When I first started researching my family tree it was early in the 1980s. My dad was still alive, so I remember asking him to tell me about his siblings and parents. I knew he had been the youngest in the family. At that time, I also knew he had two living sisters, Agnes and Jean, two living brothers, Will and George and had a sister who had died, Mary (Polly). It was only then that he told me he had had other siblings - other six in fact, four of which he had never known, and two who had died as adults. My dad had never spoken about them to me before. Nor had he spoken to me about his parents - his dad had died many years before I was born and his mum had died when I was only three. So that was starting point, to fill in a family tree with any information I could find about those grandparents and my dad's siblings.
Of course, it was much harder then than it is nowadays to find records. Firstly you had to physically go to the registry office - in my case, New Register House in Edinburgh, and pay a search fee for that day. You had to have a rough idea of their birth/marriage/death years and the place your person lived. You then had to fill in a search request for the librarian who would go and bring you the relevant microfilm and then you had to sit and scroll through it. It was so easy to 'miss' someone if you didn't have enough or the right detail - or even the right name - there were no 'sounds like' or alternative spellings in those days.
So it actually took me until Scottish records came online with Scotlands People in 2002 - some twenty years later - that I was able to find the birth record of my paternal grandfather. I had been searching for a John McAra, born at home in Shotts, Lanarkshire. He ended up being a John McCarry, born in hospital in Glasgow!
In the intervening years I had had more success with my paternal grandmother's side and also that of my mother. Though there again, it was only once I questioned my mum that I found out that she too had had a brother who had died young. Even then, I did not take the opportunity to ask her the hundreds of questions I would now ask, if I had the chance.
As I've already mentioned, things have changed now. It is so much easier to research than previously. However, any family research should always start with asking questions of your family members - your parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, older cousins - in fact any relative. Those older than you will know things you don't and maybe have photographs you've never seen. Those younger than you will know their own parents better than you do. Records, even easily accessed online records, only tell you the official parts of their story. Family history is about far more than records and pieces of paper.
I hope my weekly blogs inspire some of you to start a family tree of your own, if not for your own sake, for those of your children. And tell them your stories before it is too late!
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