Family History Fun

Thursday, 5 April 2012

Happy Easter to All my Blog Readers

Our Spring Garden

Here in the Scottish Borders it is lovely sunny day, if a bit chilly, to make us all feel good about Easter. I am so lucky to live in such a beautiful part of the world.

River Teviot, Hawick

By St. Mary's Churchyard, Hawick

F is for Feisty Females, the Fylde, Funerals & False Trails - A to Z Genealogical Challenge

Great aunt Jennie

Ros at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ has come up with the idea of an A to Z genealogical challenge for the month of April. It soon got me thinking, so here are my contributions.

F is for:

Fesity Females seem to abound in my Danson family with my great grandmother Maria, great aunt Jenny and my aunt Edith fitting this description to a T and providing many a blogging tale.

Poulton-le-Fylde Market Square

The Danson family were firmly based in the Fylde - meaning level green place - broadly the area in north west England between the River Ribble to the south at Preston and the River Wyre to the north at Fleetwood. Historically a remote and poorly populated land of small villages and hamlets, it took the agricultural improvements of the 18th century, and a century later the railways to bring the Fylde into the mainspring of national life.

Funerals - It is always worth contacting local libraries/archive centres to trace newspaper reports of events. An account of my great grandfather's funeral appeared in “The Fleetwood Chronicle and Fylde Advertiser” of 28^th September 1906 and noted of James Danson

“His father was the toll collector at Shard Bridge for 14 years. Mr Danson had been ill for some time, but had only recently taken to his bed. The chief mourners were Mrs Danson (wife), Messrs Robert, John, Thomas and Willie Danson (sons) Mr John Danson (brother from Clitheroe), Miss Cookson (niece), Mrs Miles, Mrs Roskell, Mrs Geo Riley, Threlfall. There were a number of beautiful wreaths.”

False Trails can abound in family history and for many years when researching my husband's Donaldson family, I made serious wrong assumptions.

I traced the family easily through census returns and old parish records to the marriage of Samuel Donaldson, and Ann Howieson in South Leith, Midlothian in 1759. Then I reached the proverbial brick wall in trying to prove Samuel's parentage.

In the Old Parish Records, there was a Samuel Donaldson born in 1729 in Kirkbean, Kirkcudbrightshire on the south west coast of Scotland. This very much appealed to me - the date was about right, the coastal location on the banks of the Solway Firth fitted with Samuel's later life as a merchant in a seaport and Kirkbean had an interesting history as the birthplace of John Paul Jones, found of the American navy. On the basis of following ancestral roots, we even had a short break exploring the area.

It was only many years later when I came to write up the Donaldson family history, that I stopped suddenly and thought - I have absolutely no proof that the Samuel Donaldson, born Kirkbean was the same person as the Samuel Donaldson who married 30 years later in Leith and was my husband's G.G.G.G.G. Grandfather.

I had another look at the ScotlandsPeople website (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) and there were only 3 entries for a Saamuel Donaldson born in Scotland in the relevant period:
1729 - Samuel son of John and Jean
1725 - Samuel, son of James and Jean
1752 - Samuel, son of John and Janet

The traditional naming pattern can sometime be a clue to identifying the "right" person. However Samuel's firstborn son was named David (probably after his maternal grandfather), though second son was John. None of his five sons was called James, and none of his three daughtters named Jean or Janet.

Given that it was not compulsory to register births, marraiges and deaths, perhaps there is simply no record of Samuel's birth and no evidence to confirm the names of his parents.

So years of assumption and work on the backgournd history of Kirkbean came to nothing, though we did enjoy our holday there. And the lesson - don't jump to conclusions that can see you following a False Trail!

Marriage entry for Samuel Donaldson in the Old Parish Records for South Leith , Midlothian, 1759

Wednesday, 4 April 2012

E is for Epitaphs, Emigration, Electoral Rolls, Ephemera & Events - A to Z Genealogical Challente

Ros at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ has come up with the idea of an A to Z genealogical challenge for the month of April. It soon got me thinking, so here are my contributions.

E is for:
Epitaphs can often be moving or witty. Ones relating to my family follow the traditional pattern, and are not particularly striking, but this one appealed to me in paying tribute to young Alice Cookson who died 9 May 1815 aged 22, with the touching thought "She lived respected and died lamented"

Emigration - where would we be without the Internet when it comes to finding emigration records? http://www.ancestry.co.uk/ provided me with the details on my great great aunt Alice Mason, nee Rawcliffe aged 33 who set sail on board the Aurania from Liverpool for New York with 6 children aged 10 months to 11 years old, plus two pieces of baggage - can you imagine how she had to cope with the living conditions on board?

Electoral Rolls are useful adjuncts to census returns in confirming that an individual lived at a specific address at a specific time and was eligible to vote. But it is important to remember, when looking for your female ancestors, that women in Britian only gained the vote on the same basis as men in 1928, with limited suffrage given ten years earlier to women aged 30 and over who met the minimum prperty qualification .

Ephemera - posters, handbills, leaflets, receipts, business cards - all those bits of paper which tend to get thrown out. Yet they can be so full of interest for family historians.

My grandmother Alice English married William Danson in April 1907. In the shoebox of family photographs and memorabilia was this receipt paid by Alice on February 26th 1907 for:

Two yards of bodice lining, hooks, silk sundries and bodice making. Was this her wedding outfit? It surely must have had sentimental value for it to be kept?

Events - our ancestors did not exist in a vacuum and to me it is important to link their lives with events going on around them at a local, national and internationl level. My father was always called a Titanic baby, as he was born 15th April 1912, the night the Titanic sank. For major events, date reference books can help, but local newspapers and local histories are invaluable sources of information.

Was your ancestor alive when there was the threat of a Napolenoic invasion with towns and villages ready to light beacons to warn of the French attack?
Might your ancestors have seen the Jacobite army marching through Scotland and the north of England in 1745 as Prince Charles Edward Stuart (Bonnie Prince Charlie) attempted to take the Hanoverian throne.
The coming of the railway to a community must have been a thrilling event to witness, with local newspapers giving extensive coverage of the excitement generated.

Peebles Station in the Scottish Borders, c 1910.
With kind permission of the Heritage Hub, Hawick
www.heartofhawick.co.uk/heritagehub

What about the impact of the invention of the sewing machine on the task of making a family's clothes?
Might your female ancestors have seen suffragettes campaigning locally?
When was your local cottage hospital built, or the local football club formed?
How did your ancestral town or village mark the death of Queen Victoria in 1901?

The possiblities are endless.for adding colour to a family story.............,,,,,

D for Dansons, Donaldsons, Dictionaries, Directories, Diaries & DT - A to Z Genealogical Challenge

Ros at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ has come up with the idea of an A to Z genealogical challenge for the month of April. It soon got me thinking, so here are my contributions.

D is for: Dansons - My mother was Kathleen Danson and I have traced the family back six generations to the baptism of John Danson in 1736, son of Peter - a family at the centre of my blogging stories.

Donaldsons - My husband's Donaldson family has been traced back via census records and old parish records to 1759 and the marriage of Samuel Donaldson, merchant of Leith, Edinburgh's seaport. It was a family of mariners and related seafaring occupations, as the family moved to South Shields at the mouth of the River Tyne on the Northumberland coast and then to H.M. Dockyard at Portsmouth. The Christian names of name John Robert occurred down the generations from 1769 to 1908.

Marriage entry for Samuel Donaldson in the Old Parish Records for South Leith , Midlothian, 1759

My grandmother
Alice Danson, nee English

Death Certificates - How I wished my grandmother Alice Danson, nee English, had died in Scotland. If this seems stark and insensitive, it is because Scottish BMD records give so much more information than their English counterparts - in particular the names of both mother and father are given on marriage and death certificates. My major brick wall is a failure to trace Alice's birth certificate of 1884 (or any other record) and so find out the name of her mother. Scottish certificates were introduced in 1855, much later than in England (1837). if you trace a death in that first year of registration, you are even luckier as the certificate names children and burial place. Unfortunately this was regarded as too much detail to cope with and soon dropped. Of course you are always dependant on the informant knowing the facts.

Dictionaries - as an ex librarian, I love browsing reference sections of libraries/archive centres and dipping into their directories and dictionaries for nuggets of information, whether it be Chambers Scots Dictionary, Dictionary of Trades and Occupations, Latin Dictionary for Local Historians etc.

Directories give little more than a name, brief address and confirmation of status or occupation, yet, as with all archives, there is a fascination in discovering the name of your ancestor in a publication written in his lifetime. A page in Mannex Directory of 1851 for Amounderness (the old name for the Fylde, Lancashire) lists my great great grandfather Henry Danson at Trap Farm, Carleton, his neighbour and brother in law John Bryning, and under Poulton-le-Fylde Inns and Taverns two relations by marriage William Gaulter of the Golden Ball and Cornelius Cardwell of the Kings Arms, plus watchmaker James Brownbill.

1851 Directory with entries relating to my extended Danson family highlighted

Diaries - if I had a touch of genealogical envy, it would be for family historians who have a diary written by their ancestor. What a wonderful piece of personal history.

To end on a more prosaic note, be aware of Data Protection legislation in restricting access to archives less than 75 years old, (100 years where children are involved). Your local archivist can advise on this complex topic

Tuesday, 3 April 2012

C is for Confirmation, Cousins, Childhood, Charabancs & Cheques - A to Z Genealaogical Challengte

Ros at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ has come up with the idea of an A to Z genealogical challenge for the month of April. It soon got me thinking, so here are my contributions.

St. Chad's, Poulton-le-Fyle Lancashire where my
Danson family were batpised, married and buried

C is for:
Certificates, Censuses and Church Records - the core of all family history activity, but here are my slightly different thoughts on the challenge.

Discovering distant Cousins through the Internet, adding to the knowledge of my extended family and providing a great source of further blogging stories and photographs.

Finding out about our ancestors is so much more than names and dates and takes us down many different avenues of social history.

My mother & aunt at a Gala Day c.1912

What was their Childhood like?

My mother - all dressed up

What did our ancestors wear? Costume

What milestones marked in their lives? Christening, Co;nfirmation and Career.

Prayer book presented to my grandmother
on her confirmation, 1904

How was business conducted? Cheques

A beautiful item of ephemera that has survived from

the business of my third cousins' ancestors.

How did our ancestors get around? Cart-horses, Charabancs and Cars

My third cousin astride the cart-horse from the family business of carters & coal merchants

A Charabanc trip - photograph in the collection of my great aunt Jennie

My father standing proud with his brother in front of his first car

Not forgetting Copyright - protecting our own work and that of others.

Monday, 2 April 2012

B is for Blackpool, Brynings, Babies, Bibles, and Brides - A to Z Genealogical Challenge: .......

Ros at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ has come up with the idea of an A to Z genealogical challenge for the month of April. It soon got me thinking, so here are my contributions.

Blackpool Tower from the North Pier

B is for:
Blackpool, Lancashire: My birthplace, a seaside resort on the north west coast of England which rose to fame in the late 19th century. My mother's family came from nearby Poulton-le-Fylde, a much older settlement which is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1085-86. My Danson family is at the core of my family history activities and I have traced them back to 1736. My parents met at the famous Tower Ballroom at Blackpool.

Brynings: The Brynings were sidelines to my Danson family (Jennet Danson married John Bryning in 1786) and were prominent in their local community of Carleton and Poulton-le-Fylde. On my list of "yet to be covered" blog topics.

Brekalls: My great great grandfather Robert Rawliffe, widowed with five surviving daughters,   married 35 year old Elizabeth Brekall in 1875. As she had three children of her own, I assumed she was also widowed. Wrong! According to the marriage certificate (and earlier census returns) she was a spinster. She went onto have a further four children with Robert. A rich source of further blogging stories.

Babies: Who cannot but be fascinated by baby photos and here is the oldest one in my collection - of my mother Kathleen Danson and my aunt Edith Danson, taken 1908-9.

Bibles: What a miss for future family historians, as how many of us now have in the home a family bible, where we record births, marriages and deaths?    I was delighted to find at my grandfather's house his own parents' family bible, though the entries petered out after the first four children were born. They went on to have a further 7 children!

Brides: My most popular page views are anything to do with weddings and I love to see the costumes of the time. It was difficult to select one photograph,  but here is one c.1910 chosen for the magnificent hat and contributed by my third cousin.

Business Cards: perhaps these are a piece of ephemera that often gets thrown away. I was so pleased to find, after her death, this memento of my mother's early working life.

Where to stop with B's?
I could go on to Black Sheep, Bastards,
Baptisms, Birthday Cards, Burghs and Burgesses
and at the core of all this activity - Blogging

Copyright © 2012 · Susan Donaldson. All Rights Reserved

A is for Adventure, Alice, and Archives - A-Z Genealogical Challenge

Ros at http://genwestuk.blogspot.com/ has come up with the idea of an A to Z genealogical challenge for the month of April. It soon got me thinking, so here are my contributions.

Maria Danson, nee Rawcliffe
with granddaughter Annie Maria.

A is for:

Adventure - when I started toying with the idea of tracing my family history, how little did I know on what a journey of adventure it would be - finding my way through the resources; alighting on surprising coincidences such as my great grandmother Maria Rawcliffe (right) born the same day as my daughter 114 years later; discovering I had American connections, hitting obstacles, with the birth of my grandmother and the name of her mother remaining my major brickwall; being at times astonished, puzzled and moved by what I am finding. The Adventure continues.....

Alice Mason nee Rawcliffe with husband James
and 3 of their large family

Alice is the sister of my great grandmother Maria (above) and her story of Adventure particularly fascinates me as she emigrated from rural Lancashire with six children under 11 (plus 2 pieces of baggage) to join her husband, John Mason in the teeming tenments of Brooklyn, New York in 1887. They had a further five children including Arthur Valentine, born appropriately 14th February 1888. To add to the story, after many many years, I have recently had contact from Alice's descendants in America (thanks to this blog) and am looking forward to discovering more about my American connections.

Archives - I had to include this, as I used to work in the Heritage Hub, Hawick, home of the Scottish Borders Archive Service. Again it is a story of Adventure exploring the unique records and touching pages that record details of our ancestor in their own lifetime, whether it be a poor law entry, a school record, or a will.