas always felt an exciting time. My mum would start baking her Christmas cake weeks in advance and nearer the time the Christmas decorations would go up. My mum liked floral art so she would spend some time making up various seasonal arrangements, even using a paste of washing powder to create snowy scenes. The decorative paper chains would be hung around the room - thankfully that is not a tradition anymore! But some 'habits' are passed on and they become tradition just over a couple of generations. One of those habits comes down from my dad. It was my dad who decorated the Christmas tree. He would spend what seemed like hours checking the fairy light bulbs. In those old sets if one bulb went, then the whole set wouldn't light up, so each bulb had to be checked one by one - and what if there were more than one dud bulb?? After the light check was completed, then they had to go on the tree. This process took what seemed like forever too - and I wasn'...