Despite the fact that I have now been researching my family history for almost 25 years, there are always new documents to be found and ancestral haunts to visit, so in this final post of the 52 Weeks challenge I’m going to reflect on the discoveries that stood out as particularly memorable during the past… Continue reading Memorable
Tag: McDonald
The Name’s The Same
Prior to the 20th century, ancestors tended to baptise their children using a frustratingly limited range of names, which can make it challenging to determine whether you have identified the correct person. This issue is further complicated in Scotland, partly because the pool of names is even smaller, but also due to the tradition whereby children… Continue reading The Name’s The Same
Urban
During the 19th century, there was a well-documented shift of the British population from rural to urban areas driven by the many challenges and opportunities offered by the agricultural and industrial revolutions. By 1851, for the first time, at least half of the population was living in an urban area but, with the exception of the… Continue reading Urban
Reunion
My paternal grandmother’s sister, Mary Hay Clark, was born in Peterhead on 25 July 1878 and was just 12 years old when their mother, Barbara McDonald, died in 1891. In an earlier post [see Migration] I hinted that a cousin, Christina Hardy, had an important role to play in the life of one of my… Continue reading Reunion
Language
There is not a single person amongst my direct ancestors who was born outside of the UK, so the short answer to “what language did they speak ?” is pretty simple: English ! The exception to this may be those who were born in Aberdeenshire in the 18th and 19th centuries, although even here it is hard… Continue reading Language
Siblings
I have mentioned my paternal grandmother’s eleven siblings several times now, so I think it is time to introduce them. To recap: they are the children of John Clark and Barbara Ann McDonald, and all of them were born in Peterhead, Aberdeenshire apart from my grandmother, Flora, who was born in Maryhill. Although John and… Continue reading Siblings
Migration
Given the long history of Scottish migration, it is not surprising that the Aberdeenshire branch of my tree includes several of the estimated two million Scots who sought a new life elsewhere in the 19th century. The harrowing narrative of forced moves following the Highland Clearances in the 18th and 19th centuries is well known, but my ancestors… Continue reading Migration
Challenge
Working out how my paternal grandmother, Flora Clark, ended up in Portsmouth, hundreds of miles from her family in Scotland, was one of the biggest challenges I faced when I began researching. This photograph, taken around 1919, is the only image I have of her. I knew that she had been born in Glasgow in… Continue reading Challenge
Nickname
My great grandfather’s name was recorded as John Cox Clark when his son, Thomas, registered his death in 1912, which puzzled me as Cox is not a family name and it doesn’t appear in any other records. I think it was probably a tee-name, or nickname, traditionally used by the coastal communities of Aberdeenshire to… Continue reading Nickname
In the Beginning
In 2001, my father read a newspaper article that announced the publication of the 1901 Scotland census online, and he asked me to see if I could find the family of his mother, Flora Clark. She had died when he was a small child and he knew almost nothing about her beyond the information recorded in… Continue reading In the Beginning
Sleuthing Notes 