Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Scottish Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 50

By quizzing your family, you will usually be able to draw a family tree starting with a name, ‘Alexander or maybe Angus MacLeod’, followed by their child, with a bit more information say, ‘Malcolm MacLeod, born in 1922’, and then a third generation down, with much more definite information: ‘Flora MacLeod, born on 22 April 1951, Gorbals, Glasgow’. You may think you’ll save money and time if you start with Alexander (or Angus!), but what can you really look for? Starting with Malcolm would be better, as you can look for a birth in 1922, but as you don’t know where Malcolm was born, you’ve no idea where to look. You’re probably not 100 per cent sure that the year 1922 was correct anyway: it may have been calculated from an age at death, and these seldom take into account when in the year people’s birthdays fell, so Malcolm could have been born in 1921 or 1923. Therefore, start with what you know for sure, and seek Flora’s birth certificate. Once you have this, you’ve established a firm foothold, and can work back with confidence.

The birth record is a contemporary source, providing the parents’ names, probably from their own mouths – not half-remembered hearsay, then, but fact. Now, turn to the marriage indexes, seeking their wedding. Marriage records usually state ages of the couple and the full names of all four parents. Thus, following our example, once you’ve worked back from Flora’s birth to her father Malcolm’s marriage, you’ll have a definite age for Malcolm, and know his parents’ full names, including whether the father was really called Alexander or Angus. Sometimes, admittedly, people got details wrong, or lied: if you discover discrepancies, you’ll simply have to widen the period of your next search.

The next step is to seek Malcolm’s birth: if his parents’ names match those given on his marriage record, you’ll know you have the right document.

A special feature of Scottish General Registration records, that is not found in the rest of the British Isles, is that death records state the parents’ names. Admittedly, these can be inaccurate, because the informant of the death may have been born years after the deceased’s parents died. But, usually, this extra feature is very helpful, and deaths should always be sought as a normal part of tracing your

Eleanor Conquer, born 1876 in Haddington (courtesy of the Crowley Family Collection).

Scottish family history. To help you search, all birth, marriage and death records state whether the person’s parents were alive or dead at the time, and in the nineteenth century you can hone the search further using census returns.