The Fantastic Falkirk Wheel joining  |
The Kelpies with snow on the Ochil Hills  |
That's me in the middle  |
Callendar House, Falkirk - has a museum and a local research room with thousands of old photos of the folk and area  |
Eventually I hope this will be a reasonable source for anyone researching the Scottish branch of their Family Tree and interested in the local history of Falkirk and Stirlingshire. It will also include any articles gleaned from newsgroups that I think may be useful background information for the family historian. I made a start by selecting some turn of the century photographs from a series of booklets published by Falkirk District Council that depict the life of the common folk of the Falkirk area. If you have any additional bits of useful info then mail me.
The best place to navigate around my site is from my Contents page. You can get to it by clicking on the button from just about any one of my pages. Alternatively you can start from the the charts for my grandparents -
- dad's dad - Thomas Paterson,with a pedigree chart here,
- dad's mum - Elizabeth Malcolm,
- mum's dad - George Burrell, and
- mum's mum - Mary MacGregor
and the Irish Connection (The Honorable Thomas O'Grady)
There is a full index here of all of the family names that I am interested in with links to charts, family photos and notes on some towns and parishes. This links to family group pages with notes on any connections to other researchers. Don't bother clicking on a name in the index unless there is a date range and place of origin against it. If you have an interest in the origins and history of the surnames then try here
A major project that I've finished with for the moment is the Statistical Account for Stirlingshire (1840/1), an account by parish of the life of the common and landed folk written by their parish ministers.
Another big project has been the sharing of the 1881 census returns for East Stirlingshire. There are a couple of formats for this with the latest being a searchable database accessed from the same start point as my own family list of names. About 10 years after I shared all this the Scotlands People website shared the 1881 LDS (Latter-Day-Saints) census for the whole of Scotland
I've taken a DNA test which is uploaded to Ancestry, MyHeritage and GEDMatch. This has provided some useful connections amongst the 20,000 matches but still no further forward on my big hurdle - finding the ancestors of the Paterson name - though I have confirmed the Hossack and the O'Grady illegitimate lines through DNA matches.
I currently don't have a guestbook but you can mail me by hitting the email button on foot of this page.
GENEALOGY SOURCES (SCOTLAND)
If you are a newcomer to this genealogy game then you will find these sites give useful information on getting started. The best place ,of course, is with your immediate relatives - the older the better. Nowadays the Scotlands People website has a wonderful collection of records but when i first stared there were very sources on the internet, and all real research could only be carried out by hard graft, digging around in record offices, family history centres and such like. I'm now in the process of widening out my tree and making it available on Ancestry as well as paying, again, for for digital copies of certificates.
- The Scotlands People website is in my view one of the best sites on the web for researching and downloading certificates of Births, Marriages Deaths and Census returns. Although it doesn't cost anything to search the indexes, and the price per certificate works out at about £1 per certificate, be warned, it is highly addictive
- The National Records Office (Scotland) is the place to visit if you are serious about doing any Genealogy research.
- The GENUKI page is probably the best place to get general background information. Also has good references and lists of parishes and county abbreviations.
- For a site that has place names and maps and some tax returns then try Scotlands Places page.
- The absolute must visit site is the Mormon site at www.familysearch.org with millions of records in their International Genealogical Index, the IGI.
GENERAL SCOTTISH SITES
- For a list of Famous Scots then try here.
- There are two places I have found that list Clan Tartans, Mottoes and Emblems
- This has an article about Arthur's Oon in Stenhousemuir. The site was in the back garden of one of my school mates.
- The Electric Scotland site is also worth a visit
LINKS TO FELLOW GENEALOGISTS
- See my connections page for links to fellow genealogist who have connected with my tree.
- Dave Kincaid ; Falkirk, SCT to Rotherhithe, ENG.
- Ruth K Andrews ; Ireland to Seattle.
MISCELLANEOUS BACKROUND READINGS(SCOTLAND)
- Irregular Marriages in Leith. by Jack Campion.
- Scottish Radical Disturbances of April 1820. from the Journal of the Society of ARMY HISTORICAL RESEARCH
Last Update by Tom Paterson on 22nd Feb 2018