Roots, shoots and stories

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...

The topic of 'random' sent me back looking into my tree for a woman I had come across who had a connection I never would have expected to find in my family tree, a tree  which is full of Central Lowland Scots, Irish and a scattering of English people. The woman in question was Effie Hanchett, a lady born in 1870 in Plymouth, Nebraska, USA. I had come across Effie when I was researching my maternal Adams line. Effie had married a William Henry Adams in Fairbury, Nebraska in 1893 and William is my first cousin three times removed. William's grandfather was my 3 x great grandfather.  Effie Hanchett (1870-1848) Source: shared on Ancestry.com In 1872, William, aged 8 and his younger sister had emigrated from Lanarkshire in Scotland with their parents, William and Marion, to start a new life in America. His father William was a coalminer like many Scots who emigrated at that time and he continued that job when they got to Illinois as can be seen in the 1880 census for La Salle, I...

Looking at my DNA matches over various platforms and my family tree research, it is obvious to me that my paternal grandmother's line - the Walkers - are the line which have the most descendants (or at least the most descendants who have tested) and who have spread out furthest over the world. My great great grandparents James Walker (1777-1862) and Ellen Muir (1790-1866) from Linlithgow in Scotland had ten children - eight boys and two girls. Such large families were not uncommon in those times. Two of the boys never married, but between them the other eight siblings produced at least 52 grandchildren! The eldest of the siblings, George Walker was, however,  the only one of the children to ever leave Scotland and that was later in life, when he followed his son John, a miner, over to the USA. It is, however, many of the grandchildren of James and Ellen who decide to leave their homeland for the USA and for Australia. Their USA destinations included Kansas, Colorado, Ohio and Maryl...

 When I first visited Cramond Kirk and its churchyard a few years ago in search of my McAra ancestors, I came across a large gravestone, listing some family members and their dates and places of death, two of whom I can associate with the topic of 'Boats'.  The stone itself was erected many years after the deaths of the people listed and some of the dates were definitely inaccurate. James McAra, the first name on the stone was certainly not dead on the stated date - he was, in fact, living in Tasmania having been deported for the accidental killing of his brother, my 3 x great grandfather (More details about that are given here :  James McAra  ). However, it was not the dates that drew my attention, it was one of the places mentioned as place of death. James' son, Archibald McAra, was listed as dying in Valparaiso, Chile! McAra gravestone in Cramond Churchyard. Inscription unfortunately not too clear. That came as quite a surprise. When his father James had been conv...

 At 2 a.m. on the 10th of February 1940, Janina Stepek and her three children, Jan, Zosia and Danka were woken up by loud knocking at the door of their home in Eastern Poland. It was the Soviet Red Army and Ukrainian Militia, the Soviets having invaded Poland some five months earlier. The family were ordered to pack what they could and be ready to leave within thirty minutes. One officer, in an act of kindness, told Janina to pack as much as they could for cold weather. They were taken by cart to the nearest train station, along with the entire population of the village. There they discovered that the inhabitants of many villages had been similarly forced to leave their homes. After several hours in the freezing cold, they were bundled on to cattle trains. Each wagon took fifty people, crammed together. There was no toilet, there was a stove in the centre of the carriage and there were some shelves which could be used as beds for some. The doors slid shut and locked everyone in, le...

My direct ancestry is not at all exotic. Although my percentage ethnicities do vary a bit from one testing company to another, one thing is clear: I am very, very Scottish. 23andme have me as 99.5% Scottish/Irish, Ancestry at 71% Scottish, 27% Irish. The Irish I know comes to me through one 2 x great grandmother on my maternal side and one 3 x great grandmother on my paternal side. I do have one 3 x great grandfather who was English, but everywhere else you look on my tree it is Scotland all the way, and Central Scotland at that too.  All my direct ancestors for the last two hundred years are all Lanarkshire born! It appears that my ancestors were quite happy to stay in Scotland, only moving relatively locally to improve their chances of work. The coalfields of Lanarkshire proved an attractive prospect for people who had been iron workers and general labourers. The cotton mills also provided work for many of them. These people benefited from the start of the Industrial Revolution a...

 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 ...