Читать книгу Collins Tracing Your Family History - Ryan Tubridy, Anthony Adolph - Страница 77

EDINBURGH PHYSIOTHERAPIST Lorna Barbour’s ancestor has an interesting birth record. Margaret Duncan Wilson was the first child to be registered in Lerwick once General Registration began in 1855. The exceptionally detailed birth certificate (of the type issued in the year alone) states she was born at Chromate Lane, Lerwick at 5.30am on 6 January, 7th child of James McAllum Wilson, a superintendent of police at Lerwick, aged 34 and born in Fraserburgh, and his wife Jane Wilson formerly Smart. The couple had married in Stonehaven in June 1840 and had two other girls and four boys, of whom one had died.

The 19th-century Shetlands may conjure up images of weather-beaten crofters knitting chunky sweaters, the warm glow of their cosy peat fires flicking across the picturesque wrinkles of their weather-beaten faces. Far from it. Plunged into semi-darkness half the year and with little to warm them save whisky the islanders, whose Viking blood has recently been confirmed through extensive DNA testing, seem to have been an exceptionally unruly mob. The local papers report almost continuous drunken disorder, not least at their drinking extravaganza, Upheliar, including running gun battles and once the nail bombing of the chief magistrate’s house. And when the American whaling boats put in and drunken sailors filled the streets and bars of the town, things really hotted up.