Some Family History Freebies

 

Image by Hans from Pixabay

Over the past weekend I noticed some family history resources being offered for free - one via on-demand TV which may well be free indefinitely, and another couple of what are very likely time-limited offers. So I'll start with those two.

First: A free download of a useful reference book, the Kindle version of The Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, Volume 1. It covers the surnames Aaron-Cushing, so tough luck if you're researching Millers, Robinsons, Smiths, or Thomsons - some of the most common surnames in Britain! However, the Introduction covers British naming history, trends, and types of names and is very interesting. 

This offer only appears to be valid in the UK at the moment, and you'll need an "eligible" (i.e. not too old) Kindle device to read it on.  This particular download doesn't seem to work on the Kindle app on my phone, or on a laptop. But hey, it's free - what did I expect?!

Second: 7-day free trial membership of Family Tree Plus, a service run by the UK Family Tree Magazine. The membership gives access to its online community plus hundreds of how-to articles and webinars. These are archived and can be used on demand. For more information about what's included in the package, the membership web page has much more detail. Note that the offer's only open if you haven't already had a free trial or membership of Family Tree Plus.

In addition, anyone visiting the Family Tree website may notice a pop-up offering a free "Collect Your Family Stories" research kit, including ideas for interviewing relatives - particularly useful over the festive season. To get this download you simply have to sign up for the Family Tree Magazine regular e-mail. Of course you can sign up, get the download, then unsubscribe if you don't want the e-mails. 

My usual tip for this kind of thing is to set up a dedicated, separate e-mail account for offers. That way, if unsubscribing doesn't work, your regular e-mail address won't be inundated with unwanted messages!

Third: I spotted a social media post about episodes of a British television show "DNA Journey", linking to Ancestry's YouTube channel. Sadly, only short trailers are available to view on that platform for now. If you want to see the full programmes they are archived on ITVX, an on-demand service, where they're free to watch.  

The show itself was quite entertaining, although the focus was more on trying to find links either between the celebrities, or between their work and that of their ancestors.  I found the different eps a bit hit-or-miss, but the best ones were with Ricky Tomlinson and Sue Johnston, and John Simm and Philip Glenister.  I cannot in all conscience, however, recommend the Ant and Dec episodes, with their questionable Viking DNA results!

Relatives Around The World

I ended a previous post about my long-lost great uncle Duncan with an unsolved riddle: did he know his wife back home in Scotland had divorced him, and did he marry the woman he had crossed the world to be with?

Well, the answer did come, from his relatives in Australia.  An email arrived with photos of divorce documents as well as his marriage certificate to his second wife, Ivy.  I was so pleased that their life had turned out the way they clearly hoped it would. They had two children of their own plus the five from Ivy’s first marriage, so family life would have been a full-time occupation.

Divorce Notification, 1952

In further antipodean family history developments, I received an email from MyHeritage alerting me to a tree posted from my father’s side of the family.  I recognised the tree owner’s surname immediately, as my parents and aunts had corresponded with this family of my dad’s brother Angus. He had emigrated to New Zealand as a young man, and occasional exchange visits took place between the family.  I recall meeting some of these relatives when they toured Scotland in the early 1970s.  They were visiting my father’s sister Kate, and when Dad arrived to meet them, they all immediately remarked on the striking resemblance between him and his elder brother in NZ.

As tourists from down under often did, they hired a camper van to see as much of the country as they could, although these were not nearly as common on the roads as they are today.  While staying in Glasgow to visit the numerous relatives who lived there, they did some sightseeing in the city.  They parked their van in George Square in the city centre, and a local child, being unfamiliar with the style of the vehicle, mistook it for an ice cream van and tried to buy a cone from them, much to everyone's bewilderment.

My Kiwi correspondent gladly shared copies of documents with me, including an extensive genealogy of Uncle Angus’s English wife – which surprised me by revealing that her ancestors were actually from Scotland. 

Then, in just the last month or so, I've learned of some younger relatives, on two separate maternal lines, who have taken an interest in their forebears. Both showed up as DNA matches on Ancestry, and had been posted on behalf of the family members concerned. With the first, I had kept in touch with the family in the USA, and they were able to confirm that my cousin’s teenage daughter was indeed the person represented by the small tree!  I offered to share anything she wanted to know about the family.

The other enquiry came from England via Ancestry, asking if I would be willing to share information they had been unable to trace about my relative’s parents.  I referred the enquirer to the relative’s father, knowing that he would share what he felt comfortable with, and she confirmed that they had set up a time to discuss the family’s history with him.  Again, I invited them to let me know if there was anything else I could share that would be of interest.

It's great to be in touch with family from around the world (and nearer home, too).  These experiences have highlighted to me how crucial it is to have my tree posted online, as well DNA results, for others to find.  In a post in the near future I’ll share the story of another recent contact, one which provided a spot of closure for me on the genealogy front.

On the trail of my military McIntoshes

 

Siege of Burgos, 1812, Francois Joseph Heim (Public domain)

In search of my several-greats grandfather who fought at Waterloo – and who carried his wounded brother on his back on the retreat from the siege of Burgos in the Peninsular War, only to discover when they got to safety that his brother had died – I recently contacted the Black Watch Museum Archives in Perth (the Scottish one) to find out if they had any regimental records that might help identify said brother. I had previously been unaware of any siblings that great-grandpa Hugh had. 

Hugh was born in either Avoch (pronounced “Auch”) or Rosemarkie, depending on whether you believe the census or the military records. As they’re only a few miles apart it doesn’t really matter; both are in the area of Easter Ross known as the Black Isle, and neither of their parish churches’ records include a birth record for Hugh.  There are over 50 individuals with the surname McIntosh in the 1841 census taken in Avoch. Hugh isn’t one of them, however, as by that time he had retired from his military career and set up home in Nairn, on the other side of the Moray Firth, where seven of his nine children were born to him and his wife Elizabeth Sinclair.

He had more than likely been stationed at nearby Fort George during his service, as it was there, in the parish of Ardersier, that he and Elizabeth were married. Perhaps that was part of the reason for choosing Nairn as their home, after a life in the army.

I was delighted, then, to receive an email last week from the Black Watch archivist, Jennifer, who had made a search of the records they held and had not only found records that mentioned Hugh, but had managed to narrow down the identity of his brother, using a casualty list and other regimental records.  The only McIntosh who was in the same unit as Hugh and who died in the retreat from Burgos was named Donald. As he didn’t survive there won’t be any discharge or pension records at Kew, unfortunately.  But now that I know his name, it won’t be quite as much of a needle in a haystack task to find out more about him; perhaps in newspapers, or a local war memorial of some kind.

I don’t know whether the McIntoshes moved en masse from the Black Isle to Nairn, or if it was only Hugh who settled there.  It’s possible that Donald was born elsewhere in Scotland.  Hugh’s first two children were born in, respectively, France and Dublin, Elizabeth accompanying him both on campaign and in his postings.

Both Hugh and Donald are listed in this roll of Capt. James Stirling's Company

My next goal is to identify which of Hugh and Elizabeth’s five sons were also in the army.  His obituary mentions two, and gives their regiment and the places around the world in which they served.  So far I've found one described as a “pensioner” in his own newspaper death announcement. Sadly, he also appears to have had a lengthy and varied criminal record, with his name popping up regularly in the burgh police records and the court reports of the local Gazette. One can only imagine the possible PTSD that led him into such a life. It's his pension record that I'm going to try and find next.  Stay tuned for (hopefully) more finds!

Oh, and here's the newspaper obituary for Hugh which set me off on this chase. He was a bit of a character.

Nairnshire Telegraph, 4 February 1863 (courtesy of BNA)

 

Never Stop Looking

 

Argus, Melbourne, 19 Jul 1950

Last week I posted a bit about my grandfather and the kind of fellow he turned out to be.  This week, after a 45-year wait I bring you news of his brother Duncan.  Previously all that had been known about him after departing Glasgow was that he had emigrated to Australia.  No further word about him reached my mother’s family.

Yesterday, an e-mail alert from MyHeritage which had been languishing unread in my inbox for several weeks revealed some suggestions for records about various men named Duncan Paul. Most of them seemed to be from American city directories, and I was about to delete the e-mail when the birth date of my great-uncle jumped off the screen.  Sure enough, he had ended up in Australia, and one of his relatives there had posted his information on the website.  From it I gleaned a fair bit of interesting detail, which makes up much of the following story.

Duncan, my mum’s uncle, was born in 1914 in Glasgow, and married Elizabeth there just after the outbreak of World War 2.  He was involved in military service and seems to have been posted to the south coast of England because it was in Southampton, about 1946, that he met a lady called Ivy.

Ivy was a recently-widowed mother of five.  Her husband Charles had been a steward in the merchant navy but died in September 1945 and is commemorated in a war grave.  Ivy and Duncan had a child together, and then in 1949 she left with the children for Australia.

Cameronia
(Marxchivist from USA on Flickr, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Duncan also applied to emigrate, and in 1950 had been accepted when, during a spell working on Southampton dock, he got itchy feet.  The ship Cameronia berthed and he learned that it was bound for Australia, so on the night before it sailed he packed three suitcases and brazenly marched aboard, his confidence fooling crew and passengers alike.  However, after five days without food he surrendered himself to the captain, who appears to have taken pity on the stowaway and allowed him to work the remainder of his passage.

When the ship docked at Colombo in present-day Sri Lanka, Duncan sent a telegram to Ivy to let her know he was on his way.  She was his sponsor for the purposes of emigration and when the Cameronia arrived in Melbourne she was there on the quay to greet him.  Australian newspapers carried the story of the “Scottish stowaway” and printed the photograph at the beginning of this post, along with a physical description of Duncan as being freckle-faced, red haired and slightly built.

But what of his wife Elizabeth back in Glasgow? This is where the Australian newspaper account is silent, but records show that it was not until 1952 that she obtained a divorce from Duncan.  His address on the legal documents was "unknown", so as yet it's not clear if Duncan ever knew he was divorced, nor if he married Ivy.  

But really, never give up on a search for a relative, no matter how long you've been looking!

David Malcolm 1899-1946

Have you ever come across a crime scene photo involving one of your ancestors?

My second cousin thrice removed, David Malcolm, was born towards the end of Queen Victoria’s reign in the soon-to-be royally famous village of Glamis, north of Dundee.  When he was a young boy, his family emigrated to the United States and settled in South Dakota.  Here, they moved to a homestead, and David tried his hand at farming, then mining, and according to a cousin was a skilled carpenter and housebuilder.  However, he found his calling as he served two terms as deputy sheriff of Butte County, prompting him to run for sheriff.  This he did successfully, and in January of 1945 he took office.

A year later, he and Special Agent Tom Matthews were part of an interstate manhunt for an escaped convict serving a sentence for murder, who had been on the run for over a week from Minnesota.  They were unfortunately the first to apprehend him, and he shot them both dead.

The crime scene photo – which I found on the open web in a gallery of local history pictures – is of the murder scene, taken after dark.  Two bodies lie prone next to cars on a country road, surrounded by men, who, bizarrely all seem to be standing around just chatting, one of them even balanced on a pair of crutches.  It was probably the event of the century in the sleepy Black Hills town of Spearfish, normally best known for its teacher training college.

David was buried in the county graveyard.  His killer was only indicted for the murder of Special Agent Matthews, but at the trial David’s widow Edith gave evidence of her husband’s final hours.  He had received phone calls about the fugitive, and according to Edith, “He went into the office, put on his holster, gun and hat and jacket and came out in the kitchen and said goodbye to me.”  That was the last time she saw him alive.

It took a jury barely two hours to find his killer guilty, despite the public defender’s alternative plea of manslaughter.  South Dakota was a state that imposed the death penalty, and given the heinous crime, it was no surprise when it was pronounced in this case.  When the state had re-introduced capital punishment in 1939, they got several prisoners to build an electric chair, using one borrowed from Illinois as their template.  From then until 1946 three men were sentenced to death in the state, but all received commuted sentences of life imprisonment instead.  David’s killer would be the chair’s first victim.

Back in Scotland, the Malcolm family must have heard of the tragedy. On one of the gravestones in the kirkyard at Glamis, another member of the family is mentioned as having died in South Dakota (quite a few of the Malcolms seem to have emigrated there), which was the clue that led to me following their trail and learning about David’s untimely demise.  There was clearly transatlantic communication between the two branches of the family, so it’s very likely that the sad news was reported in letters home.

Thanks to the assistance of a friend in the U.S., I’ve been able to finally see what David Malcolm looked like.  This photograph was published with his newspaper obituary, which incorrectly gives his age as 57 - an understandable mistake if this is a good likeness of him.  He was, in fact, only 47, and has what my mother would call a “lived-in face”.  

David is honoured with an inscription on the National Law Enforcement Officers Memorial in Washington, D.C.