During the week I visited the University of Glasgow Archive at Thurso Street, Glasgow, to consult shipbuilding records held as part of the Scottish Business Archives (https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/archivespecialcollections/discover/business/). My mission was to trace information about a carpenter and shipwright, who later worked as a foreman at the William Denny and Brothers yard in Dumbarton, and for whom I was able to find various references.
In advance of my visit I consulted the online catalogue and determined various resources that I thought might be potentially useful from the firm. Having done this, I then contacted the archive by email to ask if the list seemed appropriate from their experience, and was I missing anything out that might equally yield results? It just so happened that the archive had already created a list of potential sources listing employees (they've had previous similar enquiries!), which mostly mirrored my original selection, but with one or two additional entries, all of which were ordered up in advance for me to see on my visit.
On my visit I was able to identify my target in the records on hand, but I also asked if I could see a further record option from my original list, which was not immediately available, but there was no problems in this being retrieved. And fortuitously so, because it was from this collection that I sourced most of the information I could find on him, it being various lists of gratuities paid to employees in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, in which he appeared on a few occasions.
The range of records was remarkable for William Denny and Brothers, including late 19th century rental books for properties leased by employees, an extraordinary collection of staff suggestions from the offices and the yard itself (for which bonuses were regularly paid in an incentive scheme), letters applying for offices jobs, and references for successful applicants, books detailing when forgemen were hired and discharged or retired, and much more.
If you want to find out more about what is available for the shipyards in the business archive, and other Scottish industries, visit https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/archivespecialcollections/discover/business/ for a series of guides. The catalogue itself is accessible at https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/glaas/archives/5423a1c4-bcfe-3c21-8dcd-0ebf353a9207.
To book a seat the archive, visit https://www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/archivespecialcollections/consultingourcollections/ - or drop me a note if you would like me to carry out some work for you there!
(With thanks to the two Emmas at the archive!)
Chris
Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.
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