Collins Tracing Your Scottish Family History. Anthony Adolph

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       This photograph of Catherine and Jane Wilson in 1923 is usefully marked on the back ‘Drummond Shields Studio, Edinburgh’, thus suggesting the area where these girls may have grown up (courtesy of Jane’s daughter-in-law, Helen Taylor).

      When you interview a relative, use a big piece of paper to sketch out a rough family tree as you talk, to keep track of who is who. Structure your questions by asking the person about themselves, then:

      • their siblings (brothers and sisters)

      • their parents and their siblings

      • their grandparents and their siblings

      …and so on. Then, ask about any known descendants of the siblings in each generation. The key questions to ask about each relative are:

      • full names

      • date and place of birth

      • date and place of marriage (if applicable)

      • occupation(s)

      • place(s) of residence

      • religious denomination, whether Church of Scotland, Free Church, Catholic, Jewish, and so on.

      • any interesting stories and pictures.

      Next, ask for addresses of other relatives, contact them and repeat the process. Once you know the name of a village where your ancestors lived, try tracking down branches of the family who remained there, for people who

      Sennachies

      Before Christianity and literacy came to Britain, a special class of Druid, the seanachaidh or sennachie, memorized and recited the royal sloinneadh or pedigree. Long after other forms of Druidism had fallen away, sennachies remained, some as villagers who remembered the local family histories, others in the clan chiefs’ households. In about 1695, Martin Martin wrote in A Description of the Western Isles of Scotland (Birlin, 2002):

       ‘Before they engaged the enemy in battle, the chief druid harangued the army to excite their courage. He was placed on an eminence, from whence he addressed himself to all of them standing about him, putting them in mind of what great things were performed by the valour of their ancestors…’

      Martin, who used the term ‘marischal’ for the chief’s sennachie, also said he was,

       ‘obliged to be well versed in the pedigree of all the tribes in the isles, and in the Highlands of Scotland; for it was his province to assign every man at table his seat according to his quality; and this was done without one word speaking, only by drawing a score with a white rod which this marischal had in his hand, before the person who was bid by him to sit down; and this was necessary to prevent disorder and contention; and though the marischal might sometimes be mistaken, the master of the family incurred no censure by such an escape.’

      It’s good to know that, occasionally, we genealogists were allowed to get it wrong.

      Dr Johnson (1709-84), the London СКАЧАТЬ