[BITList] Who Do You Think You Are

[HUGH MCINTYRE]

Friday morning,

It's a clear morning - visibility for miles - no doubt that means rain.

Last night we had an episode of the subject TV programme, postponed from Wednesday to suit TV coverage of Glasgow Rangers barely managing to beat Partick Thistle.  While the programme makes compulsive viewing and I never miss it, it gives a misleading notion of family history research. What they are doing is very advanced stuff. Subject asks aunt/brother/sister about family and is amazed at the result.  In my 33 years of research I was never once amazed by what little my relations could tell me.  Based on the result, subject goes off on a train to some repository, where a lady happens to have the very book needed to progess the matter sitting on a desk.  Subject jets off to Paris/Rome/Istanbul/New York for further leads from long lost relations and/or skilled researchers, and an impressive body of evidence is swiftly amassed..

That's not how I remember it.  I employed a researcher only the once - I gave her £20 to copy out a very long, faded, will for me, but I had to find the will myself.  That will, incidentally, illustrates a flaw in the research shown on the programme.  Last night's programme had a lady (can't recall her name, but she's descended from Lord Beaverbrook) who managed to hook onto a line that went back a fair way in Canada and USA, and the various handy researchers got her back to the first arrivals from England in the 1600s.  This was done on the basis of assumptions, coincidence of names in registers, a brand of evidence I've never permitted myself to accept at face value. Putative ancestor A has a father called B.  A man called B is found to have had a child called A, and lo! the matter is settled. As a famous Scottish footballer is supposed to have said, maybes aye, maybes naw.  In the early years of my own research I found a perfect match for two of my great great grandparents.  Everything fitted, but they were the wrong pair (came from Aberdeen). More recently, I had built up a family tree for my wife over a number of years, complete with some well known ancestors and in-laws - Sir Harry Lauder comes to mind - and even one of my own lines tied in.  All of this was based on the foundation (shaky, as it turned out) of Alexander Mair, miner, married to Janet Muir in 1876.  It was only when irreconcileable dates and such started to appear that I had a fresh look at the evidence. The names and occupation were correct, as was the marriage date within a year, but there were two such couples, and I had the wrong one.

So, the will.  This is the deathbed testament of James Adam in Wyllieland, Fenwick, Ayrshire, died in 1623, leaving a widow and two under age children.  James had the heritable tenancy of Wyllieland, so his family had been there for some generations, and the will is full of people called Adam, owing or being owed money, or acting as cautioners for the widow and children.  I can trace my line back to John Adam (2nd marriage 1722) of Skernieland, the adjoining farm, and (if I use the technique in the programme) to the 1623 James Adam in Wyllieland via an intermediate John Adam in Skernieland whose father was a different James Adam in Wyllieland.  However, the best I can do is claim a relationship, not a direct descent.  Lack of evidence is not evidence of lack, but that's as far as it goes.

Hugh.

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