Genealogy Chat

Having known my birth mother was Scottish for many years, just lately I have started to research the family and put together the tree. So after a marathon trawl of the on line records and a fortune in credits from Scotlandspeople I have some idea of where my ancestors came from. What I found is fishermen, flax mill workers, quarrymen and crofters. What really surprised me was a incredibly small area the family stayed in. From the earliest census in 1841 right to 21st century you can draw a circle only about 3 miles across to cover where they lived, with only a few outsiders.

Having done the online research I'm now off to the area to see what would have been home had history been different. Will also have time to do some additional research in local archives.

Andy

Sounds similar to my own Scottish family. They all came from a small community in NE Scotland

Good luck with your local research, would like to hear how you got on with it

Blue1

Which area did they come from Mike? Obviously somewhere near the coast.

Not too uncommon, I think.
Until the 20th century, people generally didn't travel much, and usually lived and died in the same place.

We're lucky, but future genealogists are going to have a much harder time tracing their ancestors, as people now travel around so much - born one place, marry somewhere else, die goodness knows where.

I'm researching Inverbervie, Gourdon and St Cyrus. I've found the area where my birth mothers family came from and narrowed it down to a few properties. I'm hoping a trawl of the electoral roles will help to find the exact address. I'm off the Aberdeen library on Saturday. I'vie also visited the Maggie Law boat museum in Gourdon (an absolute gem) to see how the fishermen. Of the area lived. They had very hard lives and were undoubtedly very tough and hardy folk. I know one of my ancestors lived in the village, there is a house that bears his surname, but will need further research to see if he actually lived there.

Andy

This site has very interesting old maps:

http://www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk/

For an 1890s map of KCD showing parishes (indeed for any Scottish county) see:
http://www.electricscotland.com/history/gazetteer/
In addition to the maps and the gazereer, there's a survey on fisheries.

For old OS maps, first go to a modern map:
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/
and look up, say, Gourdon. When I click on it, I'm taken to an URL which has the coords of the arrowhead embedded within it as:
x=382500&y=770500 (i.e., 382500,770500)
You might want to zoom out to level 3 or 4 as levels 1 and 2 are really just street maps.
This actually points to the middle of the sea, so we want to increase the northing by 200m (the easting is OK), and then go to:
http://www.old-maps.co.uk/index.html
and search for the coords 382500,770700 then select an old map
A suitable scale is 1:2500 (I find 1:10560 is too small to see the sort of details I want).

Another useful site is http://www.geograph.org.uk/
in particular, http://www.geograph.org.uk/gridref/NO8270
Here's a pic of o fishing boat in the harbour:
http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2970055
The blurb under the pic includes:
Subject Location
OSGB36: NO 8255 7069 [10m precision]

If we pad this out to 1m precision, the (landranger) coordinate is NO 82550 70690
One can translate from one system to the other once we know NO are the magic letters for old style coords beginning with 3,7 (this covers nearly all of Kincardine - the northern hills of Banchory Ternan and the northern part of Nigg parish (including that part within the Burgh of Aberdeen) begin with 3,8 and the magic letters are NJ - true for most of Aberdeenshire except 4,8 and NK around Peterhead.
The advantage of the landranger coord is if I'm happy with 10m accracy, I can just shorten the coords.
I was happy initially with 100m accuracy - I can express this as NO 825 707.
I can search at streetmap for NO8270, NO825707, NO82507070, or NO8250070700.
The arrowhead is located at the centre of the 1km, 100m, 10m square whose coords are the SW corner, or exactly in the last case.

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As ArgylGran notes, immobility is not uncommon - I agree, and it was probably more true of fishermen than most.
However, I don't think it was the norm. I have found my ancestors in every parish in the Buchan (except Monquhitter and Strichen) on one census or another or in their kids pob's, until they wound up in some city like Aberdeen where they stayed - maybe. Remember that Scotland's greatest export was her people.
My wife's ggg grandparents were miners - they had a kid every couple of years, with the births alternating in Cumberland and Co Durham.
For a more extreme example, check the Channel Islands censuses for folks born in Quebec. I presume (but don't know) that these were all members of cod-fishermen's families - a quite distinct way of fishing from Scotland's herring fishery.

Thank you for all links. Will investigate when I have time.

From the info found in Aberdeen Archives, I have now been able to find the house that would have been home. It's currently undergoing renovation and has changed considerably over the last sixty years, but would have been a two bedroomed cottage typical of the area.

Andy