Frequently Asked Questions

What this site is

Many people know a little about their ancestors; others know absolutely nothing. I was one of the latter group of people and although some of my family had some background information, most of it was hidden, forgotten or never known. As time passed, I wanted to try to fill in some of the missing details. This site details those findings.

Who this site is for

The short answer to this question is that this site is principally for my own use - as an organisational tool. However, from time to time, relatives enquire about what I have discovered and this is a useful way of providing that information without bulky file transfers. I have actively discouraged any tracking of the site by search engines so you have probably been directly referred to this site by me or someone who was referred by me.

How this site works

Use the links at the top of the page to go to the various main sections of the site. Once you are familiar with the family stories, you may want to jump straight to a particular sections, topic or person within that page and you can do that by clicking on the Q icon at the bottom, left of the page. This icon only appears on pages when extensive links are available and it will open up a more granular index to the events of the families; clicking on an event will take you to that topic. The ^ icon, bottom right, always gets you back to the top of the page you are on.

What this site doesn't do

This site is not an attempt at an narrated family history - that is not in my skill set. I merely list the facts, as I know them, indicate the sources of the information and provide links to reproductions of the original documentary evidence. I also try to indicate my reasons for conducting particular searches in the records. Although it is not a narrative as such, I intend to develop additional pages within the site where consideration of topics and people can be conducted at greater length without interrupting the flow of the main lines of research. Some of these deal with social history, the milieu of our ancestors, an appreciation of which helps flesh out the lives of people mentioned on this site.

Errors and contributions

If anything said on this site seems to be at odds with the facts as you know them, or you have any additional contributions you would wish to add, either privately or for addition to the site or if there is information on the site you think should be removed, please contact me. I would be pleased to hear from you.

How I got into family history

I first started to get interested in my family history in the 1980s. I can’t remember exactly how it came about but I had never known anything about my father’s history nor, really, much about my mother’s. Events in my life led to a long period where I had no contact with my family and perhaps it was this that eventually led me down the track of family history. I can’t think of any specific event that spurred me but something obviously did and this web site is a summary of that "journey".

During the 1980s I worked in the music business as a technician. This usually took me overseas and, typically, I could be travelling for many months before I returned home. Sometimes I was only home for a week before going back on tour; on other occasions I was home for a month or more. During those longer periods I did a lot of reading and my interest in history - and in particular, social history - somehow evolved into an interest in researching the social history of my own family.

Family history was a very different pursuit then. The records were the same, of course, but access to them was not anywhere as easy as it is now with the availability of computer databases. Although I had an early interest in computers, purchasing my first one in the 1980s – Tandys followed by Ataris and then PCs, personal computers were still quite expensive. However, as prices fell and as records started to be digitized the world of family history research changed dramatically. But that was all in the future. In the 1980s the genealogical sources were still largely paper-based. The earliest available indexes that were not paper were microfiches and microfilms and access to these, if you did not live in a city that housed the records, often involved a visit to the library or local Latter Day Saints church centre to look at microfiches and microfilms. This was the norm then.

I knew nothing about researching family history and there was no easy availability of records. This combined with my working lifestyle led me down another route. I had read that the Scots Ancestry Research Society conducted researches for other people and decided to give myself a head-start by commissioning some research into my family history. This fitted in well with my working life as I could request some research be conducted and leave it with them. When I next returned home, there it would be waiting for me.

Reading their reports would lead me to some research on my own account and that raised issues that I thought they could clarify for me, so additional reports were requested. The first report was into “the paternal ancestry of William Neil” and it was dated 23rd June 1987 and was full of fascinating material. I ordered further, more targeted, research from the SARS and received further reports dated 16 July 1987, 18 November 1987, 23 November 1987 and 7 January 1988. These constituted the foundation of the research from which I have tried to build on over the years since then, sometimes drifting away from it and then returned again later, each time adding a little bit more to the picture. As time passed, so did the technology to access records and the number of records available for examination increased. Indexing was more widespread and image databases meant that remote viewing of records was possible. So much has changed in the last forty years that it is hard to remember just how genealogy used to be before the computer.

For a long time I just kept paper records then I started to write up my research in word proceessor documents, spreadsheets and scanned documents but these never really worked well for collaboration. If someone wanted to see your family history the standard way of sharing was a Gedcom file of some sort but with the development of the World Wide Web it was possible to share information via your own web site. I must admit that I intended to do this for some time and had made the odd stab at coding my own site but it was only when an unknown relative contacted me wanting to know as much as possible about our shared ancestors that I was moved to get going. This was clearly a better way of organising information and also making it available for download as required. Also, the next time an unknown relative contacted me everything would be there ready to be read.

I don’t profess to be a great coder of web pages, nor am I much of a historian but I am interested in both and have tried to present an account of how I came to find out the information I have and to document it properly so others can follow my reasoning. The family history world is full of people happy to assist newcomers to the pastime of family history and I have been the beneficiary of lots of help myself, Those that have been particularly helpful are mentioned in the family history pages and I am most grateful for their help and friendliness.

I am not interested in making this web site public; in fact I discourage search engines from finding it. My interests are known to the family history societies I am a member of and that is enough for me. This site is just a way to organise my personal research and to allow limited access to other people at my own discretion with due respect to other people’s privacy. Some pages of the site are password protected for that reason but anyone who has good reason to access those pages is welcome to contact me and ask for access.

At the moment of writing, we are hopefully nearing the end of a long period of confinement due to the Covid pandemic. I had thought that I would have had plenty of time to get up to speed with my family history but it seems there were other things to do. I spent a lot of time reading social, political and religious history because I felt that was an area that would strengthen my ability to think of new ways around the eternal “brick wall” that we all have. I have also rebuilt this web site, which previously was even cruder than it is now, and now I am ready to start again. The great joy about drifting away from family history is returning to it.