Body Snatching in Kirkintilloch

With the launch of our new website, www.scottishindexes.com, in August we have been starting to index records outside our home area in the Scottish Borders and Dumfries & Galloway. One of these records we indexed recently was Dumbarton Prison Register, 1828 to 1840. An interesting crime that we spotted along the way was ‘Raising and Carrying of the Body of a Woman from the old Burying Ground Kirkintilloch’ and ‘Violating Graves’! Both of these crimes were committed by one Peter Gardner.

Auld Aisle Graveyard Gateway and Watchhouse
Kirkintilloch
© Copyright Martyn Gorman

This seems like a pretty gruesome crime that Peter committed so you may wonder why someone would do this. Until the passing of the Anatomy Act in 1832 it was very difficult for anatomists, surgeons or medical students in the UK to obtain bodies to dissect, which was a vital part of their education. One major reason the public objected to the use of bodies in this way, and therefore a reason for the creation of laws preventing the use of bodies by the medical profession, was that there was a belief that if your body was not buried whole you could not be resurrected on judgement day. This belief was so strong that it was viewed that allowing a body to be dissected was an extra punishment that could be handed out after death. For this reason it was only the corpses of convicted murderers that were given to the medical profession for dissection.

As you may be able to imagine there were simply not enough murderers for the medical profession! The need for corpses was so great that there was a very lucrative trade in dead bodies and in some instances this led to murder!

This is why Peter Gardner was willing to risk imprisonment for his lucrative backstreet profession. The Anatomy Act of 1832 changed everything. It gave legal access, by holders of a licence, to obtain unclaimed corpses. These corpses were often from prisons and workhouses, to be used by medical professionals. It also made provision for a person to donate the corpse of their next of kin to s school of anatomy.

Peter’s occupation, at least the illegal side of it, was now redundant and most of those buried in graves across Scotland would remain there.

Looking back to the beginning

This week’s throwback Thursday blog post is a little more personal, taking us back to the very beginning of Maxwell Ancestry. Even while we look forward to the future with Scottish Indexes (www.scottishindexes.co.uk launching tomorrow!) it’s nice to look back at where we came from.

Our founder Graham Maxwell’s family are a long-lived bunch, and it was spending time with elderly relatives which first piqued his interest in genealogy. He remembers hours spent doing jigsaws with his great grandmother when he was just a small child. Sadly, his great granny Maxwell died aged 85 when Graham was only four years old. On the other side of the family, however, his Great Aunt Mary lived until she was 104. Her memories provided a vital and fascinating resource when Graham began his family history research in earnest.

Mary Cameron aged 99, taken on 17 Feb 1989

In 1989, Graham and his mum made their first visit to the General Register Office in Edinburgh. Armed with the knowledge they had gained from family stories, their mission was to trace the family through birth, marriage, death and census records. They hoped this way to compile a coherent picture of their family history.

The records system took some getting used to, and the process of research was a good deal more time consuming than it is today. However, their efforts were rewarded - together they successfully traced their family tree before going on to write a family history book as a gift for Graham’s Nana and Pappa. Long before ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ or Ancestry.com, Graham and his mum created an easy-to-read family history chronicle filled with family photos and historic postcards of places and people. Fascinated by the past, Graham has always endeavoured to understand the lives of people’s ancestors beyond mere names and dates. In this first family album he added a piece of linen woven in the mill where his ancestors once lived.                                             

                                                                 

Researching his own family history whetted Graham’s appetite for genealogy. When friends asked him to research their family trees he didn’t hesitate. His time delving into the records came with the growing realisation that he could translate his passion into a career, and he began to take on clients in 1996.

Over time the business grew, most clients hearing of the business through word of mouth. Graham continued to develop his skills and gained further experience as a genealogist, becoming a regular fixture in both the General Register Office (now the ScotlandsPeople centre) and the National Archives.

A lot has changed since these early beginnings – both for the business itself and within the field of genealogy. Maxwell Ancestry was amongst the earliest of ancestral research businesses to harness the power of the internet, allowing people from Manitoba to Melbourne to seek records. His wife Emma joined the business in 2001 and together the pair have helped people with research projects large and small. While we’re looking forward to launching our new site, our focus will remain on helping our clients – so they can have the ‘Who Do You Think You Are?’ experience Graham’s grandparents had all those years ago.

Graham Maxwell aged 20

Get Your Free Index to Quaker Marriages and Births in Scotland 1647-1874

Update - December 2014

You can now search Quaker births and marriages on our new website www.scottishindexes.com

With this months issue of Your Family Tree Magazine (Issue 140) not only will you receive an issue bursting with useful information but you will also receive two free downloads from Maxwell Ancestry!

• Index to Scottish Quaker Births 1647-1874
• Index to Scottish Quaker Marriages 1656-1873

Subscribe to Your Family Tree Magazine online today to make sure you will receive your free downloads. This isn’t a one-off either, they give a free download away every month!

About the Indexes

The Indexes to Marriages and births is taken from an alphabetical list of marriages and births recorded in the Digest of Quaker (The Religious Society of Friends) Births, Marriages and Deaths of Scotland, 1647-1874. The Digest can be viewed in the National Records of Scotland (NRS): their reference for this volume is CH10/1/64.

The digest was originally made around 1867 but seems to have been updated until about the mid-1870s. It was created by copying entries from individual meeting registers into one alphabetical volume. The original individual volumes can also be consulted in the NRS.

Marriages

Our index includes the name of the individual, name of their spouse, the year of marriage, monthly or other meeting record location, and the page number in the Digest.

The Digest contains the following headings:

Book, Page, Names of Parties, When and where Married, Residence and Description, Parents’ Names, Residence and Description, Monthly or other Meeting Record.

Before the digest of marriages starts properly there are two pages of marriages which “have been either considered irregular or to have been but imperfectly recorded”. These pages been included in this index; an example of this type of record is given below.

Book: 17

Page: 3

Names: Ormston Jane, Waldie John

Date of Minute: 1749, Novr. 26

Description: [Jane Ormston] daur of Charles (merchant) of Kelso: Fewar and Commissary Clerk

Information given: At Kelso Monthly Meeting a letter was read from Jane Ormston acknowledging her having married contrary to the Rules of the Society. {The first child of this Marriage is recorded in the Parish Register as born 5th September 1750.}

Monthly Meeting or other records: Kelso Mo Mg

Births

The Digest contains 1134 births and has the following headings:

Book, Page, Name [of child], Date and Place of Birth, Parents’ Names, Residence and Description, Monthly or other Meeting Record.

New logo

I'm really excited about our new logo. We've used a fairly standard tree for a while, which I do like but felt it was time for a change. Hopefully the new logo will be appearing on our website soon along with some new features and new collections. 

Coming soon:

Global search: At the moment you have to search all our collections separately, which may be what you want but sometimes it's useful to be able to search everything a website has.

New collections: As well as expanding our current collections we plan to add new data sets.

New packages: We'll be adding some basic starter packages, either to kick start your own research or to give as a gift.

New layout: Since designing our site it has grown a lot and it's now difficult to find what we have so we'll reorganise it a bit to make it more user friendly.

What I would like to know is what do you want? What changes can you suggest? What packages do you want to see?

Either add a comment or email me with your ideas, we would love to hear from you!

List of parishes in our new baptism search

Here is a list of what is contained in our new birth/baptism search as of today:

Dumfriesshire

Ecclefechan Free Church 1843-1848
Applegarth Kirk Session (Church of Scotland but not in the OPRs) 1694-1703, 1703-1719, 1763, 1765-1766
Closeburn Kirk Session (Church of Scotland but not in the OPRs) 1726-1754
Dumfries, Buccleuch Street United Presbyterian Church 1846-1856

Wigtownshire

Newton Stewart Relief Church 1791-1845

The Stewartry of Kirkcudbright

Glenkens Free Church 1841-1857

Roxburghshire

Jedburgh Associate Church 1737-50 (more to follow)
Hawick East Bank Associate Church 1805-1806 (more to follow)
Hawick Free Church 1843-1846 (more to follow)
Castleton Kirk Session (Church of Scotland but not in the OPRs) 1707-1710
Kelso Relief Church 1813-1819
Yetholm Burgher Church (New Light or New Licht) 1824-1855

Selkirkshire

Galashiels Kirk Session (Church of Scotland but not in the OPRs) 1666-1690, 1693-1718, 1729
Galashiels Relief Church (later the United Presbyterian Church) 1838-1855

Berwickshire

Bunkle and Preston Kirk Session (Church of Scotland but not in the OPRs) 1684-1690
Eyemouth United Secession Church 1841-1861

Search on-line today 

www.maxwellancestry.com

Maxwell Ancestry, a member of the Scottish Genealogy Network

Records of Scottish Quakers 1669-1867

Update - December 2014
You can now search Quaker births and marriages on our new website www.scottishindexes.com


I was in the National Records of Scotland (formerly the National Archives of Scotland) yesterday and consulted a lot of interesting records. One register I consulted (which I haven’t had the need to consult before) was Records of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), Digest of births, marriages and burials, Scotland 1669-1867. (NAS reference CH10/1/64).

The volume is a digest of birth, marriages and deaths from the various record books around Scotland. Whilst I didn’t find what I was searching for, it may contain what you are looking for! The books is a transcription of records dating back to 1669 and continues to 1867. A bonus I discovered yesterday is that it is alphabetical; making it much quicker to search.

Here’s an entry that caught my eye:

Book: 17

Page: 123

Name: Wood, George

Date of Death: 14^th of January 1762

Age: [Blank]

Residence and Description: Ednam. Weaver and Bleacher

Date of Burial: 16^th of January 1762

Place of Burial: Kelso

N.M. for Not Members: [Blank]

Monthly or other Meeting Record: Kelso Mo Mg

So if you can’t find a birth, marriage or death in Scotland have you considered the possibility your family were Quakers? If you would like it searched e-mail me and I’ll see what I can do: info@maxwellancestry.com

www.maxwellancestry.com

Read the Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal week by week

Starting today you will be able to experience a little of 1832 from your own home. We had started, some time ago now, uploading the Chambers’ Edinburgh Journal to our free resources section of the website. From today though I will upload it once a week, on the date it was originally published, so you can read it as it would have been read in 1832.

Published weekly it’s only 8 pages in length and easy to speed-read the less interesting parts. I hope though it will prove and interesting, informative and lets face it a fun read for those of you who have the time. Most of the questions we are asked arise from a misunderstanding of Scotland in the past and this is another thing which can help us to understand our ancestor’s lives.

The images are very large; they may take longer to download however it will make these historic articles easier to read.

I hope you enjoy this new feature: www.maxwellancestry.com

Dumfriesshire Valuation Roll 1896-97 - Free online

We have finished our project of uploading the Dumfriesshire Valuation Roll 1896-97. If you haven’t used the valuation rolls before it’s definitely worth a look, even if you’re not researching in Dumfriesshire.

Valuation rolls are great for genealogy and researching the history of your house. Valuation rolls were collected annually from 1854 to 1989. For each property in Scotland they record the name and designation of the proprietor, the tenant, the occupier and the annual rateable value. They do not list any other residents in a property.

View for free at www.maxwellancestry.com

Bunkle & Preston Baptisms and Marriages 1684-1690 - £6.99

This book contains a transcription of the registers of baptisms and marriages for Bunkle & Preston Parish, Berwickshire, Scotland. The original records are held by the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The entries in the register are taken from Volume 3 of the Kirk Session records. The surviving entries in this register are for baptisms and marriages from October 1684 to June 1690. It is clear that earlier leaves from this register have been removed, both from the page numbering, and the remains visible stuck in the binding.

These entries are not to be found in the Old Parish Registers of Bunkle and Preston parish kept by the General Register Office (Scotland) at New Register House in Edinburgh, which does not commence until 1704.

Buy Bunkle & Preston Parish Register 1684-1690 - £6.99

1851 census for Kells now online

We have been making great progress with www.maxwellancestry.com. Various new records are now online and more will be coming shortly as well as new books, some of which will be ready in the next day or two.

The big census update is 1851 Kells, Kirkcudbrightshire; this is now in the database and also available from our bookshop. We have also added more household links, general notes and prison links to the database.

Regarding the prison indexing project, Graham has now indexed the second Jedburgh volume and is proof-reading it now so it should be on sale within a couple of weeks. He has now also started work on the next Scottish Borders prison, which is Kelso. Although various links will appear in the census database from now this is not by any means a search of the prison registers themselves. In fact less than 1% of the prison entries have any link with the census records at present. Therefore if your ancestors are from the Borders area it is best to check in the actual prison index. If you do not already have a copy they are available from our bookshop.

The mapping is also continuing, Hawick and Wilton parishes are next, these may take some time though! Big towns always seem to slow up the census mapping project!

I’ll let you know when the new Jedburgh prison book is ready.