Walker family from dundee/perthshire

[ozziehistorybuff]

Hello from down under,
I was wondering if anyone could help me with finding information about my late husband's family? I have a small amount of information given by his cousin but seemingly not enough to be able to further my search. My husband's name was the same as his father and grandfather; David Ogilvie Walker.
The information The information I have is ; for his grandfather,David Ogilvie Walker born 21st October,1887 @ 4 Dalfields Walk,Dundee,Fife ,he married Mary Stewart Watson born Jan 3rd, 1891 at New Brick row, Cowdenbeath. They had 5 children (all now deceased except for his aunt),
David,my husband's father
John ,his Uncle
Mary,known as May ,in the family
Alexander known as Alex
I have tried various sources but to no avail,does someone have any information they would be willing to pass on to me. I would be very grateful as I promised my husband I would try and do his family history but as stated above, not a lot of luck.since I am on an aged pension I can't afford financially to commit to a lot of view for credit or fee based sites. thanking you in advance.

[WilmaM]

Welcome to Talking Scot

A quick way to get a 'skeleton' family tree is to go for marriage certificates.

You have his grandparent's detail - where did you get them? from family information or from birth/death or marriage certificates?

I had a look on Scotlands People [ the official pay-per-view site for All Scottish records]
there seems to be a marriage for a couple with those names in Cowdenbeath, Fife between 1910 and 1915.
If that ties in with other info you have [ the ages of their children] I would download that and it will give you the names of both the couple's parents.
Looking for their marriages will subsequently give you their parents' names, along with addresses and occupations and witness names, which could tie in with the broader tree. So with just 3 certificates you could have 3 generations and a dozen more individuals names.

Using that information you could then look for the census records for the family to get their children's names and ages.
The official census records 1841 - 1911 are found on Scotlands People, but Freecen.org.uk has transcripts of many of them for free. Not so good for the later years [1881,1891] but better coverage the further back you go.

Family Search is another free site for records [familysearch.org] but it can be a hit or a miss especially with the newer records.

I hope that's given you a bit of a jumping off point, any problems do just shout we are happy to help guide you in the right direction, but I warn you it's addictive!

[speleobat2]

Do you have spouses' names for the 5 children? Walker is a common name and the spouses names will make it easier to track the children in the census records.

Carol

[speleobat2]

Hi all,

This family is challenging because the names are very common. Grandfather David Ogilvie Walker's father's name was also David Ogilvie Walker. This is from the marriage cert. for David and Mary Stewart Watson. David's mother was Margaret Sharp. Mary's father was Alexander Watson, coal miner, and her mother was Mary Stewart. David's father was a boilermaker. I found them on the 1901 Census on Ancestry indexed as David Walker and Margaret S. Walker. Mary's parents were indexed as Alexander Watson and Stewart Watson. So far I have found Dundee in Angus, Forfarshire, and Fife. I had forgotten about the changing counties! The Walkers had 6 children at home in 1901. The Watsons had 9.

That's as far as I have gotten with this. Time for a break!

Carol

[speleobat2]

I couldn't resist going back one more generation to see if there was another David Ogilvie Walker. There wasn't. The next generation back is William Walker, Ploughman who married Agnes Ogilvie. Their son David was a ship riveter and the original David Ogilvie Walker. Margaret Sharp's parents were Thomas Sharp Marine Engineer and Rachel Biddie Wotherspoon. The writing is a little unclear, but that looks right. Margaret was a Jute-spinner.

Carol