A Hawick Man's Brush with History

Winnie and Bob at home in Hawick

All of our ancestors played a part in history. No matter what they did, where they lived or who else remembers them we want to find out more about them, and the mark they made on their community or the wider world. Sometimes, though, there are certain discoveries that make you stop dead in your tracks.

This happened to me a few days ago. I was researching the Grieve family of Branxholm Braes, near Hawick. If you follow us on Flickr or Facebook you will have seen a lot of photos, postcards and even letters which belonged to this family. I have been going through the family archive and in the process I have come across three identical postcards (see front below) sent by Robert Grieve to his young wife Winnie in 1908. We’ll have to presume that the hotel only had one postcard on offer, either that or our Bob wasn’t very imaginative!

Celerina

These precious postcards are dated January and February 1908 and posted from Celerina (Schlarigna) in Switzerland. Bob writes about curling matches in which he had taken part. On a postcard dated 15 February 1908, he writes ‘We have had a great victory to-day’. This made me curious, what competition was going on?

I headed to the British Newspaper Archive to search their large collection of newspapers. It didn’t take long to locate a reference to the championship. I found in an article in the Dundee Courier of 6 February 1908 (page 3) that our very own R. Grieve was playing in the International Bonspiel. 

There were several other results so I continued my search. Again an article in the Dundee Courier caught my eye, this time it was dated 4 February 1908 (page 6). Entitled ‘Scottish Curlers in Switzerland, Bonspiel at Celerina, Opening Day’s Play’, it begins:

“The great International bonspiel commenced this morning at ten o’clock. His Imperial Highness the Archduke Franz Ferdinand, the heir-apparent to the Austrian throne, threw the first stone amidst the enthusiastic cheering of the curlers. The ice was in excellent condition.”

Another search revealed an article from the Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer dated 4 February 1908 (page 8):

“The fourth annual international curling bonspiel commenced on the Cresta rink here to-day. Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austrian throne, who is staying the the same hotel with the curlers, consented to throw the first stone, which he did with great accuracy and speed amid cheers from Scotchmen and Engandiners (sic).”

Today of course we are all too familiar with who the Archduke Franz Ferdinand was and the influence his death would have on the world.  Did ‘our’ Bob see him, did he meet him? We may never know, but this simple research shows that by reading family letters and postcards carefully and comparing these to other sources, such as the newspaper, you can build up a far more exciting picture of your family tree. 

He didn’t win by the way!

Sir John Pringle

One of the reasons I have been so slow to produce the first volume of the Kelso Dispensary records is that I keep getting distracted. The diseases are so interesting, not to mention the people in the registers and my constant amazement that so many ordinary people were given treatment.

Today I have been looking at Sir John Pringle who is one of the “Recommenders”, a quick Google search revealed that there is actually a monument to Sir John Pringle in Westminster Abbey!

By the time the dispensary opened its doors Sir John was about 70, but that doesn’t seem to have held him back.

So you never know perhaps you are alive today because the dispensary saved your GGGGgrandfather!

Report and State of the Kelso Dispensary

When I was in the National archives the other day I came across some leaflets entitled Report and State of The Kelso Dispensary. I found it useful to help me understand the daily running of the dispensary. Here is a transcription of the front page of the leaflet:

Report and State

of

The Kelso Dispensary

77th Year of the Institution

The Physicians and Surgeons connected with the Institution attend the Dispensary every Sunday before Divine Service, and every Friday form nine to eleven o’clock, to give their advice, and to direct the Apothecary of the Dispensary (who also attends on these days), to dispense such Medicines as are proper for the Patients recommended. In cases of acute, and occasionally in chronic disease, when Patients cannot be brought to the Dispensary, the Surgeons of the Institution are allowed, at the recommendation of a Subscriber, to visit them in the country at the expense of the Charity, in terms of the following rule of the Institution, viz., “That no one be visited in the country who can be brought by any conveyance to the Dispensary without personal hazard; that when in cases of sickness or accident it becomes necessary for the Surgeons to visit a Patient in the country, the visit shall not be repeated at the Surgeon’s discretion for a longer period than till the first ordinary Meeting of Physicians, Surgeons, and other Office-bearers; at which Meeting it shall be incumbent on the Visiting Surgeon to report the case, and after consultation it will be in the power of he Meeting either to order a continuation of visits for a limited time, or a notification to be made to the Patient that he must be brought to the Dispensary in Kelso–it being always kept in view that the expense of these visits, to be borne by the Institution shall not exceed triple the sum subscribed by the recommender.” Patients in the town of Kelso may be visited in their own homes by the Apothecary to the Institution, upon an order from the Physicians or Surgeons to do so. All recommendatory letters to be addressed, “To the Apothecary of the Kelso Dispensary,” who is appointed to deliver the same to the Surgeons in rotation.

No Patient will be visited in the country at the expense of the Institution, unless a visit is solicited by a Subscriber, or ordered by the Physicians. The other regulations under which the dispensary is managed, and the rules by which proper objects of charity are recommended are entitled to the benefit of the Institution, will be furnished by the secretary. 

There is a record kept of the Patients, their ages, diseases, the event of their case, the names id the Subscribers, and the parishes to which they belong. There have been 715 admitted for the year from the 1st October 1853, to the 1st October, 1854.

BATHS

There is one Bath kept exclusively for the Patients of the Dispensary; another, handsomely fitted up with marble for the accommodation of the Public. Baths may be had at one hour’s notice, on application to the Housekeeper, for payment of 1s. Hot Bath, and 6d. Cold and Shower Bath, which sums go toward the support of the Charity.

© Kelso dispensary data - Crown copyright. National Archives of Scotland reference HH71/5.

© Transcription — Copyright Graham Maxwell Ancestry 2011.

Free Castleton Poor Roll Index

We have just uploaded another PDF to our website, the Index to Castleton Poor Roll 1846-1864. Although quite interesting itself the index is a key to further information.

The full record has lists of children of the recipient as well as details relating to emigration, employment and education. The columns in the original book are as follows:

1. Name of Pauper
2. Present residence
3. Married or single, widow, or widower. If child, orphan, deserted or bastard.
4. Name of each dependant living with Pauper
5. Age – Years
6. Place of birth
7. Trade or occupation
8. If wholly or partially disabled
9. Description of disablement
10. Means and resources of Pauper besides Parochial relief
11. Names and weekly earnings of Parents
12. Names, ages, and earnings of children not living with Pauper, and whether marries, and number of children.
13. Date when admitted on Roll.
14. Amount of relief in money.
15. Amount of relief in food, clothing, fuel, lodging, or of any other kind.
16. Date and cause of removal from Roll.
17. Remarks

So as you can see the form was quite detailed, sadly not all entries have every column filled in but all the entries are of interest if they are related to you!

 Castleton Poor Roll Index

Street view now enabled

For some time, as you may know, Google’s Street View has been available in the Scottish Borders and Dumfriesshire, however it was not available on the mapping through our website. We have now updated the format and it’s now available on www.maxwellancestry.com.

Search our census for free, like you always have, either by address or name: click “Display Map” next to Current Map/Satellite and you can view as a map, satellite, hybrid, terrain or street view.

www.maxwellancestry.com

What’s New at Maxwell Ancestry?

We have added to our website today an index to our prison database. This will hopefully make it easier for you to find which book you need or purchase or enable you to order a full transcription of the prison record directly.

Why buy the book?

The prison books that have been available in our bookshop for some time have all the information that is online and in addition they also list the crime (the thing we all want to know) that the prisoner committed. If you see more than one record relating to your family this is a cheaper way of finding out what crimes were being committed.

Why buy the full record?

The original entries are very informative and cost just five pounds. Typically in any record after 1840 you would expect to find at least the following:

Date of admission; By whom committed; Name; Sex; Age; Birthplace; Residence; Where spent greater part of their life; Height; Hair colour; Eye colour;

Distinguishing marks etc.; Precise offence (often including article stolen etc.); Clean/dirty; Drunk/sober; Direct from arrest or from another prison,

if so which one; Occupation; Previous imprisonments with entry numbers for such; Liberated without trial – when and by whose authority; Tried – when

and by whom; Convicted or acquitted; Sentence; Liberated or removed after conviction – when, by whose authority, to what place; Number of days in

prison; Conduct during confinement; Whether able to read and write.

So whichever way you buy further information we hope that this new database will prove useful to all. Search it at: www.maxwellancestry.com

Txt spk 4u from 1777

Don’t worry I’ve not gone crazy, well no more than usual. I have started work on transcribing the Kelso Dispensary records which we told you about a few months ago. They are very neat but full of abbreviations and it struck me that despite the slightly highbrow opinion that shortening words to squeeze more into a text message is a terrible thing to do, the same kind of thing was done two centuries ago, and ultimately for the same reason.

Stop and think for a moment, you are running an institution back in 1777, paper is expensive, you need to record certain information; how will you organize your page? The later records, post industrialisation, have one page dedicated to each patient. Back in 1777, however paper was much more expensive, and these records cram about 24 people to each page with almost the same amount of information included. They have managed to do this by not wasting space on the pages just as their modern counterparts don’t waste text messages.

There is less blank space but also many abbreviations: for example: Tho – Thomas, Recov^d – recovered and Ap^r  – April. So next time you receive a message from a text abbreviation user don’t be so quick to complain but remind yourselves that they are following in the footsteps of your frugal ancestors.

Chirnside Burials 1817-1854

I just wanted to tell you about a new book we have transcribed and which is now available in our bookshop. This book contains a transcription of the registers of deaths or burials for Chirnside parish, Berwickshire which are to be found amongst the Kirk Session records for Chirnside parish held by the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh.

The main register, Volume 7, commences in January 1817, and the last burial entry in this volume is from August 1841. Another burial register is contained in Volume 8, which commences in August 1841, and we have transcribed until the year 1855, when civil registration of deaths commenced in Scotland.

These entries are not to be found in the Old Parish Registers of Chirnside parish kept by the General Register Office (Scotland) at New Register House in Edinburgh (the burials for Chirnside in the Old Parish Register end in 1815), and it is believed they have not been transcribed or indexed before.

Buy Chirnside Burials 1817-1854 for just £8.99 from maxwellancestry.com

To help you out here is a list of surnames found within the book:

Aitchison; Aitkin; Alexander; Allan; Anderson; Angus; Atchison; Atkin; Ballantine; Balsillie; Begbie; Bell; Bertram; Bird; Black; Blackadder; Blackhall; Blackie; Blair; Bogue; Bonar; Bone; Bowmaker; Broomfield; Brown; Bruce; Brunton; Burns; Cairns; Cameron; Carr; Carse; Carter; Chambers; Clazey; Cleghorn; Clinkscale; Cochran; Cockburn; Cooper; Cossar; Cow; Cowe; Cowie; Cowper; Craig; Cranston; Crawford; Crichton; Crosbie; Crow; Cryghton; Dally; Darling; Davidson; Dawson; Denham; Dickison; Dickson; Dodds; Donald; Donaldson; Dougal; Douglas; Downie; Dryden; Dun; Dunbar; Duncan; Edgar; Edgely; Elder; Elliot; Elliott; Ewart; Ewert; Ferguson; Foord; Ford; Forman; Fortune; Foster; Fuller; Fulton; Galbreath; Geggie; Gibson; Gilbreath; Gillie; Gillies; Gilmour; Girvan; Gray; Grey; Grieve; Gullon; Gutridge; Hailstones; Haliday; Halliday; Hastie; Hately; Hay; Henderson; Hermiston; Heugh; Hewit; Hill; Hills; Hilston; Hogg; Home; Hood; Houliston; Hudson; Hume; Hunter; Hutson; Jamieson; Jeffrey; Johnson; Johnston; Jordan; Kerr; Kinghorn; Kirkaldy; Knox; Laidlaw; Landells; Landreth; Lathem; Lauder; Laurie; Learmont; Leslie; Liddel; Liddle; Lidgate; Lillie; Lindores; Litster; Lockhart; Logan; Lorrain; Lorrains; Luggate; Lunham; Lyal; Macdougal; Mack; Maclaren; Manderson; Mark; Marshall; Martin; Mason; Mather; Maul; McCulloch; McDougle; McGechan; McIndoe; McKay; Mclean; McQueen; Melrose; Middlemis; Miller; Mills; Mitchell; Molle; Neilson; Nelson; Nesbit; Nicholson; Orkney; Ormiston; Palmer; Paterson; Patterson; Paxton; Peacock; Philip; Pilmour; Platt; Polwarth; Ponton; Porteous; Porter; Pringle; Punton; Purves; Ramage; Ramsey; Ray; Redpath; Reid; Renton; Richardson; Robertson; Romanes; Ross; Russel; Russell; Rutherford; Sanson; Scott; Selby; Sett; Shepherd; Sheriff; Shiel; Simpson; Sinton; Smart; Smeaton; Smith; Spark; Spears; Stark; Steel; Steele; Sunderland; Sutherland; Swordy; Taylor; Temple; Third; Thompson; Tod; Todd; Torry; Trotter; Turnbull; Utterson; Valentine; Veitch; Vertue; Vineycomb; Virtue; Voy; Waddel; Wait; Waldie; Ward; Watherston; Watson; Watt; Waugh; Wedderburn; Weir; White; Wilkie; Wilson; Winter; Wood; Wright; Youl; Youls

New Scottish Ancestry ebay shop

To celebrate the opening of my new ebay shop we are listing auctions for some of our books with a starting price of just £3.99!! This means possible savings of up to £9!

So keep checking or new ebay shop for the books you are looking for!!

Are you available on the 28th of August?

I have just been reading the Border’s Family history society’s blog. They are looking for volunteers to help transcribe the Coldingham Priory gravestones and the next opportunity is Saturday the 28^th of August 2010.

The work being done by groups up and down the country is really commendable, many of the stones are wearing away and the sooner they are transcribed the less information is lost: See the Aberdeen Family History Societies website.

So if you will be in Berwickshire this weekend take a look at the Borders Family History Society’s blog for detail of how to help out. It doesn’t have to be a whole day just an hour or two will assist the volunteers greatly.

1841 and 1861 Fala and Soutra census now online

Just to let you know we have uploaded the 1841 and 1861 census of Fala and Soutra to www.maxwellancestry.com. We have also added notes and household links. We have been sent research by various people which we try to verify and as soon as possible.

The website is still under review and we have received some great feedback but if you have not been in touch yet but have some suggestions please let us know as we want to make it as easy as possible to use.

Census database updated – Can you advertise it?

We have updated the database again; this time we have added 1841 & 1861 Fala & Soutra. We have also continued to add household links and notes to our database so hopefully some of our research will prove helpful to somebody.

Remember this is still a relatively new census database and many people still do not know it exists. It is different from many others; here are a few things we believe set us apart:

1. It is the only website, that we are aware of, that links the census with maps.

2. We have added notes from our own research, for example dates of death, marriage and birth and also notes about imprisonments.

3. We have transcribed the 1841, 1851 and 1861 census for Berwickshire, Scotland (as well as many other counties) and we offer this full transcription free on our website - we are the only website that offers this complete county without charge.

4. Our transcriptions are done by expert local genealogists; therefore ensuring a high standard of transcription.

5. Maiden names are commonly used throughout married life in Scotland (this can cause confusion in the census) therefore we have endeavoured to add married and maiden names to our database.

So if you agree that our free census search is helpful please help us advertise it. Can you post links? Can you email friends? Can you tell your local family history society or research group? If you can, more people will visit the site, then more people will click on adverts giving us revenue or buy some of our other products and services. This will enable us to keep updating the census and other records therefore helping everybody.

www.maxwellancestry.com

Thank you for your support,

Emma

Parish register – all on one page

As with our prison indexes we now have all our parish registers listed on one page of our website. I have also included extra information about each so you will know exactly what you’re getting.

As new records become available I will add them to the existing county pages in our standard bookshop and to the standalone Parish Registers page.

This I hope will answer the questions people have about these less familiar parish registers.

Visit our new parish registers page now!

Uses for the prison indexes

So we have spoken a lot about the prison indexes adding colour to your family tree but they may add even more than that. I came across this post on rootschat.com.

Quiet a familiar situation, born Ireland no further information. Where do you start? Is this the end of the line? Well as you can see from the post I made our prison index gives a County in Ireland. Now the family will have a chance of tracing their Irish ancestors.

So if you have Irish ancestors living in Scotland have a look at our prison indexes and see if we can unlock your little mysteries.

Visit our bookshop now

Parish Records available form Maxwell Ancestry

Records which are not available on Scotland’s People or the IGI

I have just realized through all my blogs about the prison and census projects I have forgotten to tell you about the parish registers that we have been publishing.

Why have we been publishing parish registers I hear you ask?

Are these not available on Scotland’s People and is not the index to many available free on the IGI? Well the answer is that most are, but not all! The IGI and Scotland’s People are mainly based on the OPR’s which should be all we need. However, how often do you search and search to no avail? The OPR’s are excellent but by no means complete and this can be a real source of frustration. There are, however, some other places to look for births, marriages and deaths before 1855!

Some (but by no means all) Kirk sessions contain birth, marriage, and death entries in various forms. The Kirk Session records are not at present on Scotland’s People and by and large this information does not appear on the IGI, therefore is inaccessible to many. The Kirk Session records for much of Scotland are kept at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, although some are held in local archives up and down the country.

Graham thought it may be useful to transcribe and index some of these records. The Castleton Parish register (Roxburghshire) has been for sale on our website for a while now and more are coming. Closeburn (Dumfriesshire) was added last week and one for Galashiels has just been completed. Here is a wee summary for you:

Castleton Parish Register 1707-10 and the Castleton Parish Hearth Tax 1695 £7.99

Parish Register of Closeburn, Dumfriesshire, 1726-1754 £8.99

And soon to be released:

Galashiels Parish Registers: Proclamation Register 1845-1854 and Relief Church Baptisms 1838-1855 £7.99

Our hope is that these will help fill in some of those missing blanks and hopefully help you locate your ancestors.

Here is and excerpt from the Closeburn book to whet your appetite:

19 April 1726

James Kirkpatrick and Agnes Mccaig in Newtown Mains a Son John.

1 June 1726

Archbald Frazer and Janet Kirkpatrick in Auchenleck a Son Daniel.

16 June 1726

James Hainen and Helen Nivison in Kirkland a Daughter Helen.

26 June 1726

Thos. Gibson & Grissel Mcmurdo in Townhead a Daughter Janet.

7 July 1726

Samuel Kirkpatrick & Janet Pagan in Crukup a Daughter Henerata presented by the Mother because of the father's ignorance.

© Kirk Session records — National Archives of Scotland reference CH2/1233/6.

© Transcription and indexes — Copyright Graham Maxwell Ancestry 2010.

Published by Graham Maxwell Ancestry

Cleughside, Kirkpatrick Fleming, Lockerbie, Dumfriesshire, DG11 3NG

info@maxwellancestry.com

www.maxwellancestry.com/publishing

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.