I’VE been hooked on amateur genealogy for nearly 40 years, after finding a longcase clock in my father’s loft when I was helping him to flit. It was his grandfather’s – he’d been born on Bute but the family had left the island in 1866.
I’ve followed the usual research trails: the BMD Records from 1855 and the Census returns from 1841, as well as the Old Parish Records, all in West Register House, Edinburgh. It’s a lot easier nowadays as it’s all accessible online at modest fees.
Then there were the gravestones, family bibles, and lore from elderly relatives (sometimes delicate when exploring the possibility that a fictitious ‘husband’ had subsequently been created to cover up illegitimacy.)
But the Census Records (1841-1911) are the most fascinating for me: a snapshot of our ancestors’ families: where they lived, their ages, jobs and place of birth; when sons and daughters left school and were working by the age of 13; of ‘farm boys’ aged 10, never mind the devastation of many children not surviving to adulthood.
Their jobs reflected the areas where they lived: in Stevenston in the foundries and Nobel (where a 2xgreat grandfather died in an explosion); in the Garnock Valley, the mines, the steelworks and the cotton industry. Several had come over from Ireland, while other branches record the decline of jobs on the land with farm servants gravitating toward the towns and cities down the generations, and others emigrating to North America, Australia and New Zealand.
It involved a lot of intriguing detective work tracing offspring, often helped by the Scottish tradition of naming one’s first son for his paternal grandfather; the first daughter for her maternal grandmother etc but sometimes complicated when both grandfathers had the same Christian name. However, with today’s penchant for novel names, that facility won’t readily be available for the genealogists of the future.
It also clarified some ‘relatives’ who were actually just family friends of long-standing: in one case neighbours from the 1920s.
So what have I got out of all these years of pursuing my ancestors and relatives?
Well, the root of my middle name (‘Faulds’) – the maiden name of my 3xgreat granny from Beith who married a tenant farmer from Bute in 1790. The healing of a 70-year-old family rift after my maternal grandfather’s remarriage in 1942 and my now being reconciled with cousins and their families that I’d only known by name a decade ago.
I also discovered that at the July 1865 general election, my 2xgreat grandfather Mark Marshall Crawford was among a number of tenant farmers on Bute warned by the Marquess’ factor at the polling station that anybody seen voting for the Liberal candidate would be put out of their farm. Mark ignored the warning. The next year his tenancy was terminated, and he had to move to North Ayrshire.
That’s why it’s so important that we have as accurate a record as possible for the 2022 Census exercise.
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