I was very happy to be asked to speak to the SGHET meeting, for two reasons. Firstly I’ve been associated with Colin and his work on the Southern Necropolis for 18 years when the Southern Necropolis group first started work in a wee room in the Mitchell library. Secondly, it’s a bit like coming home for me – my father was born and grew up in Cramond Street in Oatlands. When I was wee my parents often brought my brother and me to visit our Auntie Katie who lived in the same close as she and my father had been born in.
My talk was about burial grounds and family history, because as experienced genealogists know, much can be learned from headstones and the inscriptions on them, and from cemetery records.
I started the talk, though, a bit further back in the family history story, explaining that the first step for everybody is to collect any evidence one has at home, birth, marriage and death certificates, lair certificates, old photographs and letters and to begin to draw a chart of the information you already know. The key facts are date of birth marriages and deaths and we are very lucky in Scotland that these are available on line at www.scotlandspeople.org . This is a brilliant web site because it not only gives us images of births,
My talk was about burial grounds and family history, because as experienced genealogists know, much can be learned from headstones and the inscriptions on them, and from cemetery records.
I started the talk, though, a bit further back in the family history story, explaining that the first step for everybody is to collect any evidence one has at home, birth, marriage and death certificates, lair certificates, old photographs and letters and to begin to draw a chart of the information you already know. The key facts are date of birth marriages and deaths and we are very lucky in Scotland that these are available on line at www.scotlandspeople.org . This is a brilliant web site because it not only gives us images of births,
Family History & Burial Grounds
by
Elizabeth Carmichael.
by
Elizabeth Carmichael.
Isobel Barret
(SGHET)
(SGHET)
Elizabeth Carmichael
(aka Biff)
(aka Biff)
marriage and death entries in the registers, but also images of the enumerated censuses from 1841 – 1901. And if that isn’t enough, all of the Wills through Scottish courts between 1513 and 1901. So, when all of this information has been collected, it’s time to start looking to other sources, newspapers, maps, local histories. For information about Glasgow the place to look is in the Mitchell Library, where you can find lots of sources and advice, but if one’s family came from somewhere else, the local library for that area should be the first point of contact. I went on to talk about burying grounds – how originally these had been