Who do I think I am?

View from Anderston to Govan (featuring the 'Squinty Bridge')

In 2014 I did something I have never done before, and may never do again. I paid with my own money to attend a family history fair in the UK. I have attended every Who Do You Think You Are - Live in London and Birmingham, and before that, every Society of Genealogists Fair in London, as well as a number of local and national events. I was always a volunteer for one organisation or other, and since 2003 it has been part of the day job.

This was different. 'Who Do You Think You Are - Live!' was in Glasgow, the city of my birth, and where I have at least one line of ancestry back to the 16th Century. Both my parents, all four grandparents and five of my great-grandparents were born there too. So you can understand why I was keen to go. But despite my deep roots in the city, and elsewhere in Scotland, I don't mind admitting that I am much more knowledgable about English genealogy than Scottish. I like to think I have a reasonable working knowledge of Scottish records, but it is not where my expertise lies. So when I am in Scotland I am the enthusiastic amateur, and it is actually rather enjoyable being on the other side of desk for a change!

I had a wonderful time, I could suit myself and do what I wanted without looking at my watch all the time to see when I needed to be back on duty. The location of WDYTYA - Live!, the SECC, was also a happy coincidence for me. It is in an impressive setting on the banks of the Clyde, in Anderston to be precise, a district of Glasgow that is virtually unrecognisable from even a few decades ago. My father and many of his family were born there, and from my room in the Hilton hotel I had a view across the river to Govan, where my mother was born, as were many members of her family. So I could hardly have been more at home if I tried.

I have spent most of my life in England, and have no plans to move, but I have never for a minute identified myself as English; British yes, and Scottish, yes, but not English, much as I love the place and (most of ) the natives! I guess the acid test is 'Who do you support in a sporting contest?' My answer to that is that I support a Scottish team or contestant if there is one, and if it is a contest where teams or individuals compete on behalf of the UK or GB, then I root for the British team or person. In a contest where Scotland and England are both involved, I am all for Scotland, but if (and sadly, all too often when) Scotland are out, it's 'Eng-er-land' for me! I am not one of those who support two teams, Scotland, and whoever is playing against England. If you could have heard my father screaming himself hoarse as he cheered England on to victory in the 1966 World Cup, you'd know where I get it from.

Although I haven't lived there in over 50 years, I am very much a Glaswegian - you can take the girl out of Glasgow, but you can't take Glasgow out of the girl! In many ways I feel I have more in common with people from other cities than with other parts of Scotland, although I have ancestral lines from the rural Scottish counties and the Highlands too. I was also surprised to find just how much I felt at home in Ireland the first time I visited, long before I discovered just how mush Irish ancestry I have. But perhaps that is just a characteristic of family historians in general; we are always looking for something that we can identify with in people and places everywhere, to understand them better.

As a family historian I have discovered over the years that yes, I am very interested in my own family, and families that I have some connection with. But much of the time I am equally excited by the things that I find out about other people's families too. I have always been fascinated by all things historical, an in particular the 'what people did all day' kind of history. I am keen to know about the history of the places where I have lived, and where I live now (which I will write about another time). To get the most out of your family research you want to see where your people fitted in to their time and place, their communities and the wider world. That's why I want to know about the neighbours, and what they were up to, and what was influencing their lives. Or perhaps I'm just nosy.

Scotland's People -the first decade

General Register House, home of the ScotlandsPeople Centre

This month sees the tenth birthday of the ScotlandsPeople site, dear to the heart of Scots genealogists, especially those of us who don't live in Scotland any more. I think it's worth looking back over the last 10 years (and beyond) to see how much has changed in such a relatively short time. I also used the phrase 'and beyond' because it may be the 10th birthday of the ScotlandsPeople site that we know now, but the General Register Ofice for Scotland (GROS) had many of its records online before then with Scots Origins. It was in 2002 that the contract was awarded to Scotland Online, now brightsolid, who have done a great job, but we should recognise the pioneering work done by Scots Origins. This developed into the wider British Origins site, and still provides some useful resources for Scottish research.

Back in 2002 you could see online images from the Statutory Registers (births, marriages and deaths) back to 1855, the census of 1891 and then the newly-released 1901 census. A lot more records are available now, but that was pretty impressive back then, bearing in mind that for England and Wales the only online digitised resource was the 1901 census. The remainder of the holdings of GROS were added over the next few years: the censuses of 1841 to 1881  (and 1911 when it was released last year), the Old Parish Registers (OPRs) before 1855, and every year another year's worth of births, marriages and deaths. This is an important difference between GROS and the GRO for England and Wales, which only deals with births, marriages and deaths, and the closely-related records of stillbirths and adoptions. The official announcement from GROS on 18 September 2002 read:

Todays provision of birth and death registration images online, together with the earlier release of 1891 and 1901 census data, is part of the GROS's major Digital Imaging the Genealogical Records of the people of Scotland (DIGROS) project. This project will include the digital imaging of all the records held by the GROS including all open census records, statutory registers of births, marriages and deaths and parish registers of the Church of Scotland - some of which date from the 16th century. The project is due to be completed by the end of 2003 and will result in a uniquely comprehensive online resource, confirming the GROS's position as a leader in access to genealogical records wich began with the establishment of the Scots Origins website in 1998.

The next step was a significant development, the addition of records not held by the GROS but by the National Archives of Scotland (NAS).  Although NAS occupied the adjacent building, the two organisations were quite separate at the time, although they jointly set up the ScotlandsPeople Centre, and have since been combined to form the National Records of Scotland (NRS). These currently comprise Roman Catholic parish registers, valuation rolls for 1915 and wills and testaments up to 1901, with more in the pipeline. These records which are now so easily accessible are a genealogical goldmine for anyone researching Scottish ancestry.

A Scots wedding 1884

But there is more to ScotlandsPeople than just the facility to search and view core genealogical records. In conjunction with the Court of the Lord Lyon there is also the collection of coats of arms 1692-1908. I have yet to find anyone in my family, or connected with it, for whom this has any relevance, but you never know what might turn up one day. And for people with more illustrious ancestry this collection can be very valuable. There are also some additional features available when searching that many users may be unaware of. For census records there is the facility to use a full census reference instead of searching by name - you will find this within 'Advanced search'. You may have such a reference from a citation, or have found it in one of the street indexes on the site. These are quite well hidden. You need to go to the 'Search the Records' tab, then click on Census Records in the drop-down menu and select a census year. This takes you to useful background information about that census, including a link to PDF files of street indexes. There isn't a street index for every district in every year, but large towns are usually covered (only Glasgow and Edinburgh in 1841, but increasing numbers for later years). Search results are returned as a list, but there is a button at the bottom of each results page that allows you to see them plotted on a map. This is particularly handy if your knowledge of Scottish geography is a little shaky!

I wonder what the next ten years will bring?

Busy September

Apart from the extra traffic that reappears on the roads with the start of a new school term, I like September. The weather is usually better than August (but it's nice to see the autumn and winter collections in the shops too, just in case). It's also the time when new family history classes start up, and when many societies re-start their talks programmes after a summer break.

I also have a book coming out at the end of the month (in my last blog post I did warn you of the shameless self-promotion to come). In fact is is a joint project with my good friend and former colleague, Dave Annal of Lifelines Research. His name comes before mine for a number of reasons; Annal comes before Collins in the alphabet; he is an established author; and he did more than his fair share of the work! It is called 'Birth, marriage and Death Records, a guide for family historians' to be published on 30 September. If you are really keen you can follow the link and pre-order it from the Pen & Sword Books site for the bargain price of £10.39.

Oddly enough, no-one has written a book on this subject before. There are plenty of books on individual topics, such as civil registration or baptism records, and chapters on births, marriages and deaths in general family history books. But while there are numerous books on the census, or wills and probate, no-one has ever put together a whole book exclusively on birth, marriage and death records. We only wish we could have made it twice the length, there is so much wonderful material out there.

But before the book comes out I have two important speaking engagements, both at the Society of Genealogists. The first is a half-day course on Tracing Scottish Ancestors at The National Archives on Saturday 22 September. This is based on a talk that I first delivered three years ago, but which has now been updated and extended. There's a lot of material, so I am looking forward to having a double-length session this time. There is a podcast of the original version that I gave onsite at The National Archives in 2009.

Somerset House, birthplace of civil registration in England and Wales, in the 1830s

On the following Saturday, 29 September, I am back at the Society to deliver the opening sessions at their day conference celebrating 175 Years of Civil Registration. Hats off to the Society of Genealogists for being (as far as I am aware) the only organisation to mark this very significant anniversary. It seems to have passed entirely unnoticed as far as the General Register Office is concerned; they made a big deal of the 150th anniversary in 1987 and even commissioned a book, the excellent 'People Count' by Muriel Nissel. Perhaps they are saving themselves for the bicentenary in 2037.

You can book for both the Scottish Ancestry and 175 Years of Civil Registration on the Society's Events Calendar page. Maybe I'll see you there?

Some of the many advantages of being Scottish

Janet Soutar Brown 1856-1915

This is a post about mothers, because it is Mothering Sunday here in the UK. My own ancestry, so far as I have been able to trace it so far, is entirely Scottish and Irish, mostly Scottish. And one of the great things about Scottish records is that women never really lose their maiden names, and this makes them much easier to trace than most English women; in fact they are often easier to trace than Scottish men too.

In my own case the direct paternal line comes to an abrupt halt with the birth of my great grandfather Robert Collins in 1874 - if you want to know why, I wrote about it in a post called The cautionary tale of McIntyre.

I have been much more successful with my research in the opposite direction, where I can trace my direct female line back six generations. The severe looking lady in the picture is my great grandmother, Janet Soutar, and her great grandmother, Margaret McJannet was probably born in the 1750s or 1760s, more than a century before Robert Collins. Granted, I don't know anything about her, beyond the fact that she and her husband Andrew Drennan or Drynan were the parents of another Margaret, who was born in Carrickfergus, Co Antrim in the 1780s. This Margaret also married a soldier, William Charlton, and one of their daughters, called (guess what) Margaret, married a soldier, William Soutar, and they became the proud parents of six children, including my great grandmother Janet.

I have all the relevant birth, marriage and, crucially, death certificates. Plus of course parish register entries, census, military records and poor law applications to support my conclusions. And this is another advantage of being Scottish; there is a lot more information on certificates, and in particular you get details about mothers; for example, a marriage certificate in England and Wales gives details of the fathers of the bride and groom, but in Scotland you get the names of the mothers too, including their maiden names. Better still, if the mother has been married more than once you get all of her surnames. Death certificates give a wealth of information that English and Welsh researchers can only dream of; the full names of all of the deceased's spouses, and the names of both of their parents, including of course the mother's maiden name.

Searching for the deaths of married women or widows is also easier in Scotland, because they are indexed by both surnames. So even someone with the commonest of names is comparatively easy to find because you are looking for a pair of matching entries, rather like searching for a marriage. This is just as well, since Janet's married surname was Brown. Have you any idea how many Janet Browns have died in Scotland? Neither have I, but a Janet Brown cross-referenced with Janet Soutar wasn't hard to find. Finding her husband John's death was a lot more difficult! And I only know about Margaret McJannet in the first place because she appears on her daughter's death certificate; Margaret Charlton (nee Drennan/Drynan) lived long enough for her death to be recorded in Scottish civil registration. Registration began in 1855, and she died in 1858, aged 75.

Death entry for Margaret Charlton 1858 RD 644/03 (courtesy of ScotlandsPeople)

 I know a lot more about many female ancestors in all of the direct lines; the Scottish practice of recording maiden names in all kinds of records was very useful, but the fact that they were poor was of even more help. All four of my great grandmothers appear in the Glasgow Poor Law records held at the Mitchell Library; Janet was the only one of them who did not apply for poor relief, but her mother did so when she was a young child so details are recorded for Janet and her siblings. Whenever the central heating breaks down, or I run out of milk, or suffer from some other 21st century inconvenience, I think about the incredibly hard lives these mothers led, their many pregnancies, and the children they lost. I have led a charmed life by comparison,

So let's hear it for mothers past, and their mothers, and their mothers' mothers. We wouldn't be here without them.


 

Mappy Monday - Evacuation map of Scotland 1939

TNA ref: RG 26/6

A National Register was compiled throughout the United Kingdom in September 1939, on the outbreak of the Second World War. The information collected was used for a variety of purposes; identity cards, ration books, conscription into the armed forces and other services, and the evacuation of children. There is a great deal of background information in The National Archives about the administration of the system. Many of the documents can be found online at HISTPOP and there are some interesting details about the evacuation of children, including the map of Scotland, above. There is no corresponding map for England and Wales, but there is a county list. Every county was designated either as an evacuation area, from which children were to be removed, a neutral area, or a reception area.

Links to the evacuation papers and other documents on National Registration can be found on the HISTPOP page Documents relating to National Registration, 1939

 

England and Britain are not the same - and why it matters

St George's Day is a good day to remind the world (including England) about this. The terms 'England' 'Britain' and 'UK' are often used interchangeably, but be warned, this can lead you into all kinds of problems. And I don't mean the risk of incurring the wrath of the Scots, Welsh, Irish, Manx and Channel Islanders.


For the genealogist, or any other researcher using British records, it is really important to know the difference, or you could be looking in the wrong place, or failing to look in the right one, which is just as bad. If you are not from the British Isles you may find this confusing; you are not alone. It's not just that some English people say England when they mean the UK, and vice-versa (and I have even heard history professors do this, and they really should know better).

I found a file among Home Office Correspondence in The National Archives (ref: HO 45/7928) which contained a petition, together with the official response. I transcribed both documents and placed them on the Your Archives wiki site, so you can read A Protest against The Name England being imposed upon the United Kingdom for yourself. See what you think.

A century and a half on, confusion still reigns. I am trying to do my bit, and in a couple of weeks I shall be delivering my talk 'What is Britain' at the NGS Conference in Charleston, South Carolina. I have previously given it in Florida, Massachusetts, Virginia and Utah, so after Charleston that will only leave 45 states to go...

I am being sponsored by FamilySearch to deliver this and another talk, and I am very grateful for their support. I have also recorded a shortened version of 'What is Britain' which can be viewed on the Research Courses page. At the risk of biting the hand that feeds me, I see they have filed it under 'England Research', presumably because there is no 'UK' or 'British Isles' Research section. Oh well. I have commented on this before in my earlier posts on the way that FamilySearch now describes records from the British Isles.

I won't go into any more detail here, but for a good online account see Uniting the Kingdoms.

I enjoyed seeing the flag of St George around London today. I think it looks better on a flagpole or a building than draped around tubby shaven-headed young men with lots of tattoos and no neck, but that's just my opinion.  

1911 Census for Scotland - the double-Cross sisters?

I hope everyone else had a successful time yesterday with the release of the 1911 Census for Scotland on ScotlandsPeople. I found three of my four grandparents - two of them before the official launch time of 11am BST. Optimists usually log on a little early, and sometimes it pays off.

I wasn't relying on this census to help me make any great breakthroughs, and I didn't make any astonishing discoveries, but there were a few surprises. I found extra family members, and filled in a few gaps.

The 'fertility in marriage' question revealed the existence of hitherto unsuspected infants who had died. I knew this was a possibility, because I had seen many people make such a discoveries in the 1911 Census of England and Wales over the last two years. All the same, it still gave me quite a jolt to find that my grandmother was one of five sisters, not three as we had always thought. In some ways this is one of the most rewarding things about researching family history, finding and recording the short lives of children who are quite closely related to me, but who literally have been forgotten.

This was the first time I had seen one set of my grandparents in the census, as this pair were born after 1901. By contrast with the discovery of my grandmother's two extra sisters, I found no new people in my grandfather's family, but it was an interesting census entry all the same. I already know quite a lot about the family, which is lucky, because the way they appear in this census would be misleading if I didn't. In the England and Wales 1911 Census, I have seen a number of schedules where the householders were evidently confused by some of the questions, and although in Scotland we only see what the enumerator has copied up, I think I this one was probably a bit of a mess. They lived at 76 McAlpine Street, which was still standing in the 1960s, and there is a picture  of 64-84 McAlpine Street on the excellent Virtual Mitchell site, which has lots of images of Glasgow.

It was a three-generation household, which can be a good source of confusion to start with. It confirms what my grandpa told me, that he lived with his grandparents, and I was pleasantly surprised to find his grandfather, Thomas Cross, making his first and only census appearance; Thomas was an Irishman in the merchant navy, so he had always been out of reach before. The household appears to consist of Thomas and Jane Cross, two daughters in their 20s, Ellen J and Margaret Cross, four visitors, and Jane Cross, aged 3 described as a relative. But the two daughters are listed as married, with the fertility in marriage details given, even though they have the Cross surname. The visitors are Ellen Collins and Maggie J Allison, also in their 20s, and married, and two small children, Henry and Ellen J Collins. The sisters are listed twice, under both their maiden and married names.

Well, I have seen duplicate entries in the census before, but never two people listed twice in the same household! Little Henry is my grandpa, and his sister is my great-aunt Agnes. And I do mean Agnes; he did have a sister called Ellen, but she wasn't born until 1916! He also had a brother, Robert, born in 1910, but goodness knows where he is! The 'relative', Jane Cross, is Margaret/Maggie's daughter who was born a couple of months before she married Fred Allison in 1906.

I am very glad that I already have a couple of decades' worth of research on this family, because if I were starting with this census entry I'd be very confused. I have plenty of birth, marriage and death certificates and other records for these people, so I can be confident that the family just made a complete dog's breakfast of filling in the form! One of the things that I know from the certificates is that Jane Cross and her daughters could not write; they all made their mark instead of signing on every document I have seen. I have no evidence either way on Thomas, but we are clearly not dealing with a very literate family here. The completed enumeration book is neatly written and very legible, but I can just imagine the poor enumerator tearing his hair out trying to make sense of what must have been a pretty horrible-looking piece of paper, full of crossings-out, or else he had to ask them the questions and try to make sense of their answers.

So I will take this opportunity to apologise publicly to the descendants of the poor man, one T S Taylor, on behalf of the combined Cross, Collins and Allison families. Sorry. I will see that it doesn't happen again.  

Mappy Monday - some links

Instead of digging a map from my own collection, I thought I would link to some map and map-related sites instead. Here are a few of my favourites, in no particular order.

Historypin

Digital collections of historic maps

Maps for research (UK)

Old Street Plans (UK)

A vision of Britain through time

London: a life in maps

MAPCO (London)

Booth poverty maps (London)

Maps of Scotland

Historical Map & Chart Collection (USA)

Library of Congress map collections

Bostonography

I put this list together in a few minutes, from my favourites list. Maybe you'll find something here you didn't know about before - I hope you find something you like. But if you want to read an article by someone who really took some time and trouble over it, I recommend:

Mapping out the past, a post from Kith and Kin Research (aka Luke Mouland).

1911 Scotland, England and Wales - nearly the same, but not quite

We're almost there, the 1911 Census for Scotland will be released (fingers crossed) within hours now, not days. Scotland'sPeople is bracing itself! I wish I could be in Edinburgh for the launch, but the day job takes precedence, and at least I hope I will be able to access it remotely. The site will be under quite some strain to start with, I expect, and if we can't all get access immediately...well, it's been closed for a century, a little longer won't hurt.

By now many of us are familiar with the 1911 Census for England and Wales, so we have a pretty good idea of what to expect. There is one important difference, which is that as in previous census years, the Scottish census was copied into enumerations books, and the household schedules were destroyed. This was an administrative decision by the General Register Office for Scotland. The information gathered was much the same as in England and Wales, and the tabulation was done by machine, as in England and Wales. The extra information gathered was a significant increase on previous censuses, so it will be pored over gratefully by Scottish family historians, myself included.

The lack of household schedules means that we won't be able to see our ancestors' actual handwriting, which is a pity, but a greater pity is that when the enumerators wrote up their books, they will have left out the details that had not been asked for. By this I mean the widows who provided the length of their marriage, and the number of children they had, living and dead, when the question was only addressed to married women. On the English and Welsh schedules these were crossed out by the enumerator, but are still clearly visible.

Birthplace questions - England and Wales

There are some differences in the questions, too.

Like the schedules for Wales, but not England, the Scottish census contains a language question; whether a person spoke English, Gaelic or both. The questions on birthplace and nationality are subtly different, though, more details being asked for in England and Wales, with one exception.

On the schedules for England and Wales the parish of birth is required for anyone born in the United Kingdom. Anyone born elsewhere in the British Empire is asked for the name of the Colony or Dependency, and the Province or State. If born in a foreign country, the name of the country is all asked for, and anyone born at sea is required to write 'at sea'.  

Unfortunately the Scottish census asks for the parish of birth only from people born in Scotland. Anyone born in England or Ireland is only required to put 'England' or 'Ireland'. There is no mention of Wales at all, so it may be assumed to be part of the well-known administrative unit 'EnglandandWales'. Sorry, Wales. Like those born in foreign countries, people born in Colonies or Dependencies are only asked for the name of the country, unless that country was India. And this is where Scotland requires extra information; the Indian-born are asked to state whether or not they were of European origin.

Birthplace questions - Scotland

In both countries, foreign-born people are asked for their nationality; whether British by parentage, naturalized British subject, or of foreign nationality, and if so, which nationality. But only in England and Wales are naturalized British subjects asked for the exact year of their naturalization, and those born outside England and Wales are to state whether they are residents or visitors.

These discrepancies in the questions will make no difference to most researchers, and there is still a lot more detail than in any previous Scottish census, so we will all have plenty of new toys to play with (you did stock up on ScotlandsPeople credits before the price went up on Friday, didn't you?). The difference that will affect most genealogists is that sadly, those of us with Irish-born ancestors in Scotland can't expect to discover their exact birthplaces here. Pity. Oh well, it's back to fiendish ingenuity and the power of prayer again.

Happy Census Release Day, fellow Scots. I'm sure it's going to be PDB* for some of us.

*PDB = Pure dead brilliant!

A question of nationality

I have just read a very interesting and thought-provoking blog by Polly Kimmitt He's not American. Is he Kenyan, English or Irish? The whole business of nationality can be much more complicated that you might think. In the UK we have the added complication of the four home nations, England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. Most of us identify ourselves with one of these, although our nationality is British, as a glance at a passport will confirm. The full wording is 'United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland' but I must admit I was glad to be able to tick 'Scottish' on my census form last week.

I have lived in England for most of my life, but I have never considered myself as English, and I never will. British, yes, but never English. I like it here, though, and I have no plans to leave; the natives seem to have accepted me. My young nephew, on the other hand, has absolutely now doubt that he in English. Fair enough, because he was born in England, and so were both of his parents, but that is a s far as it goes. But none of his grandparents came from England; one set were Scottish, the other Irish. So he could qualify to play football for any of three counties, and who knows, he might do so one day, because he's a pretty good footballer. Sorry Wales, you don't get a look in.

The whole sporting thing gets more confusing the more you look at it. In the Olympic Games and some other sporting events we compete as the United Kingdom (sometimes referred to as 'Team GB', which is wrong of course, and must annoy Northern Ireland even more than it annoys me). But in others, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland send separate teams. Except for Rugby League and Rugby Union, where Ireland is represented by combined teams drawing players from both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland. Don't spend too much time thinking about it, it will make your brain hurt.

Sporting allegiance and national identity may be important to the way you feel, but the hard legal facts of nationality law can affect where you are allowed to live. Many of the enquiries we deal with at The National Archives are not from genealogists, but from people who need to prove their right to British nationality, or their right of residency in the UK. We hold certificates of naturalization and of nationality issued up to 1983, and there are lots of different kinds, depending the kind of certificate and where it was issued. It also depends on the legislation that was in force at the time. It's a complicated business. There is a Wikipedia article on British Nationality Law that explains it, but you need to set aside a good long time to read it all. Like I said, it's a complicated business.

To add to the fun, there are many anomalies in the relative status of the UK and the Republic of Ireland, and the relations between them. Britain used to be a colonial power, and when they gained their independence most former colonies and dominions became members of the Commonwealth. The Republic of Ireland, however, is not, and has never been, a member, and distanced itself from the UK to the extent that it remained neutral during the Second World War. Despite this, there has always been free movement between the two countries, and until 1978 the two currencies were of equal value, even adopting decimalisation at the same time. Irish people who lived in the UK could vote in elections here, even before our two countries joined the European Union.

In her blog, Polly describes the complications that arose because her British husband was born in Kenya, while his father had been sent there to work by the British government. Something similar occurred in a family that I am related to, where the father was Irish and the mother British. Two of their children were born in England, but one was born overseas, because her father, an Irish citizen, was a soldier in the British  Army and was stationed there at the time. She had no idea that this could cause a problem until as an adult, she applied for a passport, and discovered to her surprise that legally, she was not actually British. It was sorted out in the end, and she did get her passport, but it makes you think.

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part Three

Great Seal of Queen Anne 1707, commemorating the Act of Union of England and Scotland

Since my last post on this subject, I have been taking another close look at the collections in new FamilySearch that were formerly categorised as 'British Isles'. The fundamental problem with these records is that the place filters simply do not work. Unless this is sorted out, it will be very difficult for anyone searching British Isles records - England, Scotland, Ireland (North and South), Channel Islands, Isle of Man, or United Kingdom - to find what they are looking for, or even to know what is there to be searched in the first place. Some of the issues I have raised relate to this region, the one that I know best, but could apply equally to others; you can't filter by US state or Canadian province, which is just as bad as not being able to filter by county within the British Isles. But the way that the records here have been categorised is unique.

These lists don't match!

On the home page, scroll down to 'Browse by location' and select 'Europe'. You will see a list of 'countries' on the left, and a list of record collections on the right, in country order. The list of the left corresponds with the list on the right - up to a point. The list of countries on the left reads: Austria, Belgium, Channel Islands, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France ...and so on. The record collections mirror this exactly as far as Denmark, then the next collections are not from Finland, but England, which does not appear at all in the left-hand list.

The list on the left continues...Germany, Gibraltar, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland...but the right-hand list has Germany, Gibraltar, Great Britain, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Isle of Man, Italy...etc. More record collections, this time for 'Great Britain' which have no counterpart on the left. The two lists continue in step almost to the bottom, where the last four countries listed on the left are Switzerland, Ukraine, United Kingdom and Wales. Now if you look to the right-hand list of record collections, there is only Switzerland, Ukraine and Wales, the 'United Kingdom' record having been distributed, inaccurately, between England and Great Britain.

This discrepancy between countries and record collections ONLY occurs in relation to the British Isles records, and nowhere else in the whole of the Historical Records collections.

Collections in the wrong place

I have already mentioned some of the anomalies in my earlier posts, New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part One and Part Two. There is a filter for Wales, but it contains only Probate Abstracts 1773-1780; the major collections of Wales, Births and Baptisms, Wales, Marriages, and Wales, Deaths and Burials are found within the United Kingdom filter. Also within the United Kingdom are the Great Britain collections: Great Britain Births and Baptisms, Great Britain Marriages and Great Britain Deaths and Burials. I had looked at these before, and found that they included some Irish records - all of Ireland used to be part of the United Kingdom, and part of it still is, but it has NEVER been part of Great Britain. The Irish Sea is in the way! Great Britain is the geographical term for 'the other island' as one of my Irish friends calls it.

Further investigation shows that the baptism register of St Peter's, Athlone and Drum, Roscommon, is included in Great Britain Births and Baptisms, which contains the baptism register of the Immaculate Conception Chapel, South Orange, Essex New Jersey! I also found a number of entries there from the Irish Civil Registration indexes. Naturally, I have reported this using the Feedback facility.

Overseas Records

There are in fact many more records classified as 'Great Britain' which do not belong there. These are not records that have been mistakenly put in the wrong place by someone with an imperfect understanding of British geography. These come from substantial collections of records which are held in London, but whose whole point is that they record events that took place OUTSIDE the British Isles. These comprise many thousands of events recorded in British churches and chapels overseas, or registered with British consulates, embassies and legations abroad. The original records are held at The National Archives in either the Foreign Office or General Register Office collections, or in the Bishop of London's 'International Memoranda' at the London Metropolitan Archives. A further large  collection of births, marriages and deaths at sea, held at The National Archives, is also included in 'Great Britain' by FamilySearch.

These records are not just relevant to researchers with British Isles ancestry; they include people from all nations, particularly the 'At Sea' records which include many records of foreign nationals who were passengers or crew on British-registered ships. They may be included here because they are held in British archives, but records from the India Office Collection, held at the British Library, are correctly indexed by FamilySearch under India, so we know it can be done. Time to hit the Feedback button again...

Mappy Monday - A New Giant's Causeway

Cassell's New Penny Magazine 1899

This map shows the distance between Ireland and Scotland, only 12.5 miles at the narrowest point, and a 'Proposed Land Junction of Great Britain and Ireland'. According to the accompanying article, this was the idea of one J Charles King, who had been promoting it for forty years. He had spent a great deal of his own time and money on surveying the two coastlines from Morecambe to Ayr and Oban, and from Dublin to Ballycastle. He proposed the reclamation of the land at this narrow point, adding nearly a quarter of a million acres to Ireland, stopping the inflow of the Gulf Stream, 'making the Irish Sea an island-studded lake.' Vessels  would get in an out of this 'lake' by means of two new sea-level canals through the Cantyre (Kintyre) peninsula, and the existing Crinan Canal, a safer passage than the rocks and strong currents of the existing route.

There are no engineering difficulties. For the labour requisite for the undertaking, if carried out by the Government, the work of convicts could be well utilised here, aided by the labour of break-water builders.

The force of the current is so great here as to be sufficient to supply electric power for the work, and light up those parts of Antrim and Cantyre, the coal there giving subsidiary means of power for working machinery.

For finance - if kept out of the hands of private speculators - Government paper money would pay all costs, to be liquidated from rentals of the reclaimed land, no charge or toll to be levied for passage-way along the Causeway.

With judicious supervision, the work could be completed in three years, the projector, Mr J Charles King, undertaking to give his services free, if entrusted with the work to be done.

Simple!

An intriguing notion for anyone with ancestors from Northern Ireland or south-west Scotland (like most of mine), and who moved between those two places (quite a lot of mine).
  

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part Two

I have been having a closer look at New FamilySearch, with particular reference to the British Isles collections (even though the term 'British Isles' is no longer used as a place filter, see my earlier post on the subject). This time I have been looking at some of the collections themselves, and although these observations apply to specific collections in this region, the same kinds of features may well occur in records elsewhere.

I decided to look at the Scottish records, a very small collection compared with the inaccurately-defined 'United Kingdom' one.There are two record sets 'Scotland Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950' and 'Scotland, Marriages, 1561-1910' . The description of the first collection is rather vague

Index to selected Scotland births and baptisms. Only a few localities are included and the time period varies by locality. This collection contains 9,431,034 records. Due to privacy laws, recent records may not be displayed. The year range represents most of the records. A few records may be earlier or later.

You can scroll down the page for more information, or click on links that take you to the appropriate page in  the Research Wiki. There is a lot of useful information here, but it is all general rather than specific, and at no point is there list of the actual historical records that make up the collection. To be fair, the old FamilySearch did not provide this information eithe; the last time you could find such a list was in the Parish and Vital Records listing that came with the old microfiche editions of the IGI, and the last one of those was produced in 1992.

ADDENDUM: Chris Paton's comment below mentions the very helpful GENOOT site, so I have added the link here so that you can click on it instead of having to cut and paste. Cheers, Chris!

On the plus side, you can search the FHL catalog using the film number from any given entry and find details of the original source, which certainly was not always possible with the old FamilySearch. Furthermore, since the patron submissions from the IGI have been separated out, the source should now be an actual record that can be checked and evaluated. Or so I thought.

The date range 1564-1950 is very wide, and I guessed that the most recent entries would come from Civil Registration, known as the Statutory Registers in Scotland, so I did a search among the most recent entries to find out. This is another good feature of the new site, because you seem to be able to search on as many or as few fields as you wish, even a search on a date range of a single year, with no other fields filled in. Oe of the irritating features of the old site was getting a message  like 'You must enter at least a first or last name, or you must enter a father's full name and at least a mother's first name' 

A search in the range 1946-1950 returned 10 results, but only 4 of them were births from that period, the others were much earlier, but they included dates of DEATH that fell within the specified range. For the first time in my rummaging through new FamilySearch, I found that none of these entries included a film number, or any means of identifying the source. It may be that this information will be added later; I certainly hope so. But what I found more worrying was the fact that records containing death dates were in a collection called Births and Baptisms. The information shown is what you would expect to find on Scottish death certificates, except that the date and place of birth of the deceased do not appear in death entries during this period. So while these look like very informative records, I have no idea what I am searching.

I looked at the marriages next, and while the record descriptions were as vague as for the births and baptisms, there were film numbers that I could check in the FHL Catalog. I also discovered another advantage of new FamilySearch; it will return results from anywhere within the record being searched, which was not possible before. For example, a search for a man's name will not only return results for grooms of that name, but also where he is recorded as the father of the bride, which was an unexpected bonus. Not that this information appears in many Scottish marriage records before 1855, but it's wonderful when it does. Names of both parents of the bride and the groom appear from 1855 onwards, and marriages up to 1875 have been included in the IGI for many years, but only the brides' and grooms' names were included in the index. All the same, if post-1875 records are included later, or if the extra detail is ever added to the existing marriages, it's good to know that FamilySearch can cope with it.  It's nice to end on a positive note for a change.

I'll carry on exploring - and using the Feedback button of course - and report back again in a while

New FamilySearch, a view from the British Isles Part One

I don’t wish to be an old stick-in-the-mud, but when something new comes along, it isn’t always an improvement. Having said that, there are lots of good features in new FamilySearch, but sadly, there are quite a few flaws too. The optimist in me thinks that it should be possible to tweak and amend it so that more of the good features of old FamilySearch are re-introduced, or even improved on. We shall see.

There have been some very useful comments and observations from other bloggers; if you don’t already subscribe, I’d strongly recommend The Ancestry Insider as one of the best on this subject. I agree with much that has already been said, but I want to add some observations of my own from a British Isles perspective.

You will notice that I said British Isles, and not just ‘British’, and this is deliberate. Many people use the terms ‘British’ and ‘English’ interchangeably, but they are not the same, and it’s important to know the difference. It’s not just a question of courtesy to the Scots (most of me), the Irish (the rest of me), the Welsh, Manx and the Channel Islanders; if you are looking for records of your ancestors, it saves time if you look in the right country, it really does.

One of the most useful features of old FamilySearch is the way you can filter searches by place, and much of this has carried over to the new site BUT for this corner of the world it has become much worse.

Old FamilySearch

You need to select the IGI search page for this (you can only filter down to Country level from the All Resources page)

Region: British Isles

Country: England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, Isle of Man or Channel Islands, or you can leave it at 'All countries'

County: you can select a county, or 'All counties' or 'county unknown', except for the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands, which are very small to start with

New FamilySearch

Under Historical Records, 'Browse by location'

Region: Europe

Country: Channel Islands, Ireland, Isle of Man, Scotland, United Kingdom, Wales (There is no collective British Isles category)

County: 'No further place filters found'

There are a number of obvious problems with this. First of all, there is no option called 'England', and no way to search all of the British Isles records at once, you have to search each one separately. If you look closely, the databases in 'United Kingdom' are mostly from England, but they include 'Wales Births and Baptisms.1541-1907', 'Wales Deaths and Burials 1586-1885' and 'Wales Marriages 1541-1900'. Wales has its own country category, but this only contains 'Wales Probate Abstracts 1771-1780'. If you then explore the actual databases listed within the 'United Kingdom' category, there are three (apart from the Welsh ones I have just described) that are not excplicitly English, these are the 'Great Britain' categories for Births and Baptisms, Marriages, and for Deaths and Burials. These, as you might expect, contain mostly events in England, but there are also a great many events which took place abroad or at sea - go to 'Great Britain Births and Baptisms 1571-1977', enter 'Florence' in the Place box and you will see what I mean. I have also found a number of Irish baptisms in the same category. Incidentally, 'Great Britain' is not the same as either 'England' or 'United Kingdom', and definitely does not include Ireland.

I will return to this subject again, but this is enough for now. I am still trying out the new site and there are features that I haven't explored properly yet. I have used the Feedback button to report my comments, and I do have some positive things to say about new FamilySearch too, but my first concern is with these place filters. FamilySearch as an organisation has been kind enough to sponsor me to speak at this year's NGS Conference in Charleston South Carolina in May; one of the sessions they have asked me to deliver is a favourite of mine called 'What is Britain?' It would be nice to think that some of the software engineers might pay attention to what I have to say.

Surname Saturday - the cautionary tale of McIntyre

Surnames are the tools of our trade as genealogists, but we shouldn't set too much store by them, and I don't just mean all the mis-spelllings and variants. Does anyone remember the film Local Hero? An oil tycoon wants to build a refinery in Scotland, and sends one of his executives to sweet-talk the locals. He chooses a man called McIntyre, thinking that a Scotsman would be particularly well-suited to the task. It is incidental to the plot that McIntyre only came have that surname because his Hungarian immigrant ancestor adopted it to sound more American. I used to tell this tale to my genealogy classes as a warning that you shouldn't get too hung up on the origins of a surname, in case an ancestor had simply chosen it, just like McIntyre.

Little did I know that I would have a McIntyre story of my own. It took me 20 years to locate the birth certificate of my great-grandfather, Robert Collins.His marriage and death certificates (both in Scotland) indicated that he was born around 1881, son of Patrick Collins and Jane McAtee. Patrick was dead before Robert married in 1907, and the family story was that Robert was born in Paisley, but the family came from Ireland. I tried everything, but the family could not be found in any census, and I seemed to have a set of great-great-grandparents who weren't married, were never born, and didn't die, in Scotland or Ireland.

Then I found my great-grandmothers application for poor relief in Glasgow because Robert had gone AWOL for a few months, leaving her with two small children and no money. The details given here corroborated the information I already had, with the added detail that Robert's mother Jane had gone to Canada in about 1905,and that her maiden name was McIntee, not McAtee. This was enough for me to track her down on a passenger list, with her married daughter's family, and gradually I pieced the family together, with yet another variation on Jane's maiden surname, McAttee. At last I found them in the census, including the elusive Robert, who turned out to be 7 years older than I had thought! So now I found his birth certificate at last, in 1874, not 1881, and it's a beauty. I found him inthe index as Robert Collins, but to my surprise the certificate read "Robert McIntyre  (or Collins) (Illegitimate)", and for parents' details "Jane McIntyre...widow of Patrick Collins, engineer, who died in March 1871".

So now I don't know who his father was, but he certainly was not the Patrick Collins who appears on all his documents. That's another puzzle to solve, and now I have my very own McIntyre story! And any interest I may have in the history and origins of the Collins surname has nothing to do with my own family history.

As a postscript to this, I noticed that in the 1881 census the Collins family were in the same house as another Irish family headed by a Thomas McEntee. This may just be a coincidence, or they may turn out to be related, recorded, with another spelling of the name. I'm not sure what to make of that one, I'm still investigating!