Roots, shoots and stories

My family have been living in Lanarkshire for the past 200 years. Both my grandfathers were coalminers and mining and metal working go way back in both sides of my family. I have already written about the role of mining in my family - see  https://rootsshootsandstories.blogspot.com/2023/10/week-43-dig-little-deeper.html  - and it is well documented that the miner's life was a very hard one. Recently I have come across other documents relevant to a miner's life. The one below details a typical wage for a miner in Lanarkshire around the time of my grandfathers and it is interesting to note how it went up and down. The average being around 4-5 shillings a day - according to the National Archives currency converter that would anunt to roughly £15 a day and this would be for a 12 hour day, six days a week. And as a job it wasn't without danger. Here is only part of a list for deaths in Lanarkshire coalmines in January of 1887!! Source:  http://www.scottishmining.co.uk/Indexes/...

This story stems from research into what happened to my Irish 2 x great grandmother, Sarah Diamond, when I dug deeper into the lives of the children she had had with her husband, William Boag, and also into the children he had with another woman, Margaret Muir. Sarah vanishes from the records after 1841 and is recorded as deceased by the time her second eldest son, William, dies in 1855. So I started looking into the life of her eldest son, Thomas, born in 1824 in Eaglesham, where both his parents had been workers in the cotton mill. Thomas had been baptised into the Roman Catholic faith, his mother, Sarah, being herself a Catholic. In the 1841 census, Thomas is also following the family into to the cotton mill as a cotton spinner. Four years later, he marries a woman called Elizabeth Colquhoun in a Church of Scotland ceremony and the couple settle in Glasgow, in the East end of the city. They did have several children, who unfortunately all seem to have died young, as by 1861 the cens...

In genealogical terms 'cousins' do not just refer to your 'first cousins', those people who share a set of grandparents with you. It can be used to refer to your second, third, fourth etc cousins who share a common set of ancestors with you, be they great grandparents or 15 x great grandparents. One of my paternal lines can be traced back to Robert the Bruce, King Robert I of Scotland and one of my maternal lines includes King James II of Scotland, so you can imagine there are a lot of important cousins to be found. So let me introduce you to a very distant cousin. In genealogical terms he is my second cousin seventeen (!) times removed. Meet Alexander Stewart, Earl of Buchan aka The Wolf (or Beast) of Badenoch! Our common ancestor is the famous Robert The Bruce, my 20 x great grandfather. Robert was Alexander's great grandfather. My line descends through King Robert's daughter Elizabeth, Alexander's line through her sister Marjorie. Marjorie married Sir Wal...

 I was not familiar with the term 'FAN Club' as used in a genealogical sense when I first came across it, so I had to resort to googling the term. I discovered that FAN can stand for 'Friends, Associates and Neighbours' and is yet another 'tool' that can be used in traditional family tree research to learn more about people and the lives that they led. Was this something I had previously used but just been ignorant of the term? Or was this something I could use to further my traditional research? The answer to both of these is yes! Traditional genealogy relies on building out a family tree using information from credible sources/documentation. For example, amongst other things,  a Scottish birth record will list the names of both parents  (if known) and possibly even their date of marriage, a marriage certificate will give the names of the bride and groom's parents and their occupations and whether or not they are still alive, a death certificate will give t...

 My grandfather John Anderson had a variety of jobs throughout his lifetime as had his father, David. David had started off his working life as a miner and ended it as a fish merchant, but along the way he had been a pony driver and a carting contractor. It is the latter profession that he ended up having in common with his son John, though John had started out as a tinsmith and ended up as a tinsmith! In both the 1891 and 1901 censuses, John is described as a tinsmith apprentice. However by the time of his first child's birth in 1909, he is a carting contractor, like his father before him. A carting contractor seems to have been a delivery man, using a horse and cart to deliver or move goods about the town. Unfortunately I have no idea what sorts of goods he moved.  Early local 'motor'   Source: https://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/local-news/pictures-people-places-wishaw-during-4923110 However by 1911 he has moved up  and 'modernised'. John now describes hi...

 John Bradfute was born in 1763 at Dunsyre in South Lanarkshire, the second son of the Church of Scotland minister, the Rev. James Bradfute, and grandson of my 5 x great grandfather, also Rev. James Bradfute (1680-1758). As a second son, it is unlikely that John was going to follow his father, grandfather and great grandfather before him into the ministry. His elder brother, James, indeed did so, becoming an ordained priest in the Church of England in 1786. James had been a Deacon at Rose Castle in Cumbria before becoming a priest at Auckland Castle in County Durham. John, however, chose a different path.  At the age of 18, John became apprenticed to Edinburgh printer, Alexander Kincaid. Nine years later, he was taken as a partner into the printing and bookseller business by his mother's brother, John Bell (also son of a minister). John Bell had himself once been at apprentice to Kincaid, but had started up in business by himself in 1771. So it was in 1789 that John Bradfute b...

The Battle of Arbroath, one of Scotland's bloodiest battles, was fought in the summer of 1345 between rival claimants to the post of Baillie of the Regality. The Baillie of the Regality chosen by the monks of Arbroath Abbey at that time was Alexander Lindsay. This post gave Lindsay power and prestige and he was responsible for upholding the law in the lands around the abbey. However, like many men in positions of authority both past and present, he chose to abuse his position of power and his fighting men caused mayhem within the walls of the Abbey. This led to the monks deciding to replace Lindsay with Alexander Ogilvy, who had hereditary claims to the position, but who unfortunately was Lindsay's enemy ... and my 15 x great-uncle! His sister, Isobel had married into Clan Oliphant and, on paper at least, Isobel is my 15 x great grandmother! Of course, the appointment of Ogilvy was not acceptable to Lindsay, who then raised an army of 1000 men and marched to Arbroath Abbey to r...

One set of my paternal  2 x great grandparents cause me somewhat of a headache!  The paper trail from my great grandmother Mary Boag, shows her parents were William Boag and Sarah Diamond. William was a cotton spinner and at the time of Mary's birth in 1829, the family were living in Eaglesham. By 1838, the couple had had ten children. They had been married in Glasgow by an independent minister - William was a Protestant and Sarah an Irish Catholic. All seems normal in 1841. The family are living in Eaglesham, the two eldest sons have followed their father into the cotton spinning trade, a couple of children are no longer there - possibly have died. But by the time of the next census in 1851, William is no longer in Eaglesham and no longer with Sarah. He is living in Glasgow, no longer a cotton spinner but a 'light porter' and there is a new spouse, a Margaret Muir, who was born in Eaglesham and a 9 month old son, Joseph. Obviously there was initially some doubt that this w...

 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...

 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 Scotland, Hogmanay, the 31st of December, is synonymous with bringing in the New Year. As a child, I can remember staying up until midnight for 'the bells', getting a small glass of non-alcoholic raspberry 'wine' and a piece of sultana cake, waiting to see who would be our 'first foot' (the first person to come over the threshold of the house in the New Year, hopefully someone tall, dark and handsome for good luck!) before being hustled off to bed. And that would be the end of my evening. Earlier on that day/evening, my mum would have been busy. She was a great baker and would have made sultana cake and cherry cake, which she would have cut up into fingers. She bought in shortbread and also a sticky dark fruit cake called 'Black Bun', which I hated but which was my dad's favourite. The raspeberry 'wine' that I mentioned earlier would have been made by her too from a bottle of raspberry cordial, which was only sold in the shops in the run ...

On my 2 x great grandfather John Young's death certificate, his father is listed as James Young and his mother as a Helen Ravelton. John died at the age of 78 and was a widower. His son James was a witness on the death certificate and both of John's parents were marked as deceased. Ravelton is not a common name and therefore you would expect researching Helen in the Parish records to be relatively easy, even when you consider its various spellings - Ravelton/Revelton/Raveltoun. However, with names getting passed on down through families, mix-ups can occur and this is what has happened in Helen's case and has led to lots of trees having the wrong Helen, the wrong dates or the wrong parents. Many even have the wrong James Young as her husband! I myself have also made mistakes in researching her and her husband James Young - James Young is a very common name in this area and indeed throughout Scotland. In my case too, the Youngs and the Raveltons are also closely connected. It...

 My late father-in-law, Jan Stepek, was brought up on a farm in Poland in the 1920s. He never had the opportunity to play football as a child or even watch a game. All the more ironic, therefore, that four decades later he would be the Chairman and main owner of a professional football club in Scotland. When he arrived in Scotland, he quickly learned that football was a national passion. But he paid no attention to it. However, in 1969, he found himself drawn into a crisis concerning the local football club - Hamilton Academical - or "Accies" as they are better known. By this time Jan was one of Hamilton's and Scotland's best known businessmen. One day, his next door neighbour who was a shareholder in the club, knocked on Jan's front door. Over a drink, the neighbour explained that the directors of the football club had agreed to merge with another local club, Clyde FC. This would mean that Hamilton Academical would cease to exist. A minority of the Board disagree...

My husband Martin's dad Jan grew up on a farm in Poland in the 1920s and 30s and he might not even have seen an automobile (car) in his early years. However, after WW2, he found himself in Scotland and couldn't return to his native Poland as it was now occupied by Communists. Within the space of a few years,  he opened his own business. This meant he had both the need for and the finance required to buy a car. Over the next two decades his electrical retail business became increasingly prosperous. In 1972 he and his wife Teresa, decided they and some of their family would take a trip to Poland. They reasoned it would be better to go by car rather than fly. This would require two cars of course. Jan, now a successful businessman, was known for being a bit ostentatious, showing off his new found wealth, particularly in the form of cars. At this time he owned two Rolls Royces and a Triumph TR6 sports car. The car he chose to use to drive to Poland was his classic Silver Cloud Roll...

 Although I have never participated in any grand family reunion, through my genealogical research I have met a couple of people that I would never otherwise have met. Back in 2018 I contacted one of my DNA matches who lived in Australia. I had reason to believe she was connected to me on my maternal side, and comparing our trees I found the connection was my 3 x great grandparents John Anderson and Ann Russell. As I had taken this line back further, I contacted the lady, Robyn, to share the information I had. Robyn, in turn, provided me with a lot of information about her line of descent from this pair and added that she planned to visit Scotland in the coming year. Forward on to 2019 and Robyn and her husband did indeed come over from Australia to Scotland! We met up with them for a walk and  lunch in Glasgow. We had a lovely afternoon, talking about our families and life in general. Their visit to Scotland was only part of their trip as they were visiting Ireland and England...

When in 2001 my father in law Jan Stepek had the first of a series of strokes, my husband Martin realised that if Jan died, he would not know much about his past. Martin already knew some basic facts about his father's early life: Jan had been born and raised on a farm in Eastern Poland, he and his family were deported when WW2 broke out, his mother had died during the deportation period and somehow later on he served in the Polish Navy. The bare bones of a story which Martin has only recently fully told in his book "Jan Stepek  Part 1 : Gulag to Glasgow". So... Martin determined that if his father recovered sufficiently, he would ask him to share the whole story of his early life. Thankfully this was the case. And what a story emerged! As well as interviewing his father, Martin interviewed and filmed his father's two sisters who had also been deported. This meant he had three different perspectives. Over and above this, he researched online and discovered various key...

 I have to go back a long way on my family lines to find anyone who was other than working class. My tree is full of miners, labourers and weavers. All people who did not have much money and, in cases where the breadwinner - the male - was unable to work or even died, family circumstances could be dire. Evidence for this scale of poverty can be found on death certificates, census records and Poor Law  Application Records.  I don't have to go back far to find evidence of hardship. In March of 1889, when my grandmother, Christina Walker, was only 20 years old, her husband, a miner, was hospitalised with a fever. At this time the couple had a baby who was only five months old. My grandmother therefore had to put in an application for Poor Relief to the local parish. Poor relief came in the form of a weekly or one off payment or families could be helped with goods like coal or even payment for a doctor. Parochial boards had been introduced in 1845  and each board kept a ...

Like many other people I have had my DNA tested at 23andme. In my case, it was mainly to access another database of possible DNA matches to help in my genealogical research, but I was interested to see what their health data showed up. I seem to be very fortunate in that I do not seem to have anything in my genes which suggests I have a high increased likelihood of suffering from the many things that are tested for, although I do have a slightly increased likelihood of a few things that seem to 'run in the family'. Many people test specifically with 23andme for the health data as other DNA testing sites do not provide such options, but it is necessary to be aware that even if your results show you have a high likelihood of a disease, there are always more factors at work than just your genes. Having a predisposition to something does not necessarily mean you have it. Our ancestors, of course, did not have such genetic analysis available. They also did not have the medical knowl...

 A few years ago, I came into the possession of a family bible. It was the family bible of my paternal grandparents, John McAra and Christina Walker. Until her death in 2018, the bible had been in the hands of my Aunt Inez, widow of my Uncle Will McAra. When I started enquiring as to its whereabouts, I found that it was her grandson, John, who now had it. John himself had no real interest in it at all, so he was quite happy to hand it over to me. However, it was, to say the least, in a bit of a state. The front cover was completely detached and there were many loose pages as the spine of the book was also damaged and detached. I had no choice but to take it to a book repairer in Glasgow, where it was repaired as best it could be. The bible itself had been originally published in Glasgow in the late 19th century. In Victorian times it was common for Christian families to have such a large bible in which they could record events such as births, marriages and deaths. The one I have al...

According to church parish records, my 4 x great grandparents on my direct paternal line, John McAra and Ann Angus were married on the second of July 1768 in Cramond. However, the Kirk Session minutes provide a little more detail than the actual date of the marriage. Extract from Kirk Session minutes: "After prayer, Sederunt the Reverend Doctor Gilbert Hamilton, Moderator, Messrs. Cleghorn, John Hay and John Black, Elders, John McAra and Ann Angus, both of this Parish, after Citation compeared* and acknowledged their irregular marriage and produced their lines dated the 2 of July 1786 at Edinburgh" * compeared is legal term in Scots Law meaning to appear in court personally or by attorney. In this case the couple appeared in person. So John and Ann had been involved in an 'irregular marriage'. At this time there were three types of irregular marriages in Scotland, all legal, but not marriages in the eyes of the church. The first type was the couple making a declarati...