[BITList] A root-and-branch inquiry: Inside the deep-digging, money-spinning, web-crawling world of family trees - This Britain, UK - The Independent

[HUGH]

John,

I've been there since 1975 and bought a good many tee shirts.  Technically, 
family history is an extension of genealogy, the latter being mere names, 
dates and relationships.  And family history is a branch of community 
history, and so on.  I was fortunate in having done the bulk of my research 
in Edinburgh from the original records, before microfilming and so on made 
such difficult, if not impossible.  I have transcriptions of events that are 
totally unreadable in any modern version, as I found out when trying to 
double check something.  However, digitisation can have its advantages.  For 
£13 a day in Glasgow I can get instant access to a vast array of Scottish 
records on screen, including all BM & D, 1855 to about 2008, the original 
certificates coming very fast indeed to a screen, so that one can flick 
through them as if pages in a book.  Brilliant for looking for siblings of 
people - just glance at the parents.  Why some people pay for copies I'll 
never know - it's the information on them that matters.  Copy it out and get 
on with the next one.

Eventually one is left with the Irish ancestors (pretty intractable unless 
one has had screeds of data from some elderly aunt), and family legends. 
One of the latter occupied me for nigh on 30 years, on and off.  Eventually 
I tracked him down in Montreal living under an assumed name (avoiding 
alimony?), and running a boilerworks.  The lady he abandoned in Paisley 
around 1857 after 7 months of marriage - the child she was expecting almost 
certainly wasn't his - led an increasingly dissolute life (it's all in the 
Poor Law records) before dying of paralysis in Paisley Poorshouse. "A Pest 
!" it said of her in big letters a few days before she died.  I can't speak 
of the English version, but the Scottish Poor Law Applications are God's 
gift to family historians.  From them, my wife learned her great great 
grandmother was "quarrelsome and given to drink", the information being 
supplied by a neighbour.  But it also listed her family : brothers and 
sisters, who they married, what they did, where they lived, how many 
children they had.  She did get the assistance she applied for - husband 
Alexander had gone to the USA and stopped sending home money.  The Montreal 
gent above was my great great great uncle's brother-in-law.

Great fun.

Hugh.