Sex, rock and roll and maybe we just missed the drugs!

Stirling University Archives Premises

Actually, such a ‘red top’ title is not needed. Archives are wonderful places as this visit to the University of Stirling Archives and Stirling Council Archives on 27 March proved. For all eleven of us, it was great to have the chance to find out more about the breadth of an archive’s collection rather than to consult a specific set of records.

Stirling University is fairly new as far as Scottish universities go, founded in 1967, but recent acquisitions have put it firmly on the genealogy trail. The key interest is the records of the Stirling District Asylum, from 1869, and the Royal Scottish National Hospital (RSNH), from 1862, both formerly in Larbert. The Asylum

Stirling University Archives
Checking RSNH Registers

catered for people from central Scotland mainly but the RSNH cared for children with learning difficulties from the whole country and beyond. Admissions registers and case records make for fascinating reading with many of the Asylum records also containing photographs. The Victorian language is rather shocking in places: at one time the RSNH was ‘for the education of imbeciles’. Children’s records are closed for 100 years and those of adults for 75 years. Unlike those two NHS collections, the records of the Musicians Union, starting in the 1890s, are still being added to on a regular basis. They include branch membership records, local and national minutes and newsletters which detail new members, changes of address and members removed for not paying their dues. Karl Magee, University archivist, highlighted sets of minutes and journals detailing the impact of the new-fangled ‘talkies’ on musicians’ employment: the view was that they wouldn’t last!

Stirling Council Archives
Slum Housing Replacement Plans

Stirling Council Archives
1360 charter & Kings Seal

Stirling Council Archives were established in 1975 as Central Region Archives but the collections go back much further, almost to the establishment of Stirling as a burgh with the earliest charter dated 1360. We were shown a letter from Charles, Prince of Wales, to the town council of Stirling. Not one of those covered by the very recent Freedom of Information request, this one was dated January 1746 and basically said give me the key to the town or you will suffer for it! Council records of many sorts (town, police burgh, county, Central Region) form the core of the collection but there are also militia records, church records, mainly Church of Scotland (Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire) but also some Episcopal, Methodist and Baptist, estate records with rich collection of letters and a range of other personal deposits. Bear in mind that that coverage is generally the current Stirling Council area so places like Dunblane and Doune, in Perthshire, are included. Pam McNicol, Council Archivist, had a very wide range of very interesting documents on show for us including some beautiful hand drawn estate plans and a set of records from Whinwell Children’s Home, following a child through to emigration to Canada.

Our title? A rather explicit description of a visit by the Devil in a witchcraft trial of 1658 (Stirling Presbytery Minutes) provided the sex. And who joined the Musicians Union on 1 August 1962? Paul McCartney, George Harrison, John Lennon and Peter Best (Ringo was later) of course. That’s the rock and roll. Drugs? Probably listed in the very detailed stores inventories in the Asylum annual reports.

Many thanks to Karl and Pam for hosting us and for your enthusiasm for and knowledge of the collections in your care. We had a great day!

The SGN at Who Do You Think You Are Live in Glasgow

Many of the members of the Scottish Genealogy Network are looking forward to the Who Do You Think You Are? Live event in Glasgow on August 29th and 30th.

Some members will be working on stalls, others will be helping out in the ‘Ask The Experts’ area or are giving talks. Wherever we are though, you’ll be able spot us because we’ll be wearing our new badges. Feel free to come up and ask a question and we’ll do our best to help, we do so love a challenge!

If you don’t have your tickets yet there are some good offers around. It’s probably worth buying them ahead of time as tickets are usually more expensive on the day.

Ask the Experts

You will find a lot of SGN members in this area, ready and waiting to help you with your genealogy research. How does it work, I hear you ask? As the WDYTYA website says, ‘Twenty minute appointments can be booked on the day by simply visiting the reception desk in the Ask the Experts area. You will be asked to fill in a pre-booking form so that you can be matched to the appropriate expert . . . Ask the Expert sessions are not bookable in advance unless you purchase a beginner ticket to the show.’ Click here to find out more.

The Keynote Workshop

Scottish Genealogy Network member Marie Dougan will be outlining different developments in technology in these extended workshops. Tickets for these workshops are just £3, click here to learn more about the event and book your tickets.

SGN members

Society of Genealogists' Workshop Programme

The Society of Genealogist have arranged a great programme of talks and workshops. Some talks are ideal for beginners some for the more experienced genealogist. Take a look at their programme and book the workshops you don’t want to miss! As the Sunday of the show has been cancelled some of the talks are already well booked so again don’t leave it until the day, visit the WDYTYA Live website and book the talks you want.

Exhibitors

The show brings together the large companies, family history societies and other small genealogy businesses all under one roof. With a huge variety of exhibitors there will be something for everyone! Take a look at the WDYTYA website for a full list.

Here's a tip though, you may think you’ll have plenty of time but if you are only attending one day and you are listening to talks you may run out of time. Read over the list of exhibitors and mark the ones you don’t want to miss!

Third Scottish Genealogy Network CPD Day

On Saturday 10 May 2014 around 25 genealogists met at the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness for the Scottish Genealogy Network’s Continual Professional Development (CPD) day. The Archive Centre was a perfect venue and the hospitality shown by the Highland Archive Centre was the icing (literally!) on the cake.

Built just a few years ago, this state of the art archive is a mere dream for most archivists. We were invited to tour the building on Friday and had a behind the scenes look at the extensive storage facilities and the excellent conservation room.

The CPD day began with an interesting talk by Michael Tobias of JewishGen, who explained to us how we can optimise genealogy searches and collate and organise our data. If we can learn to do this more efficiently we can more quickly and clearly identify individuals we are looking for, especially in larger projects such as one-name studies. Michael demonstrated how we can minimise loss of search results due to indexing errors, reminding us the useful ‘fuzzy search’ feature on the Scotland’s People website. It is a shame that for some reason that the ‘fuzzy search’ feature is not currently available in the Scotland’s People centre.

The next talk, ‘Making the Best Use of Sheriff Court Records’, was given by Graham Maxwell of Maxwell Ancestry, who spoke about one particular type of case useful to genealogists: ‘affiliation and aliment’ actions in cases of illegitimacy. He explained how to locate both extracted decrees and court processes which could hold vital genealogical information as well as give an insight into the lives of ancestors. Initial research has shown that around 10% of illegitimate births in the 1850s may have resulted in an extracted decree, and an additional 5% of such births resulted in other cases which can be found among the processes of the Sheriff Courts.

After a short break (which involved some more cupcakes), we enjoyed listening to Kirsty Wilkinson of My Ain Folk’s talk ‘Edinburgh Army Attestation Registers’. This exciting resource, held by Edinburgh City Archives, does not just contain records of men from Edinburgh. Kirsty’s detailed research has revealed that men from all over Scotland are recorded as attesting, and even more surprisingly, men from across Ireland, England and Wales also appear. The regiments they joined were also unexpectedly diverse. Not only did the talk help us to understand this valuable resource, it also reminded us of the importance of not neglecting local records when we’re researching. The details held within these registers could provide the vital piece of information we need to get over our ‘brick wall’ and continue with our research. 

The last talk before lunch was given by Lorna Kinnaird, of DunEdin Links Genealogy. Lorna has been working hard as a volunteer in her local school over the last few months, teaching Primary 7 pupils about the First World War in a manner that they could easily engage with. She has  arranged for historians to come into the school with WWI artefacts (which the children really enjoyed) and also arranged a trip to the National Records of Scotland (NRS). Lorna is really passionate about history, especially genealogy, and wanted the children to have the opportunity to visit the NRS themselves and be able to do some of their own research. Many of the children were able to research someone connected to their family and some were able to trace their tree back a number of generations in that one visit. Hopefully this taster will encourage the children to continue learning about history. 

After lunch we eagerly took our seats to listen to Ali Macdonald, of Family Tree DNA, talk about some current Scottish DNA projects and help us better understand the rapidly developing subject of DNA testing for genealogy purposes. The talk was fascinating as DNA research has become such an important tool for genealogists. Ali reminded us how important it is to understand how to interpret the results correctly, making the most of the possibilities of DNA testing in conjunction with evidence from written sources. Exciting discoveries are being made frequently as the Clans, Families and Surnames of Scotland are being unraveled. Despite having the same modern-day surname, DNA analysis has shown that we can separate those with the same surname into different families with different migration patterns. Ali gave us a handout which included some very useful Scottish DNA websites:

• DNA Interest Group Scotland
• International Society for Genetic genealogy
• Scottish DNA Project

Next up was Jean Dickson, who spoke about social bookmarking and Excel tips. It’s all too easy to read a blog or visit a website, finding a great resource but promptly forgetting about it when we continue browsing! Jean uses Delicious to store and tag websites she wants to come back to later. One of the great advantages of this is that she can access these from any computer and share them with fellow researchers. A helpful tip Jean gave us was to be consistent in tagging. For example, if you were to tag one website ‘prison’, but another similar site ‘prisoner’, when you search your links a year later using the term ‘prison’, the site with ‘prisoner’ tag will not appear. This talk reminded us of the importance of being an organised genealogist.

After a short break, we had the final talk of the day, which was given by Judith Russell, a genealogist based in Glasgow. The title was entitled ‘Glasgow Families in WWI: Lord Provosts and Red Clydesiders’. Judith has carefully researched some of the key characters in this important and dramatic period of Glasgow’s history, using a wide variety of sources, and brought the subject to life in an informative and well-illustrated talk. I believe Judith will be giving a similar talk to this in August at Who Do You Think You Are? Live in Glasgow: tickets should be on sale for that event in a day or two!

All in all, it was a great day where everybody benefited from the talks and conversations throughout the programme. If you are a professional genealogist working in Scotland and would like to be at our next CPD day, or come to one of our monthly meetings, please contact the group's secretary, Emma Maxwell, for further details at scotsgenenet @ gmail.com

A visit to the Scottish Genealogy Society

On Friday, 31 January 2014, the Scottish Genealogy Network (SGN) visited the Scottish Genealogy Society (SGS) in Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh. Their premises are centrally located, not far from the railway station, the National Library of Scotland and Edinburgh Central Library. We were all made very welcome in their warm, newly refurbished building.

The visit began with us seated around their study tables where we were given a short history of the Society and told a little about their library. The Society was founded in 1953, which was before other local Family History Societies got going in Scotland. The SGS has therefore always had the goal of helping people trace their family tree all over Scotland, not just in the Edinburgh area.

The SGS has 3 public computers where you can access subscription websites such as ancestry.co.uk and findmypast.co.uk for free. These computers are also where you can access other internet sites of genealogical interest and digital resources such as some monument transcriptions (MIs).

Today we may automatically turn to Scotland’s People to look for an OPR birth, but as it is a pay-per-view website most of us are on the lookout for ways to reduce our costs. The SGS has two ways to help. Firstly you can buy reduced cost credits for them which you can either use on the premises or take home. Secondly, you can view the records for free in their building, by looking at the OPRs on microfilm. They have a  complete set covering every parish in Scotland! This could be particularly useful if you are working on a common name within one parish.

The SGS also has a vast collection of MIs, covering not just Scotland but also some for Cumbria which I thought was very useful. They have handy reference folders, known as the “Black Book”, so you can easily see what they have for the area you are interested in. The SGS has also made the “Black Book” available online. The Black Book contains details of all the Scottish Genealogy Society's holdings relating to Scottish deaths and burials.

After our initial introduction we split into two groups and took a tour of the library, eager eyes looking at the labels on filing cabinets to see what we could use in our own research. Every now and again a member of the group would say, “oh, that’s useful!”.

We were taken up a few steps and round into an aladdin's cave of history books and genealogical resources. In rolls stacked up to the ceiling they have a collection of family histories donated by current and past members, who having carefully researched their family history have now donated a copy to help others of the family who follow. Again an index to these is available in the library and online.

I could go on and on about the amount of resources they have but perhaps the best thing is to stop now and let you look at their website or visit in person if you are able to.

Take a look at their membership page to see member benefits and join online, membership starts from just £20!

The next meeting of the SGN will be in London as many of us will be attending the Who Do You Think You Are? Live event. In March we are looking forward to visiting the John Gray Centre, Haddington. If you work as a professional genealogist in Scotland and wish to join our group, e-mail our secretary, Emma Maxwell, for more information: scotsgenenet @gmail.com