The sample ancestor birthday calendar

will take some time to load. I used dates of all my ancestors birthdays and that of my own family for my private calendar.

Read a short story while you wait!

You might think you know who you are, but do you really?

 I recently had a Scottish descendant discover his Irish roots. How did this happen? He told me what he knew about his ancestry. His mother and father both came from Scotland. His grandparents on his father’s side were a proud Scottish family. I suggested that we try and find out some more about his Clan. Maybe we could find the dates of his grandparent’s marriage and some addresses that showed where they lived. We agreed that documents proving they were his actual ancestors would be nice to have in his collection of family archives. I would try and retrieve from various sources the evidence of his heritage.

What I found was unsurprising, the existence of his Scottish family in the area he claimed they came from. This information was passed down to him from his parents years ago.  I started by locating his grandparent’s marriage records. I later discovered his maternal grandparents living with his mother and her siblings in 1901 on a government document. I started to look back further to find his grandmother’s family. I was successful in finding evidence of her family back to the birth of his great great great grandmother in 1782. I knew from finding this 1782 birth certificate the names of her parents and was able to add yet another Scottish generation.

I was somewhat surprised at the outcome of researching my client’s grandfather’s family. I expected another long Scottish lineage.  Indeed his grandfather was born in Scotland. I had found the evidence of his birth. Now the next challenge was to get back another generation. This is where it gets very interesting. On his great grandfather’s death certificate dated 1897 at Rutherglen, Scotland was clearly written under the headings name and surname of father, name and maiden surname of mother, his great great grandparent legal names. Now with the names of his great great grandparent’s known I was able to find them on a document that showed they were both born in Ireland!

My client continues to be proud of his Scottish roots, but it goes to show you that what people say must be true, “there is a little Irish in us all”.

Back to Calendar