Jun 16th, 2009

Is in-law the best we can do?

While writing a blog post recently, I came to somebody whose relationship to me I couldn’t describe.  My genealogy software thankfully does this for me, so I looked her up. Wife of great-uncle. Isn’t that clumsy? And it also feels pretty impersonal: ‘after all, she was only the wife of my great-uncle‘.  It set me thinking.  Why don’t we have a word for relatives who come into our families by marriage?

We call them in-laws which is a practical enough legal term but there’s little affection in it.  I mean, how many mother-in-law jokes d’you know?  The French, unusually for such a pragmatic people, call the mother of your partner belle mere – hard to make jokes about her if she’s your ‘lovely mother’.   The term in-law doesn’t even extend that far. Brother, sister, mother, father.  We don’t say grandfather-in-law or niece-in-law.

It’s when we come to aunts and uncles, nephews and nieces,  that things really start to come unstuck. (more…)

Jun 12th, 2009

Chronology

NOTA BENE I’ve transferred over some posts from curlsdiva.com which are genealogical in nature. They were written before folkarethething.com existed.  Some of the facts have changed, as I’ve done more family history research, but I wanted to add them here anyway.  To find them, go to the bottom of the page then keep pressing Older Entries.

They are:

• the Indian connection
• I was here
• the pound in your sporran
• mors
• smile for the camera
  

May 16th, 2009

Everyone’s Favourite Fish – the Red Herring

The Red Herring is a common fish scooped up  in the nets of genealogists worldwide by the thousand.  It’s almost as common in the Mare Genealogica as familia fabula (the family myth).  Being red, it stands out on a page of closely packed type with the scintillating header of COR-CRO: 15 of 385 pages. Being friendly (and equipped with special fins) it catches your eye, waves at you as you try to place (or even plaice, but no we musn’t resort to childish silliness here, we’re a serious blog you know) where you know it from…

It’s a familiar face, it’s got your grandmother’s nose and it says it was born only 10 miles from the birthplace you have on your record – can it be – yes it must be – it’s that long-lost relative you thought you’d never find. Hallelujah.

But beware – red herrings are the cuckoos of the seas.  Hidden behind that cuddly exterior is a whole shoal of bogus relations who will, before you realise what’s happening, devour your entire family tree.

How can you spot one of these interlopers? Here’s an example – if Auntie Mabel’s husband Fred appears to have been born before his youngest child, maybe he’s not the Fred you thought he was, the one so beloved by the family who could pull rabbits (more…)

May 15th, 2009

Is it worth it?

Yesterday, I signed up for my 14-day free trial of Ancestry. This would be unremarkable were it not for the fact that for years I’ve baulked at joining it.

At first, in total ignorance, I thought it was simply a fancier side to the Mormon archives in Utah – what I now know to call IGI.  Jargon really is invidious, isn’t it? Try as you might, on whatever topic, you can’t avoid it forever.  And genealogy is no different. Best to go with the flow then – saddle up my BMDs and go on over to the IGI for a long cool drink of OPRs…

Then I thought it was only for those in the US – the British records seemed woefully under-represented.  And as I, at least as far as I know, have zero connections over the pond, there seemed no point to looking at American records. You’ll notice a certain British insularity creeping in here, leading to a blind eye being turned to the fact that ahem Ancestry also holds (more…)

May 14th, 2009

Hold the line please

The plans o’ mice and men gang aft agley – meaning I had planned all kinds of things to put on this blog by today, and I’ve allowed other things to distract me.  Principal among these was the arrival, from the National Archives, of my great-grandfather’s military service record.  This is a document that I’ve been looking forward to for years and finally it’s here.  I’m ridiculously excited by it.  Hidden among all that army terminology and scrappy nineteenth century writing are the answers to many things about this family, who have been my most elusive.  As I carry their name, and they lived not that long ago, I’ve always felt very frustrated by this.  However, true to form, its arrival has sent me into a spin and I’m wildly writing notes and finding new sources without any real focus.

Anyway, I’ll write more about this later, once I’ve calmed down and deciphered (more…)

Apr 15th, 2009

The pound in your sporran

I was talking on the phone yesterday to a local history librarian and learned something I had no idea of.

Apparently, old Scottish currency was not on a par with English sterling.  The Bank of Scotland was set up in 1695, primarily to help develop Scotland’s trade, mainly with England and the Low Countries. It began business in February 1696 with a working capital of £120,000 Scots (£10,000 Sterling). And after the Union in 1707, no more Scottish coinage was issued. Today, the Bank of Scotland, that august institution, is a casualty of the economic meltdown.

The old coinage included groats, bonnets (more…)

Apr 14th, 2009

Mors

In my family history research using old church registers, I’ve been coming across some marvellous archaic terms.  One is a mortcloth.  First large mortcloth, second large mortcloth, first small morcloth, second small mortcloth and even velvit [velvet] mortcloth.  The word appears on death records and has a price attached.  In my ignorance, I thought it might be the cost of a shroud to bury a person in, but I’m only half right. Googling it, I found this.

A mortcloth (from the Latin word mors, mortis, meaning ‘death’) was a form of pall, i.e. a large cloth (usually black) thrown over a coffin or corpse at a funeral. Mortcloths were kept by kirk (more…)

Apr 13th, 2009

I was here

After a few years of neglect, I’ve gone back to doing my family history research.  It costs a fortune (few data resources are free these days, sigh) and takes up inordinate amounts of time. Now I’ve got a gedcom file (afficiandos will understand) that comprises 1242 individuals, all related to me in some way.  My direct ancestors (all those Great Grandparents to the power of n) amount to 104 people, stretching back into the 1600s.  Their blood (and genes) runs in my veins.  Almost without exception, they were dirt poor and undistinguished.  Their lives must have been harder than I can even imagine.  They’d be disdainful of the soft life I lead.  Some of the women are especially interesting – brave, tough women who brought up housefuls of children without a man, or bore a child while rounding the Cape of Good Hope.

In the midst of all this data-gathering and detective work (that’s why it’s fascinating, of course, it’s your very own detective story and you have to pick up clues where you are and piece them together if you can) I sometimes stop to think why I’m doing it.  I know that it’s important enough to me that I’m thinking of putting it (more…)