Saturday 6 October 2007

The Family

My Grandad passed away in 2004 and shortly afterwards I began to get really interested in my family tree. The whole mystery of where we all come from and what sort of life our family led in the past fascinates me.

I have spent a great deal of time here researching my familys past. The actual records building is amazing!! On my first trip I was in the atrium, looking up at floors and floors of records, archived for the likes of me to search through located in a large, round, glass-domed room.

I hadn't really got much of a clue as to what I was doing so I started with ME! It is very interesting to see the amount of information that you can dig up about yourself from birth, marriage and death certificates and all of the previous census documents.

The initial information wasn't great! All of the family records showed that family members tended to die young. Jeezo!! That is until I came across my Great, Great Grandad who was almost 100 when he died.

It got me to wondering ..... was there money in the family? hahahaha Well, money is important! ... especially when you don't have it :o)

Well I was to be disappointed in one hand and proud in the other. No money, well, not any left over the years anyways. My folks on my fathers side were all hardworking land people. Crofters, farmers, forestry workers, stone masons etc etc. The family on my mums side had much of the same really. No money but they were all grafters - who didn't believe in small families!!!!! (13 children one of them had!!)

One disturbing fact reared its head. Why was my dads family surname on my mums family side? I know I have always thought I was Royalty in a previous life; was this the first sign ... inbreeding amongst the family 3 generations ago? hahahahaha

Thankfully in my searches I have found no link to the two families!

So far I have managed to go back to the 1700's on both my dad's side and mum's side of the family but need to go one more generation to see if the story about fighting with Bonnie Prince Charlie and being gifted land is true. I have written documentation that the Clan that my family were part of did fight with him, but I need to see if any of my actual ancestors did. That is my next quest!

I love genealogy so much that friends have asked me to do some research on their behalf. It did cause a wee bit of friction and embarrassement when I had to explain that their father WAS NOT who they thought it was and that their mother had actually been playing away :o) oops ... I had a lot of soal searching before I approached that subject! Luckily for me they did have a little clue that this was the case. I managed to track down the real father to the Canadian Airforce where he is/was an officer.

8 comments:

MarmiteToasty said...

WOW WOW WOW........ I would so love to find out about my family history.... cos I dont even know me grandparents name and cos of family shit, my lads dont really have no family to speak of... maybe thats why I love sharkies family roots so very much, that sense of belonging....

I bet my family had many skeletons in their cupboards LOL

Glad ya have yaself a wee hobby LMFAO.....

x

Pam said...

fascinating post...ok, look up my family's for me now. of course it's funny cuz i don't think we had like proper scottish names. not w names like jones & smith. but, somehow our family has scottish and welsh roots. supposedly we are decendents of king james of france. but if you've seen our family tree books that each family has, you'd be wondering how exactly lmao

His Girl Friday said...

Hi! Very Interesting!!

In some of my research I found where some of my mother's ancestors (Penn's Quakers) were responsible for bringing some of my husband's ancestors (Swiss-German Mennonites) over to America. In SE Pennsylvania the two surnames are still seen in the area, with the various businesses and farms.

MT,
I understand family Sh@te; and, there are lines that I can't trace due to family secrets and skeletons...

Ciara,
I love the supposeds...it's fun to think about it! I'd love to go back over to the UK to continue the research, or at least visit some more of the places where family was from, now that I know more.

Pam said...

i don't know why i said SMITH...maybe cuz it started w the letter 's' lol but on my dad's side my ancestors were actually stuarts...and the other variation as well stewart. is there only one clan stuart?? i'm going to have to get that book from my dad before they decide to move from vegas lol

i don't know if we have 'family secrets' but i do know that dad's family owned slaves. that bugged me, but it was what it was considering he's from alabama.

His Girl Friday said...

Ciara,
don't know much about the Stuart line, as far as different branches...luckily it's probably one of the more well-documented!

I know about the southern slave thing. Nothing we can do, nor are we responsible for; it was the time, so to speak (not meant to be interpreted as 'said lightly'). Most of my Amer. family were southerners of Ulster Scots descent. And, most all were slave owners of varying degrees (Tennessee/Watauga Association).

Fascinating discussion topic, Scots. Thanks!

Scots said...

elo all xxx

Marmy ... I like my wee hobby pmsl .. don't we all have skeletons in our cupboards? I was thinking about tidying mine out :o)

Ciara ... I have Stuarts in my family too! Jeezo .. does that make us related? heehee

HGF ... this is one topic I love - perhaps because I am a nosey git :o)

Pam said...

scots-we very well could be! i happen to come across 'clan stuart' on wikipedia.org when i was looking for something else lol that's why i wondered if there was only one stuart clan and everything traces back to them. that'd be kind of cool if we were related lol i really must get that family history book from my dad now! lol :)

hgf-i know there's nothing we can do, but still. i'm also half filipino so you can just imagine how all went down when my mom n dad got together. now i'm more fascinated w the whole family tree thing.

Pam said...

*heading for scottish shores and bringing some reinforcements w me* lmao hahahaha