In search of the family

3 GENERATIONS OF WOMEN I am most fortunate to have had a wealth of paternal family photo's shared with me over the past 12 years. Each has been a joy to receive and certainly has offered colour to my research. Images of my half Great Uncle with his 12 children and their offspring, Vaudeville style pictures of my Great Aunt, images of my Grandfather as a boy, who so resembled my father at much the same age. Too many to choose from, so I have steered away from selecting one single image from these and instead chosen a photo from my mothers side of the family. You may already have read that my mother was adopted, but whilst my father distanced himself from his family, I grew up with this 'adopted' family. Whilst not an ounce of their DNA flows through my veins, I like to believe that their beliefs, love and values have helped to establish the individual writing this blog. Perhaps a case of 'Nurture over Nature,' even though I only met one of the ladies in the photo, El...

  WILLIAM MARY WILSON  1799-1865 My 3 x Great Grandmother. No, it is not a mis transcription, although there are many such instances, naming her as Wilhelmina in the main. However, a little background research into her parentage quickly explains the masculine variant of her name. Scotlandspeople have a document for her parent’s marriage on 10 th December 1798. William Wilson, a surgeon in Glasgow married Jean Muir, the daughter of John Muir of Peel, Kilbride.   Scotlandspeople OPR Marriages 644/01 0270 0267 crown copyright William Mary was their first-born child, born on 25 th October 1799, however the birth record shows that sadly her father William was deceased by the time of her birth. 'William Wilson, Surgeon Dead & Jean Muir, a d. William Mary b.25th witness John Muir and Andrew Foulis.' Scotlandspeople OPR Births 644/01 0190 0452 Glasgow crown copyrigh t William Wilson died of fever, aged 24 on May 8 th , 1799.  Scotlandspeople OPR Deaths 644/0...

  FAMILY LEGEND: Help or Hindrance? This blog post could be considered a prequel to the blog post I published in Week 1 of 52 ancestors in 52 weeks. For week 2 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks. I thought I would write about the Family Story passed down to me by my father from his father and what a merry dance this and further family folklore led me. However when everything came together there was a lot of truth within the stories, just that they had been embellished with the telling. My Grandfather told my father that we descended from Spanish Royalty, a Spanish Princess marrying a Ship's Surgeon. Later discussing this with various cousins the 'ship's surgeon' was a common claim, but no-one had heard the story re Spanish blood:- 'but come to think of it, when you looked at photo's of the brother's they were all dark haired'. Now my Grandfather was a gregarious gentleman with a sense of fun but also some grandiose ideas. So discounting a link to the House of B...

 GEORGE ARTHUR PERRY 1851-1934 WHO ARE YOU MR P? As with many people, my interest in genealogy started shortly after the death of my father. He had distanced himself from his family and rarely talked about them, so I really was starting from scratch. Small recollections of him speaking of an Uncle Ted, Uncle Percy, Uncle Ernie, Uncle Les and Auntie Dorrie, helped with a few of the names, whilst he also spoke of an older Uncle in Australia. Stories of his grandparents were sparce, he recalled a man, who wore a fez and smoking jacket and recalled that he had married the 'Nanny'. And so from these few snippets, so the the journey to find out 'Who are you Mr P?' began.  So where to begin with the story, well if I relayed the information as it was found, we would begin at the end and worked back to the mid 1870's until the brick wall was broken down when an incident occurred in 1881, which paved the way in finding the elusive early history due to a name change. The quest...