Scottish GENES

Monday, 13 March 2023

Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean talk on Wed March 15th

From History Scotland (www.historyscotland.com) magazine:

HISTORY SCOTLAND LECTURES
Slaves and Highlanders: Silenced Histories of Scotland and the Caribbean, 15 March

Dr David Alston recovers the voices of enslaved Africans and sheds light on their Highland Scottish enslavers in a series of case histories from the era of colonial slavery in the Caribbean and South America.

The ‘micro-histories’ presented in this talk link:

plantations in Jamaica with the Scottish island of Raasay
resistance and uprisings in Guyana with the coastal estates of Easter Ross and Inverness-shire
a woman born in slavery in Barbados with the schools in Paisley, Glasgow and Liverpool where her children were educated.

Dr Alston outlines the methods available to recover these and other life stories from the silences of history. And he suggests that – on ‘the other side of silence’ – there is a better approach to our difficult and shared past.

About the speaker
Dr David Alston researches the role of Highland Scots in the slave plantations of the Caribbean, especially Guyana, before emancipation in 1834. He was one of the first Scottish historians to draw attention to the prominent role of Scots in the slave trade and the plantation economies of the Caribbean. He is the author of Slaves and Highlanders (EUP, 2021).

Event details
Date: 15 March, 6.30pm - book now
The 45-minute talk takes place on Zoom, followed by a 30-minute Q&A chaired by Dr Allan Kennedy.

How to book
Tickets are £10 each, which includes on-demand access to the event recording for 7 days. Book at https://bit.ly/hsalston

Chris

Pre-order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors 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. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Friday, 10 March 2023

1871 UK Census households now plotted on The Genealogist's Map Explorer

From TheGenealogist (www.thegenealogist.co.uk):

New Release: 1871 UK Census households now plotted on Map Explorer

The 1871 Census for England, Scotland and Wales has, for the first time, been georeferenced on TheGenealogist. This is the process of linking a record to a geographical spot and means you can now see where a household stood with links to detailed maps on the powerful Map Explorer™. This is set to make investigating the places where ancestors lived in this year even more interesting for family and house historians.

Viewing a household record from the 1871 census on TheGenealogist will now show a map pinpointing its location. Clicking through from this preview map opens the powerful Map Explorer™ with its georeferenced modern and historical maps. This then enables subscribers to explore their ancestors’ area in much greater detail than on other census sites.

Joining the earlier census releases, which saw the 1911, 1901, 1891 and 1881 census linked up to the powerful mapping tool, researchers can now easily identify with just the click of a button where their forebears had once lived and get a sense of the routes their ancestors used.

Using these linked maps allows researchers to trace the thoroughfares that ancestors may have walked down as they went shopping, or popped into their local pubs for a drink. Researchers can likewise, work out the routes that their forebears may have taken to get to their nearby churches, or find the shortest way to their places of work and the direction they needed to go in order to reach their nearby park for relaxation. Historical maps can also reveal where the nearest railway station was to their home, important for understanding how our ancestors could have travelled to other parts of the country to see relatives or to visit their hometown.

With this powerful resource, Starter, Gold and Diamond subscribers of TheGenealogist can look into their ancestors’ neighbourhood from home on their computer screens, or even access the census and the relevant maps on their mobile phone as they walk down the modern streets.

(With thanks to Nick Thorne)

Chris

Find Scots and Irish folk who worked in shipbuilding in Barrow-in-Furness

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has a new collection that may be of interest if your Scottish or Irish families had connections to shipbuilding in Barrow-In-Furness, Lancashire, including both male and female ancestors and relatives involved in the trade (or indeed, English family members who spent time in Scotland or Ireland). This is the description as given on the site:

Lancashire, Barrow-in-Furness Shipbuilding & Engineering Employees
https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/lancashire-barrow-in-furness-shipbuilding-and-engineering-employees

These records, compiled by staff and volunteers from staff registers and records held by Barrow Archive and Cumbria Archive Service, include the names of the men and women employed or were apprenticed at the Barrow in Furness shipyard in Lancashire 1890s-1950s and the women who were employed to work at Vickers during the First World War. Information found could include –

First names(s)
Last name
Date of birth
Department employed in
Job role
Address
Age
Date they entered service
Date they left service

The records are indexes, with comments also available for some entries. For example, this is an entry for a gent called Balchandra Nagesh, who started work in Barrow in 1932, with the record adding that he was previously "With John Brown & Co, Glasgow from 29/04/1930 to 12/12/1931":

Amongst the employees listed there are several mentions of women who were serving apprenticeships in connection to firms in Belfast and Glasgow, for example, as well as many employees from both cities. Barrow was part of a triangle of operations between the north-west of England, Belfast and Glasgow, with employees regulalrly flitting between the three areas for employment opportunities. As a rivetter, my own great great grandparents from Belfast got married in Barrow in 1881 - and in possibly the most obscure genealogy fact that you'll ever read connected to Scottish and Irish history, I myself was conceived in a house there (my parents were posted there when my Dad was in the Navy), before being hatched back in Larne!

It should be noted that FindmyPast's blog post description of this title at https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/women-shipbuilding is a little misleading - it does not exclusively document female employees from the First World War period, the collection predominantly features male employees, but it is certainly useful for finding women who worked there during the war.

The records are sourced from the Cumbria Archive Service, with collection accession numbers included in the respective entries.

Chris

Scottish Monumental Inscriptions records, with images, added to Ancestry

A great development on Ancestry is the recent uplaod of records from Scottish Monumental Inscriptions (https://scottish-monumental-inscriptions.com), a long-standing project from Helen Grant and her team to index and photograph stones at cemeteries across Scotland. I think this marks the first time that the images are available now in addition to the transcripts from the monuments, particularly welcome as the SMI site itself now only offers downloadable PDFs of the inscriptions, without the images:

Scotland, Burial Monument Inscriptions, 1507-2019
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62497/
Source: Indexes and images of Scottish Monumental Inscriptions. Kennoway, Scotland: Scottish Monumental Inscriptions.

About Scotland, Burial Monument Inscriptions, 1507-2019

General collection information

This collection comprises information transcribed from gravestones in cemeteries throughout Scotland.

Using this collection

Records may include the following information:

Names of the deceased
Names of spouses
Birth dates
Death dates
Age at death
Names of children
Place of residence
Occupations
Inscriptions

This collection can be used to confirm when your ancestor died and where they were buried. It also may confirm your ancestor’s date of birth, along with other information.

Collection in context

The indexes and photographs were created by Scottish Monumental Inscriptions, an organisation created with the aim of photographing burial grounds around Scotland, in order to preserve information from the gravestones.

For further details, and to perform searches, please visit the link above.

(With thanks to Ken Nisbet)

Chris

How is the National Records of Scotland implementing the Scottish Government's Gaelic Language Plan?

I blogged earlier that Historic Environment Scotland has announced a consultation on its Gaelic Language Plan for 2023-2026 (see http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2023/03/historic-environment-scotland-gaelic.html). It's one of many public bodies to have done so, for example, the National Library of Scotland's current Gaelic Language Plan for 2019-2024 is available at https://www.nls.uk/about-us/corporate-documents/.

A key component of the Gaelic Language (Scotland) Act 2005 is the development of Gaelic Language Plans, which “help to formalise and communicate to an organisation's staff what its policy is in relation to Gaelic matters, and makes clear to users and learners of Gaelic what services they can expect to access through the Gaelic language” - the definition given by the Scottish Government (Riaghaltas na h-Alba) itself within its Gaelic Language Plan for 2022-2027, as outlined at www.gov.scot/publications/scottish-governments-gaelic-language-plan-2022-2027/.

The National Records of Scotland is a non-ministerial department of the Scottish Government. In 2019 I asked the NRS via Twitter whether it had a plan, and was advised that “NRS is working with stakeholders to develop a Gaelic language plan, in tandem with our work to prepare for Scotland’s Census 2021” (https://britishgenes.blogspot.com/2019/06/nrs-is-working-on-gaelic-language-plan.html). The 2022 census (as it became due to Covid) was indeed made available bilingually to the public, which was very welcome (I filled in my own copy in Gaelic), but apart from this, there hasn't been a peep about the organisation's policy towards the language since then.

So today I asked again, as follows.

“Hi @NatRecordsScot, as a Non-Ministerial Department of the Scottish Government, can you advise how you are implementing the @scotgov Gaelic Language Plan 2022-27? What measures are being implemented to make #Gàidhlig more visble at our national archive? Thanks. @S_A_Somerville”

These were the responses:

“Hi there, today we announced the display of the Declaration of Arbroath which has a free downloadable information booklet in Gaelic. Gaelic culture has an important place in our archive.

“You can find more information on our website including the commemoration of the tragic sinking of the HM Yacht Iolaire and linkages of many famous Scots to Gaelic heritage.”

I have to be honest and say that I didn't know whether to laugh or cry. A Gaelic Language Plan is simply not about having a web page online about a topic from history for several years (e.g. the Iolaire) and then claiming that this shows your organisation's undying love for one of Scotland's languages. Amongst many things it is about helping to raise visibility of the language itself, not stories from history, it's about encouraging the use of the language by staff, and to facilitate mechanisms so that members of the public, wishing to use the language, can be accommodated when making enquiries. It isn't about forcing the language on anyone who doesn't wish to use it, or taking away anything from the majority English speaking population.

Whilst the Gaelic Language Act created a Gaelic Language Board (Bòrd na Gàidhlig), it did not create obligations on statutory authorities to actually use the language, but it did create a framework for the creation of Gaelic language plans by Scottish public authorities, as advised by Bòrd na Gàidhlig. The wind of change in all things Gaelic is blowing harder by the day. The National Library of Scotland (Leabharlann Nàiseanta na h-Alba) has a Gaelic Language Plan is operation. Historic Environment Scotland (Àrainneachd Eachdraidheil Alba) has a Gaelic Language Plan in operation, and is currently consulting on its replacement.

The National Records of Scotland (no equivalent Gaelic name on display, but it could go for Clàran Nàiseanta na h-Alba or Tasglann Nàiseanta na h-Alba), in failing to make any visible provisions for the language, is seemingly sticking two fingers up to the Gaelic speaking population of Scotland, both fluent and learners.

The same argument could also be made of all public bodies to those of the Scots speaking population, for which the political arguments for better representation still need to be made with the Scottish Government (and it is ironic to me as an Ulsterman that I come from a country that has better legal provisions for the Scots language than Scotland does itself). But there is legislation in place for Gaelic, and this is a question of compliance with the spirit of the law, as much as the letter of it. The NRS has always seemingly to me projected its own institution as being Edinburgh-centric, but the use of the word 'national' here seems particularly deficient.

I have again asked a question of the NRS in response to its replies to me:

"Thanks, but I'm specifically asking about a Gaelic Language Plan. How will you field Gaelic enquiries, how will you reflect Gaelic in corporate branding, training ops for staff etc, where's the statement on how the NRS will implement a GLP on its website, etc? Thanks #Gàidhlig"

I'll let you know if I get a response, and how I will pursue this further if not.

Chris

Thursday, 9 March 2023

Declaration of Arbroath to go on display in June

The Declaration of Arbroath is to go on display for the first time in 18 years at the National Museum of Scotland (https://www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-scotland).

The Declaration, the document sent by Scottish nobles to Rome 700 years ago to demand the right for Scotland to be recognised as an independent nation, was initially intended to go on display in 2020 for its 700th anniversary, but those plans were scuppered by the Covid-19 pandemic (see http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/04/the-declaration-of-arbroath.html). The document can be viewed at the museum from June 3rd to July 2nd.

For more on the story visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-64902299.

For more information about the document itself see https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/Declaration.

Chris

North of Ireland Family History Society Spring Classes 2023

From the North of Ireland Family History Society (www.nifhs.org):

Spring School 2023 Classes at NIFHS

The North of Ireland Family History Society have published their programme of classes for Spring School 2023 and bookings are open. With a broad range of topics, there is something for everyone and some classes are free. All are via Zoom so distance is no object!

Starting out on Irish Family History (2 afternoons) Thur 23 & 30 March, 2:30 pm
Starting out on Irish Family History (2 evenings) Thur 23 & 30 March, 7:00 pm
NIFHS Look Up Live - FREE Wed 19 April, 7:00 pm
Paternal and Maternal DNA Matches Fri 21 April, 7:00 pm
Tips for Breaking through Brickwalls Fri 5 May, 7:00 pm
DNA Ethnicity Estimates Wed 17 May, 7:00 pm
Using WikiTree Wed 31 May, 7:00 pm
Things I wish I had known when I started Irish Family History - FREE Fri 2 June, 7:00 pm

Spring into better family history research! More information and bookings at www.nifhs.org/courses

(With thanks to Linda Kilby at NIFHS)

Chris

Wednesday, 8 March 2023

Defeating snow blindness on International Women's Day - how DNA is helping me to solve a 23 year long brick wall in Inverness

Many of you out there will undoubtedly feel my ancestral pain!

I have a three times great grandmother, Jessie Fraser, who came from Inverness, and who for 23 years has been a brick wall in my research. The reason for this is that she committed suicide in 1860 by jumping into the Caledonian Canal at the Bridge of Tomnahurich (pictured below; source: Cook Collection @InvMag, courtesy of AmBaile via @HighlandHistory). The incident occurred following the death of Jessie's daughter in childbirth, with the details of attempts to save her recorded in the Saturday Inverness Advertiser of 12 May 1860:

From census records in 1841 and 1851 I know that Jessie Fraser was born at Inverness between 1814 and 1816, and from the baptisms of her children it is clear that she married David MacGillivray prior to 1837. I have yet to find a marriage record for them, and in her death record (below), her parents' names were omitted, with no information given on any family members, including her husband, as the informant was the procurator fiscal.

A note in the record also states that she was buried in the yard of Inverness High Church (pictured below), without even the dignity of an undertaker. On a visit to Inverness many years ago I consulted the burial register, and she was not listed within – the suggestion was given to me that she may not have actually been buried within its walls at all, but just outside, such was the supposed scandal of her suicide.

Looking for Frasers in Inverness is like looking for something white in a blizzard, there are plenty of possibilities! But after many years of finding DNA matches to folk with Frasers in Inverness (including one person who has 13 Frasers out of 16 great great grandparents!), a couple of days ago I finally managed to lock on to two separate people via AncestryDNA who connect to a Fraser family in Inverness, and who are both descended from the same Fraser three times great grandparents, with the suggestion that they are both 4th-6th cousin. No other possible lines in their trees connect to me or my father. Crucially, I've also discovered today that one of their shared matches is a person who I emailed just a week ago, who I believe is a first cousin of my grandfather (sharing 294cM with my father, and 138cM with me), on a separate MacFarlane line, and for whom I am awaiting an email confirmation - thankfully, there are not a lot of MacFarlane families in Inverness, the complete opposite of the Fraser situation! My great grandmother Jessie MacFarlane was Jessie Fraser's granddaughter.

From all of this, my working theory now is that my new DNA matches are descended from an older brother of Jessie Fraser, who was a baker, and that she may be from Kirkhill to the west of the city, and I'm happily finding all sorts of circumstantial evidence to help strengthen this up (e.g. the father of the baker was a tailor in Inverness, as was Jessie's husband, and the naming of her children includes names that tally with the family just found). I still have a way to go to prove this conclusively, but at long last, I am confident that I am finally playing in the right Fraser ball park.

Today is International Women's Day, and a chance to celebrate our female ancestors, often hidden behind the records of a historically patriarchal society in Scotland. I've been trying to reclaim Jessie for 23 years from the genealogical obscurity created by the circumstances of her death, I am determined that the story that will be left about her to history will be more than just that of her suicide. Jessie had several children, and was once someone else's child. I have previously solved many genealogical brick walls in my tree in the past thanks to DNA, but if this one delivers, it will be my biggest breakthrough since I started my family history research in 1999.

The moral of the story - if you have yet to take a DNA test for family history research, I would thoroughly recommend that you do!

(You can find a chapter on how to get started with DNA as a research tool in my book Sharing Your Family History Online - available UK at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Sharing-Your-Family-History-Online-Paperback/p/18718, US via https://www.penandswordbooks.com/9781526780294/sharing-your-family-history-online/!)

Chris

Historic Environment Scotland Gaelic Language Plan consultation

Historic Environment Scotland (www.historicenvironment.scot) has launched a six week public consultation for its Gaelic Language Plan for 2023-2026, which will replace its first ever plan, which covered the period from 2018-2022.

You can find more on the story at https://www.historyscotland.com/news/communities-volunteers-digital-innovation-and-green-agenda-at-heart-o, whilst the plan itself can be consulted at https://haveyoursay.historicenvironment.scot/development-partnership/gaelic-language-plan-2023-2026-consultation/.

* It's been a busy week for me on the Gaelic front, with an oral exam on Monday as part of my SQA Higher in Gàidhlig, in which I had to talk for ten minutes in the language about what I currently do for a living as a genealogist (and in my previous role in TV production at the BBC and STV), as well as the means by which I have previously and currently learn Gaelic. Fortunately I got through it all OK - but I still have the written prelim to get through next week!

If you are in the Glasgow area, and interested in Gaelic conversation classes, there is a Glasgow Scottish Gaelic Meetup Group which meets twice monthly for converation practice - further details at www.meetup.com/glasgow-scottish-gaelic-meetup-group/.

Chris

Tuesday, 7 March 2023

MyHeritage launches cM Explainer and colour coding for family trees

Two announcements from MyHeritage which may be of interest.

Introducing cM Explainer™ to Predict Relationships Between DNA Matches With Greater Accuracy

One of the most important benefits of taking a DNA test is the matches that you receive. DNA Matches reveal many relatives you never knew about before, based on shared DNA inherited from common ancestors. However, the relationships to your DNA Matches can be confusing. This results in many users not understanding how they are related to most of their DNA Matches, which holds them back from using the matches to advance their family history research and make new discoveries.

Today we’re excited to announce the release of cM Explainer™, an innovative, free new feature on MyHeritage that estimates familial relationships between DNA Matches with high accuracy. This helps overcome the challenge of understanding relationships to DNA Matches. For every DNA Match, cM Explainer™ predicts the possible relationships between the two people and the respective probabilities of each relationship, estimates who their most recent common ancestor(s) could be, and displays a diagram showing their relationship path.

DNA Matches are characterized by the amount of DNA shared between two individuals, measured using a unit of genetic distance called centimorgans (cM). cM Explainer™ is unique in the way it uses both the centimorgan value as well as the ages of the two individuals (if known) to fine-tune its predictions, making MyHeritage the only major genealogy company to offer relationship prediction at this level of granularity and accuracy.

cM Explainer™ is fully integrated into the MyHeritage platform to shed light on any DNA Match found on MyHeritage, and is also available as a free standalone tool to benefit individuals who have tested with other DNA services.

For more on this, visit https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/03/introducing-cm-explainer-to-predict-relationships-between-dna-matches-with-greater-accuracy/.

Introducing Color Coding for Family Trees

Adding color coding to your family tree can make it easier to navigate. At MyHeritage, we previously implemented color coding in Fan view of the family tree, as well as in the Family Tree Timeline. Today, we’re happy to announce the addition of color coding for family trees across the two main views of the tree: Family view and Pedigree view. This addition is both visually appealing and makes it incredibly easy to understand your family tree at a glance.

We’ve also made several new product enhancements to help you better understand the relationships in a family tree. These include the addition of an icon indicating a blood relationship in the left profile panel, and the ability to view the relationship and the relationship diagram in family trees where you aren’t a member. We’ve also added color coding when viewing the family tree of a Smart Match or DNA Match, so you can better understand how you might be related to the site manager or DNA Match.

For further details visit https://blog.myheritage.com/2023/03/introducing-color-coding-for-family-trees/.

Chris

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Monday, 13 March 2023

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Wednesday, 8 March 2023

Tuesday, 7 March 2023