New Scottish family tree research packages from Scotland's Greatest Story

For many years I have only offered research through my Scotland's Greatest Story research service (www.scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk) based on an hourly rate, but I know that some people prefer the option of paying for a research package, for example, to obtain a family tree research report as a present for a celebratory event. 

As such, to offer a bit more flexibility, I have decided to put together two research package types for Scottish based research, offered as follows:

SGS 1: Four Generation Scottish Ancestral Tree     

£395  (£365 without a bound copy)

This package includes a full day of research at a ScotlandsPeople centre, plus additional research into newspapers and other resources, charts, and write up time. The starting point has to be an individual born in Scotland after 1960, with the report identifying the stories of parents going back three generations, including children’s details, and identifying the names of the ancestors in the fourth generation, and as much information on them as time will allow.

SGS 2: Five Generation Scottish Ancestral Tree

£695  (£665 without a bound copy)

This package includes two full days of research at a ScotlandsPeople centre, plus additional research into newspapers and other resources, charts, and write up time. The starting point has to be an individual born in Scotland after 1960, with the report identifying the stories of parents going back four generations, including children’s details, and identifying the names of the ancestors in the fifth generation, and as much information on them as time will allow.

(Although this is one generation further back, it is double the amount of work of the first package, as the number of families in a tree going back doubles with each generation!)

Please note:

• I will require as much information from you about the candidate chosen as the starting point as possible, including their parents' names, prior to making a start.
• Reports will include transcriptions of any records found. If original copies of records are requested, these can be sourced but will be charged at cost, in addition to the package fee.
• Where brick walls emerge, e.g. with a line that departs from Scotland at a particular time, or where there is a lack of documentation available, the research time will be redirected into fleshing out the stories of those that have been found with additional context.
• For printed and bound reports requested beyond the UK, an additional postage fee will be added, charged at cost for the relevant destination.
• A deposit will be required in advance for 40% of the relevant package, with the balance paid upon completion of the report, and prior to its despatch.  
• Payments accepted by PayPal, cheque, or via bank transfer.
  
• These packages are specifically for families that are known, or believed, to have lived within Scotland in the timescales involved. For other enquiries, for example Irish or English research, or cases involving adoptions, please use the hourly rate service - details at https://scotlandsgreateststory.wordpress.com/servicefees/.
• If required for a specific date, please contact me at least two months in advance.
  

I hope these may be of interest, and if so, you can contact me via my Scotland's Greatest Story at https://scotlandsgreateststory.wordpress.com/about-2/contact/, or via email directly at enquiry@scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk

I look forward to helping where I can!

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.

Show and tell mining history event in Cumnock

From East Ayrshire Council:

Show and Tell your mining history at our Cumnock event

Do you have mining memorabilia, lots of stories or an interest in local mining history?  Come along to this exciting Show and Tell!

As part of  a photography and oral history project "Mineworkings", by artist Nicky Bird, National Galleries of Scotland is hosting a Show and Tell exhibition at Barrhill Community Learning Centre, celebrating East Ayrshire's mining heritage.

Share your knowledge

If you've got memorabilia, whether it's photographs, mementos or objects, or you're just interested in finding out more, please come along and share your artefacts, questions and stories to help keep the memories alive.  

Community Portraits

Transport yourself to the past by adding your own portrait to our unique collection of photos from mining communities from the 1980s.

Event details
Wednesday 26 July, 11.00am - 3.00pm
Barrhill Community Learning Centre, Bank Avenue, Cumnock KA18 1PQ

Visit our Coal Communities Landscape Partnership website at https://coalfieldcommunities.co.uk

(With thanks to East Ayrshire Council)

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.

Second sight in Gaelic Scotland

Historically in the Highlands and Islands, people known in Gaelic as 'muinntir an dà shealladh' - 'people of the two sights' - were often believed to have had an ability to predict the future, and in many cases, doom for particular individuals. The spooky Runrig song Cnoc na Fèille references the muinntir an dà shealladh in its first verse, who were able to see a strange light on the hill of the market stand.

There's a great article looking at the subject of 'second sight' in today's Herald at https://www.heraldscotland.com/news/23640933.second-sight-folklore-scottish-highlands-islands/, including instances of it recorded by traveller Martin Martin on his journey of the Western Isles, published in 1703 (A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland - available at https://archive.org/details/bim_eighteenth-century_a-description-of-the-wes_martin-martin-gent_1703). 

You can also find out more about second sight in the following book available on Electric Scotland at https://electricscotland.com/history/brahan/highlandsecond.pdf.

And here's that Runrig song - one of my faves...!

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.

Records of Scots seeking naturalisation and denization under England 1603-1700

This may be of interest to those who may wish to seek Scottish colonists who went to Ulster in the early 17th century Plantations, and the Hamilton-Montgomery settlements in Antrim and Down just prior, as well as those settling in England, or for those pursuing Hugueonot ancestry. 

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has added a new collection, Britain and Ireland, Naturalisations 1603-1700. The following is the blub from its site at https://search.findmypast.co.uk/search-world-records/britain-and-ireland-naturalisations-1603-1700:

The records within this collection are taken from the volume “Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603-1700”, edited by William A Shaw and published by The Huguenot Society of London in 1911.  

The processes of denization and naturalisation essentially serve to treat aliens (foreigners, or strangers in the language of the time) as if they were English subjects. They would acquire all the rights enjoyed by a native-born English subject, including the right to acquire, own, sell and bequeath real estate, plus of course the duties incumbent upon a natural-born English subject; and at the same time lose the inconveniences of being an alien.

There's more on the site - and coincidentally, my article in the July 2023 odf the UK's Family Tree magazine also looks at these and other records concerning immigrant ancestors to Britain (https://www.family-tree.co.uk/store/back-issues/family-tree-magazine/family-tree-magazine-july-2023-issue-212-1/). 

Specific to Ulster, as Scotland was not in a political union with England during the Plantations, many of the Scottish settlers sought denization to protect their property rights under English law when they arrived in Ireland. 

Typing Scotland into the keyword box in the FindmyPast database shows 294 results alone, with 3 hits for Edinburgh, 1 from Galloway, and potentially more from other areas. Some of the entries provide additional source information to allow you to pusue further details about them. 

Have fun searching!

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.

Scottish GENES is now on Threads

Is this the end of days for Twitter as we have come to know it? 

In the last few months Elon Musk has made Twitter a fairly horrible place to be since buying it up and fairly well ruining the whole online networking experience. The genealogy community on Twitter has not in itself changed, but every day users now seemingly have to block new followers from right wing American organisations and other unsavoury areas for which no interest was ever shown, whilst basic services and tools such as TweetDeck are now being monetised, in the process ruining initiatives such as #AncestryHour. Twitter is fast becoming hard work in a way that it never previously was, and many users have been walking away.

On Thursday, Facebook and Instagram parent company Meta launched a new social media app called Threads. The app works very similarly to Twitter, but with a character limit of 500, rather than Twitter's 240 characters, and also permits links and attachments. What it does not support yet is the use of hashtags (#), and it has no messaging facility either, but it can only be a matter of time before these become features.

Musk is seemingly concerned at the development, and is now threatening to sue Meta. Tied into Instagram, over 30 million people have apparently already signed up to Threads, and I am one of them - you can now find Scottish GENES at https://www.threads.net/@scottishgenesblog (@scottishgenesblog for short on the app). Threads is available for download for both Android and Apple devices.

I will stay on Twitter for a while longer (@genesblog), but if Threads becomes a success it is my intention to remove myself from Musk's platform as soon as possible.

I hope to maybe see you on Threads! 

(NB: I currently have two Twitter accounts - @chrismpaton and @genesblog. Please note that I will be deleting the first of these, @chrismpaton, in the next few days. I will continue with @genesblog for the foreseeable future, but it is my intention to withdraw from Twitter as soon as possible).

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 Threads at @scottishgenesblog.

Digital birth and death records now available from the English GRO

Scotland and Ireland have had access to digital birth, marriage and death records for many years now, but for the GRO for England and Wales, it is fair to say that it has been taking the scenic route! Many years ago an attempt was made by the English GRO to digitise and index its records through two projects - DOVE (Digitisation of Vital Events), and EAGLE (Electronic Access to GRO Legacy Events). The project was never completed, with over half the records still to be worked on.

A step forward was made when it became possible to order some birth and marriage records as PDF copies from the GRO at Southport via https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/login.asp, at the hefty pice of £7.50 each, although that was cheaper than a certified copy at £11. However, a further evolution has now happened with access now available to digitised images of historic English and Welsh birth and death records - or at least some of them - for just £2.50 each (which is the same price of access for the Northern Irish equivalents via https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk). 

The records available are for English and Welsh births from 1837 up to one hundred years ago (1923), and English and Welsh deaths from 1837-1887.

There are some important qualifications on the site about the digital images available:

Digital Image (JPEG)

• Image of a record that can not be used for official identification e.g. if applying for a passport, driving licence, or where required to give notice of marriage
• Cost £2.50. Image available to view once payment is complete and a link to the image is provided on the order confirmation screen
• Available in 'My Orders' for 3 months after date of purchase
• Not all records are available to view as Digital Images, however the record you are searching for may be available as a PDF or certificate.

When accessing the English GRO site, you will be asked when you start an application if you wish to order a certificate, PDF, or digital image - if a digital image, there is a link that takes you through to the indexes at https://www.gro.gov.uk/gro/content/certificates/indexes_search.asp, and you proceed from there.

A test purchase has shown that you get an image such as the following:

Payment is by Mastercard, Visa or Maestro only.  

This is a massive step forward for English and Welsh researchers, who have been discriminated against for years with regards to cost effective access for research into their own vital records, but this is still only a job half done. 

Fingers crossed that someone up high in the Westminster government will see the wisdom in completing the job, and levelling up access to such important genealogical records for all across the UK.   

(With thanks to @WillsmanOneName on Twitter)

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.

RootsIreland subscription discount offer

From RootsIreland (www.rootsireland.ie), via email:

Don't miss out on our special offer running now 20% off a twelve month subscription!

Why take out a subscription to Roots Ireland?

RootsIreland have the most complete and most accurate set of Roman Catholic church records online, as well as millions of Protestant records, civil records, census records, headstone inscriptions and census substitutes. Our index is easily searchable and has features such as standardised surname and forename searches which make your searches even more user-friendly.

We hold over 23 million records, and our database is being added to continually. Since 2020, we have added over 1 million records to our database from Limerick, Clare, Sligo, Kerry, Wicklow, Westmeath, Kilkenny, South Dublin, South Tipperary, Monaghan, Armagh, North Mayo, Cork, Laois, Offaly and East Galway. New records are continually being added to our database throughout the year, which are announced in as they take place.

Together, our 34 genealogy centres have an unparalleled amount of local knowledge which can be invaluable to those tracing their ancestors, a service which no other website or company can provide to such a high standard. By taking out a subscription with RootsIreland, you are helping these centres to continue to provide a world-class service and securing many Irish jobs.

If you have any questions please check our Help section and if this does not provide an answer, then you may contact us or one of the county centres. You can check what is available on our site for each county here.

*Offer applies from 1st July to 12 midnight Irish time on 14th July only. Cannot be used in conjunction with any other offer.

Check the subscription page at https://rootsireland.ie/ifhf/subscribe.php

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.

AncestryHour suspended on Twitter

From AncestryHour (@ancestryhour) via Twitter:

"Due to technical issues beyond our control, it is necessary to temporarily suspend #ancestryhour until they are resolved. Thank you for your understanding."

This comes in the same week that Twitter's CEO Elon Musk has announced heavy restrictions for the number of tweets that users who don't pay for the service can view in a day, and with recent changes to TweetDeck. (I'm not actually sure how users can be prevented from using the AncestryHour hashtag should they wish, but it would clearly be against the wish of the event organisers for now).

Hopefully the situation will be resolved soon, and not become another of the latest unwelcome changes to have hit Twitter in recent months.

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.

Ancestry's Scotland and Northern Ireland Deaths Index

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) has a useful collection on its site called the Scotland and Northern Ireland, Death Index, 1989-2021 (https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/60631/), which can help with recent deaths in both countries, carrying basic information on about half of all deaths in this period (I believe drawn from insurance claims data).

However, this week I noticed a problem with this collection. I searched for my father's death entry in 2021, and this was what I was presented with:

According to Ancestry's database, my father was born on 10 May 1945, and died 2 Jun 2021. In fact, he was born on 5 Oct 1945 and died 6 Feb 2021.

So what has happened? Ancestry has made a fairly ridiculous rookie mistake here with UK dates, which differ from how US dates are recorded. My father was born on 5/10/1945, not 10/5/1945 - and died on 6/2/2021 not 2/6/2021.

If you have used this databse, best to check that the same has not happened at your end - and if you have previously looked for someone and found a person with the same name but the wrong date, perhaps try again.

As with any data source, remember that just because something is in print does not necessarily make it accurate!

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.

NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives collection link currently disabled on University of Glasgow website

The NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde Archives were made accessible at Glasgow City Archives in the Mitchell Library for many years, with archivist Alistair Tough available on appointment for those who wished to see records within the collection. Although accessible at the Mitchell, the records were actually the responsibility of The University of Glasgow Archives. Since Alistair's recent retirement, there has been no access to the collection for researchers, with no replacement as yet appointed.

It now seems that the link to the NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde on the University of Glasgow website has been disabled. However, those wishing to see if records might be available for consultation - albeit, not just now until a new archivist is appointed - can find the same page hosted at the Internet Archive at https://web.archive.org/web/20221126190801/https:/www.gla.ac.uk/myglasgow/archivespecialcollections/nhsgreaterglasgowandclyde/collections/, with the Hospitals and Clinics link providing access to individual descriptions for each collection item.

The description for the archive remains accessible also via ArchiveHub at https://archiveshub.jisc.ac.uk/search/locations/9ec26c2d-96e4-3fcb-b8b5-3bee08ae6ec1.

Here's hoping access will be restored at some stage soon to these important records, and the link to the collection description on the live site repaired or reinstated.

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.