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I'm thinking of researching my family tree, has anyone done theirs? If so how easy was it to go about it, apart from family members where did you acquire your information. Did you use ancestry or any other websites?

 

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luckyBatistuta

Everyone I know that's done it has hit a brick wall quite quickly. I think it's easy to get started, but then starts getting tougher if you don't know what your doing and the price starts going up and up. Looking forward to seeing people's experiences to maybe get some tips and the best ways to go. Would love to dive in to this.

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My mum done it years ago for both sides of the family. Think her side went to late 1890s or something only but she found out a few interesting unknown facts about some people.

I think my dad's went back further but with less info, I think partly because we decended from Irish immigrants in the mid 1800s.

Not sure what site she used but I remember she had to be quite picky and make educated guesses as to which "John Smith" was likely to be the right person to reveal extra info on.

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If you're based in Scotland then Scotlandspeople (https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) at the National Archives on Princes Street used to let you go in for a day and use their electronic equipment to search. Not sure if they still do. They also let you use the online version, which I think is like a pay per view for each certificate/census record.

 

They seemed to have a lot of stuff, although it only goes back so far mid to late 1800s if I remember correctly.

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John Gentleman

If you're based in Scotland then Scotlandspeople (https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) at the National Archives on Princes Street used to let you go in for a day and use their electronic equipment to search. Not sure if they still do. They also let you use the online version, which I think is like a pay per view for each certificate/census record.

 

They seemed to have a lot of stuff, although it only goes back so far mid to late 1800s if I remember correctly.

 

I think, before then, it was the de facto responsibility of the "Kirk" to keep births/deaths/marriages records in their respective parishes. I'm pretty sure they would have passed them on to National Archives (now 'Records of Scotland) though.

 

The going gets tougher the further back you go. Misspellings become common (due to illiteracy) and most 'marriages' were informal. You'll also find it harder if your background was RC. Reputedly, their priests were a bit tardy on the record-keeping front.

 

I managed to get quite a way back (late 18th century on my father's side) using an online search run by the Mormon church. Sorry, cannae mind the URL but it could be worth a Google before you go into your pockets.

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Scotlands People + Family discussions.

 

It is easier to look for something specific (ie if your mum can remember her aunts names etc then you can look for that).

 

It's quite good fun.  When you find out where your great grandparents got married, and then you can look it up on google maps it makes it a little more real.

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Been doing this since 1999, both my own and my wife's ancestry.

 

I started with only my mum and dad's details and have now got my own lineage back to the 1500's in Scotland.

My wife's is somewhat more difficult as she has quite a few Irish in her line and most of the Irish records were destroyed in Dublin when the Post Office was burnt down in 1922.

 

Statutory Registration came into force in Scotland on the 1st January 1855 and the certificates remained pretty much the same as they are today (until a few years ago anyway), before 1855 you have to rely on the church records (called the OPR's) but these can be very patchy and vague at times and each parish kept records at different times and are only as good as the minister or clerk who kept them.

 

I wouldn't pay Ancestry or Find my Past (just yet), first things first, get as much info from family first, however not everything family knows will be the truth.

Example my dads granny was born Illegitimately back in the late 1800's, but by the time she got married she'd changed her name and added a father to the marriage certificate, i discovered the truth through the census records as in 1891 she was still using her birth name but a couple of years later she'd changed it to the name the family knew her by.

 

At Scotland's people you can get scanned images of all the certificates from 1855 up to certain years (privacy laws), OPR's going back to 1553, census records from 1841, wills & testaments etc etc.

However it does cost for each image, but if you can get to the Scotland's People centre located at the National Archives Building at the start of Princes Street you can make huge ground then you can download the certificates at home and not waste money by searching blindly.

 

One site which is really good for finding if an event for an ancestor is recorded is the Mormon site: https://familysearch.org/search/

Not all events are recorded, some estimates put the figure at around about 40-60% of the Scottish population were recorded in the church records, so often you'll hit a brick wall as no information exists.

 

Once you get into it, you'll get bitten by the bug and will love it, I do.

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Governor Tarkin

Good luck.

Ever thought about getting your DNA tested to trace your genetic origins?

It was an eye opener for me. I'd always known I was a bit of a mongrel but didn't know just how much!

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I started out with Scotland's People - paying for searches and certificates - and then moved on to myheritage.com.  Once I plugged in what I'd already found to myheritage.com, it started to match with people who'd already done the leg work.  I've got a fairly unusual surname, so going back on my Dad's side was relatively (ha ha) easy, and unearthed some fascinating information. Like my great-grandfather's employment history and how he ended up at Galipoli aged 40 (thankfully having already had kids, otherwise I wouldn't be here), and a juicy scandal involving my great-great-grandmother's employment as a domestic servant and a hasty marriage to a local ploughman "who, she declares, is not the father of the child".

 

It has cost me about ?120 in total in fees to myheritage and Scotland's People, but I think it's been worth it.  I'm back to scanned parish records of the marriage in 1740 of my great-great-great-great-great grandparents, and my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather apparently born in 1683.

 

My mother's side has, unfortunately, been a lot trickier due to a very common name, and I've hit a blank pretty much after my grandparents on that side.

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Good luck.

Ever thought about getting your DNA tested to trace your genetic origins?

It was an eye opener for me. I'd always known I was a bit of a mongrel but didn't know just how much!

 

I'm waiting on my results now.

I have deliberately held off getting it done, until I had more information about my ancestry, I have now reached that point.

 

My family name is I believe an Anglicized form of a French name which may have come over from France sometime in the 1500/1600's possibly French Huguenots.

As far as I can tell I have only one Irish line, no English lines and for the last 400-500 years totally Scottish lines, so any Mainland European DNA would possibly throw some light on my ancestry.

 

There is other evidence which points to my surname being French and that is at the same time my family name first appeared in it's current spelling in Scotland in the 1680's there was also a family in Quebec who were being called by the same name, the same spelling but when I researched further I discovered that this was nothing more than a variant of their proper French name.

Back in Scotland I discovered the variant used before the present spelling of my name and it sounded similar to the French name in Quebec.

 

People forget that back 400+ years ago most people couldn't read or write so forget about the spelling of your name as that changes through the ages and is totally depending on who is writing it down, what doesn't change is the phonetic sound of your name, that generally stays the same through the ages and doesn't matter if a person could read or write.

 

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I started out with Scotland's People - paying for searches and certificates - and then moved on to myheritage.com.  Once I plugged in what I'd already found to myheritage.com, it started to match with people who'd already done the leg work.  I've got a fairly unusual surname, so going back on my Dad's side was relatively (ha ha) easy, and unearthed some fascinating information. Like my great-grandfather's employment history and how he ended up at Galipoli aged 40 (thankfully having already had kids, otherwise I wouldn't be here), and a juicy scandal involving my great-great-grandmother's employment as a domestic servant and a hasty marriage to a local ploughman "who, she declares, is not the father of the child".

 

It has cost me about ?120 in total in fees to myheritage and Scotland's People, but I think it's been worth it.  I'm back to scanned parish records of the marriage in 1740 of my great-great-great-great-great grandparents, and my great-great-great-great-great-great grandfather apparently born in 1683.

 

My mother's side has, unfortunately, been a lot trickier due to a very common name, and I've hit a blank pretty much after my grandparents on that side.

 

Depending on the area, often the names of children can help break down the brick walls.

 

Example, if one of your families had say a daughter called Alison and there were 3 other families in the same area with the same surname, it can be really difficult finding out who is who, however and it's sometimes something that needs done and its a matter of elimination by looking at all 3 families to discover who their parents & grandparents were, when you do that you find that one of the grandmother's was called Alison and there you have it, in all likelihood it's your family and another brick wall crumbles. 

Sadly it doesn't always work like that, but sometimes it does.

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William H. Bonney

My mum did our family tree a few years ago. Some fascinating relations came to light none more so than jm Barrie.

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Not DNA testing but I was once getting my eyes scanned by an optician and he told me I was not a true Celt! I asked him to explain and he said you are from much further south (I live in Edinburgh). In reply I said my maternal grandmother was from Newcastle at which he laughed and said no much further south than that! Had me puzzled then and I still am.

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Did mine (Dad's side) on Scotland people and got back to 1850's. Family lived in Newtongrange, Lower Largo in Fife and would you believe it? Tranent!

 

Scotlands People and the National Archives I think. Was a few years ago (maybe 6 or 7 years).

 

Interestingly, I also managed to get in touch with a chap from Canada who's dad was in the Merchant Navy during WWII with my Grandad. Their ship was hauling coal in the med when a German Stuka sunk it. They plane then circled round and shot the survivors in the water and the guy in Canada's dad was one of the six that survived out of around 50 odd men. He escaped through Spain but was caught and put in a POW camp.

 

Very interesting doing your tree and not so difficult. If you find birth, marriage and death's you have cracked it. 

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Did mine (Dad's side) on Scotland people and got back to 1850's. Family lived in Newtongrange, Lower Largo in Fife and would you believe it? Tranent!

 

Scotlands People and the National Archives I think. Was a few years ago (maybe 6 or 7 years).

 

Interestingly, I also managed to get in touch with a chap from Canada who's dad was in the Merchant Navy during WWII with my Grandad. Their ship was hauling coal in the med when a German Stuka sunk it. They plane then circled round and shot the survivors in the water and the guy in Canada's dad was one of the six that survived out of around 50 odd men. He escaped through Spain but was caught and put in a POW camp.

 

Very interesting doing your tree and not so difficult. If you find birth, marriage and death's you have cracked it. 

 

You should be able to go back at least one more generation if you got back to the 1850's at Scotlands People, especially in the places you mention.

Your folks should be in the 1851 census and possibly in the 1841 census as well, they will tell you their age at the census and where they were born, well the 1851 census will,

 

http://www.freecen.org.uk/

Have a lot of census information which you can search for free, not everywhere is covered, but it's free.

 

 

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Fxxx the SPFL

If you're based in Scotland then Scotlandspeople (https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) at the National Archives on Princes Street used to let you go in for a day and use their electronic equipment to search. Not sure if they still do. They also let you use the online version, which I think is like a pay per view for each certificate/census record.

 

They seemed to have a lot of stuff, although it only goes back so far mid to late 1800s if I remember correctly.

I did the National Archives on Princes St it cost around ?12 for a day pass but that was ten years ago but i got back to 1790's in one day managed to look through some old parish records using a hand held disk thing with a handle on it and found one of my relatives was from a small hamlet in Ayrshire call Barnwell surname on my grans side was Neil. He was a second lieutenant aboard a Tea Clipper called the India Bogremann that sailed to Serinderabad with his wife and three children came back a number of years later with more kids and a promotion since then i just haven't found time to research properly. But as someone else has said the Mormon site i believe is free and meant to be really good. I was told that Mormons work in the archive office on a daily basis and constantly update records not sure if they pay for this or if there is some agreement with National Registers Scotland to allow them to research for free because they help NRS to update microfiche documents onto computer database.

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I did the National Archives on Princes St it cost around ?12 for a day pass but that was ten years ago but i got back to 1790's in one day managed to look through some old parish records using a hand held disk thing with a handle on it and found one of my relatives was from a small hamlet in Ayrshire call Barnwell surname on my grans side was Neil. He was a second lieutenant aboard a Tea Clipper called the India Bogremann that sailed to Serinderabad with his wife and three children came back a number of years later with more kids and a promotion since then i just haven't found time to research properly. But as someone else has said the Mormon site i believe is free and meant to be really good. I was told that Mormons work in the archive office on a daily basis and constantly update records not sure if they pay for this or if there is some agreement with National Registers Scotland to allow them to research for free because they help NRS to update microfiche documents onto computer database.

 

?15 per day now.

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I did the National Archives on Princes St it cost around ?12 for a day pass but that was ten years ago but i got back to 1790's in one day managed to look through some old parish records using a hand held disk thing with a handle on it and found one of my relatives was from a small hamlet in Ayrshire call Barnwell surname on my grans side was Neil. He was a second lieutenant aboard a Tea Clipper called the India Bogremann that sailed to Serinderabad with his wife and three children came back a number of years later with more kids and a promotion since then i just haven't found time to research properly. But as someone else has said the Mormon site i believe is free and meant to be really good. I was told that Mormons work in the archive office on a daily basis and constantly update records not sure if they pay for this or if there is some agreement with National Registers Scotland to allow them to research for free because they help NRS to update microfiche documents onto computer database.

It's amazing what you can find out.

 

My Father's Mother (my Grandmother) was born in the Canongate in 1905, my Mother's Grandfather died in the Canongate in 1947 in the same address as my Grandmother was born in, he died 6 years before my Mum & Dad starting going out with each other, both families not knowing each other and only when I did the family tree did it emerge that there was a connection between the families through an address.

 

Another was my wife's best friend whom she's known for the last 40+ years, anyway her friends mother asked me to do her fathers family tree and it turned out that 200 odd years ago we had shared a common ancestor, one of her ancestors was the brother of one of my direct ancestors, so unknown to my wife or her best friend we shared a common ancestor and we were something like 5th cousins or something like that.

 

 

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Fxxx the SPFL

It's amazing what you can find out.

 

My Father's Mother (my Grandmother) was born in the Canongate in 1905, my Mother's Grandfather died in the Canongate in 1947 in the same address as my Grandmother was born in, he died 6 years before my Mum & Dad starting going out with each other, both families not knowing each other and only when I did the family tree did it emerge that there was a connection between the families through an address.

 

Another was my wife's best friend whom she's known for the last 40+ years, anyway her friends mother asked me to do her fathers family tree and it turned out that 200 odd years ago we had shared a common ancestor, one of her ancestors was the brother of one of my direct ancestors, so unknown to my wife or her best friend we shared a common ancestor and we were something like 5th cousins or something like that.

That's pretty spooky Jim having said that as the saying goes 'were all jock tamson's bairns'

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That's pretty spooky Jim having said that as the saying goes 'were all jock tamson's bairns'

 

The best one I heard was from a guy I used to work with.

 

He was from Innerleithen and his wife was from Penicuik, it transpired that both of their parents had got married on the same day, then it got really spooky when they discovered that they were both married by the same minister right after each other.

The minister had married one couple in Innerleithen then drove up to Penicuik and married the other couple, then 20 years later their children met and got married as well.

 

Now that's spooky.

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I found this quote on olivetreegenealogy.com

 

"One very interesting probability model created by a demographer for genealogists, is that a child born in 1947 in Englad tracing back to 1492 would have 60,000 ancestors. Going back further to 1215, this child would find that 80% of the entire population of England at that time would be on his/her family tree!"

 

So we are all probably related to Paul Kane.

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You should be able to go back at least one more generation if you got back to the 1850's at Scotlands People, especially in the places you mention.

Your folks should be in the 1851 census and possibly in the 1841 census as well, they will tell you their age at the census and where they were born, well the 1851 census will,

 

http://www.freecen.org.uk/

Have a lot of census information which you can search for free, not everywhere is covered, but it's free.

I might just do that J-J. As I said, it was around 6 years or so ago I did it and I had a bit more time on my hands. That bloody JKB keeps me busy these days  :whistling:

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I found this quote on olivetreegenealogy.com

 

"One very interesting probability model created by a demographer for genealogists, is that a child born in 1947 in Englad tracing back to 1492 would have 60,000 ancestors. Going back further to 1215, this child would find that 80% of the entire population of England at that time would be on his/her family tree!"

 

So we are all probably related to Paul Kane.

 

And they would be right as well, maybe not the Paul Kane part.

 

Remember back in time people often were born, got married, had kids and died all in the same village or town, and never moved anywhere, their parents the same and their kids as well and so on and on and on.

 

Obviously sooner or later you'll end up with cousins marrying each other and then they'll marry cousins and so on and so forth.

I have a few marriages between cousins or 2nd cousins, I would think everyone has, especially the further back they go.

 

It's staggering the amount of ancestors you have as each generation doubles itself, 4 Grandparents, 8 Great Grandparents, 16 GG Grandparents, 32, then 64, then 128 and so on, it soon adds up.

 

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And they would be right as well, maybe not the Paul Kane part.

 

Remember back in time people often were born, got married, had kids and died all in the same village or town, and never moved anywhere, their parents the same and their kids as well and so on and on and on.

 

Obviously sooner or later you'll end up with cousins marrying each other and then they'll marry cousins and so on and so forth.

I have a few marriages between cousins or 2nd cousins, I would think everyone has, especially the further back they go.

 

It's staggering the amount of ancestors you have as each generation doubles itself, 4 Grandparents, 8 Great Grandparents, 16 GG Grandparents, 32, then 64, then 128 and so on, it soon adds up.

Aye, My grandfather was born on a small island north of Ulster and his line goes back quite far apparently. Aside from the odd visitor the gene pool was a bit thin. Surprised I'm not a web toed albino.

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Aye, My grandfather was born on a small island north of Ulster and his line goes back quite far apparently. Aside from the odd visitor the gene pool was a bit thin. Surprised I'm not a web toed albino.

That doesn't sound good. Sure youre not a hibby?

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Geoff the Mince

Good luck.

Ever thought about getting your DNA tested to trace your genetic origins?

It was an eye opener for me. I'd always known I was a bit of a mongrel but didn't know just how much!

Albanian with a bit of Slavic ?
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That doesn't sound good. Sure youre not a hibby?

Hud oan I'll just count...10 fingers 10 toes, defo not one of them. Don't think my forefathers (on that side anyway) took kindly to any kind of Hibernians.

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I did the National Archives on Princes St it cost around ?12 for a day pass but that was ten years ago but i got back to 1790's in one day managed to look through some old parish records using a hand held disk thing with a handle on it and found one of my relatives was from a small hamlet in Ayrshire call Barnwell surname on my grans side was Neil. He was a second lieutenant aboard a Tea Clipper called the India Bogremann that sailed to Serinderabad with his wife and three children came back a number of years later with more kids and a promotion since then i just haven't found time to research properly. But as someone else has said the Mormon site i believe is free and meant to be really good. I was told that Mormons work in the archive office on a daily basis and constantly update records not sure if they pay for this or if there is some agreement with National Registers Scotland to allow them to research for free because they help NRS to update microfiche documents onto computer database.

The Mormons have a Family History Centre on Colinton Road. While when I visited it in 2001 it did not offer as many search resources as the records office in town, it was free. You had to phone to book it and if I mind right, the opening times were limited.

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Ancestry is really good. Get your parents birth certificates, marriage certificates etc. and you're good to go.

 

I traced mine back to 1810, found 'cousins' in Canada, Australia and USA!

 

My only issue with the likes of Ancestry and others like them, is that they don't do any of the leg work.

If you join you put a name in and you may well get matches, matches from other peoples trees, other peoples research, others peoples mistakes. you don't learn the information for yourself.

 

On my wife's tree on her fathers side, someone in the family had been on ancestry and had used someone else's information, unfortunately it was wrong, whoever had done the initial research had made a mistake and my wife's uncle had used that information, he didn't learn it for himself, and that's the problem with those sites.

 

Ancestry & Find my Past and others are good for helping to fill in additional pieces of information, such as Census, Military Records, Newspaper Articles, and I use Find my Past on occasions, but I only use them to locate further pieces of information to add to information which I have researched myself, such as this, one of my wife's ancestors had died in a railway accident on the Monklands Railway in 1863, I searched Find my Past to see if it had been reported in the newspapers of the day and it had and I got additional details from what I knew already, so for that sort of thing It's good, but for family trees, no I don't use them for that. 

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Thanks for the info guys, looking forward to getting started on this and seeing where my ancestry is from.

 

You do realise once you start you'll never finish it, as there is always someone else & another generation to find.

 

Good luck

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Shanks said no

I did a bit of researched few years ago but dropped it due to family bereavements. Got back to 1840s on dads side then hit brick walls, until then I thought calling every first son James was cool but not when every generation has the same first name. Also because a lot of men were sailors I had trouble with the census.

On mums side I got back to 1810's and much to my amusement found we were Yetholm gypsies, one of the 3 main families. My rather posh mother didn't see the funny side!

 

 

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Jambo-Jimbo

Good luck.

Ever thought about getting your DNA tested to trace your genetic origins?

It was an eye opener for me. I'd always known I was a bit of a mongrel but didn't know just how much!

 

Got my DNA results back from Ancestry.

 

I had hoped to find some Mainland European DNA and the result was 32% Western European, which is predominately from France, Germany & The Benelux Countries, so slap bang right in middle of where I had hoped to find it was from. 

This 32% clearly isn't just from one or two people so the theory of my family name having been from French origins would seem to have been bourne out by this result, this was also the second highest % of my DNA, the highest at 44% was from Ireland but that isn't a surprise as we know that most of us Scots are descended from Irish Celtic Tribes who migrated to Scotland 1000-1500 years ago. 

 

So, I'm well chuffed with these results and will seriously now consider getting my entire genome done, which will show the origins of my Father's side and my Mother's side, however it is a lot more money.

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Jambo-Jimbo

I got my DNA done by Ethnoancestry 7 years ago, sent off a saliva sample, quite interesting;

 

Your Y chromosome is in the Pictish subgroup, which is very common in Scotland and rare elsewhere. The subgroup appears to be more frequent in the east of Scotland, but is also present at lower frequency in north England and Ireland as well as being spread much further afield in colonial times. You descend in the male line from the aboriginal inhabitants of Scotland, who were the ancestors of the Picts and other indigenous northern Brythonic people.

 

My mum also did the family tree, spent a lot of time and cash on it and got back as far as the 1700s. Fascinating stuff and undoubtedly whoever does it will uncover some ancestors to be proud of and some right dodgy characters!

 

Yes, my wife I'm afraid to say is the descendent of a criminal, a jail bird, oh the shame of it!

 

in 1865 her G-G-G Grandfather spent time in Jedburgh Jail, a whole month with hard labour I might add, and his crime, he was caught poaching, a month's hard fecking labour for poaching, jeez that's brutal.

But the Prison Register Transcript does give a physical description of him, his height, complexion, colour of hair, eyes and whether he could read or write, these are things you just don't get from certificates (Birth, Marriage, Death etc).

 

But there is another side of this, a side not recorded and it's what his family would have had to endure, he had a wife & 6 kids at the time, so they would have had to go without any money for that month he was in jail, no money, no or little food, heating (this was end of December 1865) and then when he was released did he just walk straight back into his job?

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