Roots, shoots and stories

 My direct ancestors didn't move around that much. None of them emigrated. The same cannot be said about some of their siblings. Various brothers and sisters left Scotland for the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand and that is why I find many of my DNA matches living in those countries today. One of my paternal great aunts, Elizabeth Walker and her brother William both emigrated with their spouses. Elizabeth headed for Australia in 1886 and settled in Wollongong, just outside Sydney. Her husband, James Allan, a coalminer, was already there and he sponsored her immigration. She travelled with three children under 3 years of age! James paid £2 towards her passage on the Abyssinia and £1 towards their 3 year old daughter Jane's. The two babies went free of charge.                                 Source: NSW State Archives, Immigration Deposit Journals, via Ancestry. Meanwhile, William Walker, my great uncle, headed for America. He was a blacksmith to trade and would easily hav

 I came across an old newspaper clipping at some point in my family research. It was from a local paper, The Wishaw Press and Advertiser. The title - "Here's a family with a unique record", a photograph and an explanation underneath. The photo shows four generations, with the youngest of the four being 'over 21'. (There had obviously been time for a fifth to come along!) In the photograph is my paternal grandmother, Christina McAra, aged 89 - a grandmother I never knew - her daughter Mary, my aunt, my cousin Christina and her grown up son Hugh.  The article states another fact - when Hugh was born in 1936, all of his four great grandmothers and three of his great grandfathers were still alive! That must be some record. I can't help but be envious that Hugh could have asked so many questions of all of those people, as I never got the chance to talk to any of my own grandparents. Hugh is now 87 and a great grandfather himself.

All of us get to celebrate our birthdays, but not everyone gets to celebrate their 100th birthday and receive a letter from the late Queen Elizabeth II. Frances Murphy, my husband's aunt,  was born in Cambuslang, Lanarkshire on the 13th of June 1919 to James Murphy, a miner, and his wife Mary Ann Pyne. She was the fourth of twelve children. When she was eighteen her father died suddenly of peritonitis. Frances, having been brought up in a religious family asked her mother why God had taken her father. Her mother replied " You are lucky. If it had been me, you would all have been put into an orphanage." Despite this tragedy, Frances and her siblings thrived. Three went to university and seven of the remaining eight studied at college - a feat almost unheard of in a working class family at that time. Frances herself became a primary school teacher, but, in the 1950s, a cousin invited her to come and settle in America. After several years teaching there, Frances qualified as

 Lamond (Lamont/Lomond) Walker Proudfoot (1884-1915) is not someone I went searching for. He is not a direct ancestor, he is my paternal grandmother's nephew, so my dad's cousin and therefore my first cousin once removed. I came across Lamond's story quite at random, when one day last year, I decided to research my grandmother's siblings and their descendants.  My dad had been the youngest of 12 children, stretching over some 26 years. His mother, Christina Walker had herself been the 11th child out of 12. The gaps in ages between cousins could be quite large. ( I myself was a late second child so my 'cousins' on my paternal side were also much older than me.) That is probably why my dad never spoke to me about his cousins, so I really do not know if he knew Lamond's story, especially when Lamond had died a year after my dad was born. Lamond was born the son of a miner in Shotts, Lanarkshire, Scotland. The 5th out of 13 children, he is noted as being at scho

 I spent a lot of my childhood at a bowling green. My late father, John McAra, loved his bowling and was actually very good at it! He played both outdoor bowls and indoor bowls.  My first memories of watching him would be at Summerhill Bowling Club in Newcastle upon Tyne, where we lived from 1958-1964. While at that club, he won the club championship and in 1960 also won the Northumberland County Pairs Championship. He also represented Northumberland on numerous occasions. He also told me that he had been approached by a selector for England, who had told him if he hadn't been Scottish, he would have been picked to represent England! While we were living in Newcastle, we did return to Scotland for our two week summer holiday. We went to Girvan every July. Why? Because they held a bowling tournament at that time. My dad would enter the singles, pairs, rinks - every event going. Some of his friends from Summerhill would even come up too, and his brother, my Uncle George would sometim