Genealogy

[shuttle534]

Anyone else been watching the show on BBC2 looking into the family trees of some celebs. It put me in the mood to do some of my own research.
Has anyone else done any reasearch into their own family trees and discovered anything of interest? Any famous people or members present at great moments in history (when Ronald Reagan called princess Diana princess David, or an A&R man who said no to The Beatles). It would be interesting to hear. So stick it up.

My research has brought back the following:
One member was a passenger on the Titanic.
One member was a bare knuckle boxer in Ireland.
And a present uncle has recently discovered himself that he is a decendant of the American Inians. (I don't know which tribe, I forgot to ask)

[cumbo]

Traced our roots down through Ayrshire to a farmhouse in Girvan,
that only said one thing.....came to Scotland during the potato famine!!
hope to get over the water some time to carry on the chase.
Has anyone had any experience with research in Ireland?I hear it is a
different ball game over there.

[escotregen]

I've not yet done it for myself (want to someday) but something I've found rewarding and interesting is helping Scottish (Glasgow) descendants overseas rediscover their roots. In one recent case I was able to track down photographs of the original Greek Thompson church that an Australian family's forebears had been married in just as it was built and just before they emigrated in the 1860s. The gratitude from the family alone was reward in itself.

[Molendinar]

Disappointingly nothing too exciting discovered yet. Great-grandfather's occupations';

Maternal:
Coal miner
Plater in the shipyards

Paternal:
Train driver
Mine manager

The only odd thing is that at the time one of my ancestors was a coal miner, born Shotts and moved to the eastend of glasgow, on the paternal side one of my ancestors could've managed him (He was based in Cleland)- both sides of the class war there!

PS the coal miner died in the pnuemonia epidemic at the end of the 1st world war, the mine manager lived on for some decades....


I was also reading this week about the origins of the name Loudon, my second name, apparently Loudoun in Ayrshire and Lothian come from the same root; Lleu-din , fort of the sun god.. which is cool!

According to John Garth Wilkinson, Lleudinyawn could derive from an Old Celtic Lugudunion [2]. Other placenames in Northern Britain which seem to follow this root can be conjectured, not least Loudoun (Ayrshire), Lugton (Renfrewshire), and Luguvalium, the Romano-Celtic name for Carlisle in Cumbria (a central city in later Arthurian mythology). However, similar placenames throughout ancient and modern Europe are also conjectured to derive from the likes of Lugudunion and Lugudunum, such the Gaulish placenames Lyon, Loudun and Leiden, and even the name of London is sometimes thought to have this root.

http://www.cyberscotia.com/ancient-lothian/index.html

interesting to read about our "welshness" here in strathclyde and Lothian

[Sharon]

My family history is disappointingly easy to trace, especially on the paternal side where I can get back to the 1740's on gravestones in the local churchyards and in title deeds.

All farmers. With little movement. I'm the 4th generation of Hallidays on my Dads farm...

Pretty much the same on the maternal side, all farmers. Although i never did get round to plotting this all out fully (yet i should say)

Maybe there are more exciting exotic things to discover on my mothers side, but it looks pretty much like I'm out of Galloway - as were the last 6 generations of Hallidays!!

[Molendinar]

aargh...!

http://www.multimap.com/map/browse.cgi?lat=47.0092&lon=0.0819&scale=100000&icon=x

I went to Chatelherault primary school in Hamilton... spooky..

//amin: link shortened for tidiness (which i can't spell)

[Sharon]

Its a sign. And I'm sure it means something, although who could be quite sure what???

Parallel life?

[escotregen]

The Devils of Loudun?... whose sitting next to him at next end-of-the-month drinks!

[purplegrum]

I started to trace my ancestry but to be honest I never got that far. I know on my mothers side the family came over from Ireland, moving to the Fraserborough area then to Glasgow and Argyle, which is from where I originate (born in Glasgow but Inveraray is my hometown).

Fathers side is a bit more blurry, although my great great uncle, James, starred in many of the Laurel and Hardy films.

(and is it me or has my post destroyed the formatting on this page?)

[Molendinar]

funny you should mention Devils;

http://witches.monstrous.com/witchcraft_cases.htm#_Toc523500407

Been enjoying that BBC show, the Moira Stuart one was pretty amazing, her trip to Edinburgh certainly captured the good side of Scotland - intellectual and liberal, she managed to avoid the small minded infighting etc. I wish I had such interesting ancestors, well, maybe eventually I'll find sthg exotic.

Has anybody joined any of these websites where you post your tree and hopefully link up with someone else's tree? It seems they're mostly american tho... things like ancestry.com (or .co.uk)

To get back to hidden glasgow stuff, I think it'd be fascinating to show on a map where your family were geographically. So far my tree would be all in lanarkshire apart from a stint in Burntisland (reminds me to post sthg for Duncan the new fifer) and quite a lot in Glasgow (every corner).

Which reminds me, on my great gran's Bann her address is 16 White Street, Govan, but as far as I can work out that's in Partick?

[AMcD]

Has anybody joined any of these websites where you post your tree and hopefully link up with someone else's tree? It seems they're mostly american tho... things like ancestry.com (or .co.uk)

Which reminds me, on my great gran's Bann her address is 16 White Street, Govan, but as far as I can work out that's in Partick?

My tree is on genesreconnected.co.uk but it's actually a bit of a pain. Constantly getting email from people at the other end of the country asking if names on my tree are their relatives, despite being born in a different part of the country and another time period.

Re. White Street. Partick is/was part of Govan parish, but in this instance there was a White Street in Govan, and it's now called Golspie Street. http://www.glasgowguide.co.uk/info-streetschanged3.html


*edit* Had a touch of deja vu there ..... I knew I'd had seen that question asked somewhere before.... http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/phpBB ... ight=white

Map here

[Molendinar]

brilliant! cheers aMcD (note creative capitalisation) another forum to join... sigh where will I find the time?

aah yes that's right work avoidance...


re: genesreconnected

mind you you must get some entertainment in pointing this out to the unfortunates from timbuctoo - my grandpa was called amcd - are you him... well no actually...

[Sharon]

brilliant! cheers aMcD (note creative capitalisation)

That reminds me....

[DMcNay]

I could bore for Britain about my family history. The only interesting coincidence is:

My great-great uncle on my mothers side was a minister, and had a chuirch named after him in Coatbridge, Maxwell Parish Church.

I was born in 1975 n Aberdeen, as my father was a minister up there. In 1976, he accepted the vant minister position at.....Maxwell Parish Church in Coatbridge.

And neither my mother or my father knew about the family connection until they had been there for a few years.

Apart from that,, the only vaguely famous person is a tenuous family link to Jane Haining, the only Scottish person to have died in the concentration camp at Auschwitz. She was teaching Jewish orphans in Hungary when the Gestapo arrested her. Her half-sister (my second cousin) is still living in Ireland.

[My Kitten]

I'd really like to trace my dads side of the family since its a bit different (Ukrainian) but since he came he on a bit of a dodgy story its hard to get real information out of anyone.

Will have to pester my gran when im up.