rland Aberdeenshire - Jean Jenie (your topic Feb 21, 2007

[Alan SHARP]

Greetings All.

Yes you have confirmed it, I'm blind. Like proof reading your own copy, you only see what you want to see, not necessarily what is in front of you. Now I can not look at a post, without spotting the "key hole, PM" icon at the bottom of the poster's details, to the right of the screen.

I think that possibly with my first PM or two, I did find my way to the PM controls through that icon, though now as it is my habit to compose my post in WS WORD, to check spelling, grammar and typos, I normally enter via the user control panel link, and also don't use the inbuilt quote function.

PS Apologies to Lynne SMITH for stealing her post thread.

Alan SHARP.

[Russell]

Hi Alan

I'm sure that Lynn will soon relise that quite a few threads on TalkingScot are hijacked temporarily but usually drift back to the original topic.
Some of the best hints and tips are concealed in posts about something entirely different. Great information but awfully difficult to find when you want to refresh your memory about something. you know you saw it but can't remember where.
Sorry Lynn I digress too.

Russell

[speleobat2]

Hi Lynne,

Sorry about the distraction! Here's some information you might be able to use in your search. Are you familiar with the Aberdeen and NE Scotland Family History Society? http://anesfhs.org.uk/

They have published many booklets of the gravestone inscriptions for the cemeteries in NE Scotland. If you go to their home page and click on Monumental Inscriptions it will take you to a search page for the indexes for the booklets. Both Tarland and Migvie are available and both have Smiths and Gaulds listed. You have to purchase the booklets to get the full inscriptions, but they aren't expensive. The indexes give you the names, stone number and dates in the inscriptions so you can get some idea of which if any of your relatives might be buried there.

Hope this helps!

Carol

[Alan SHARP]

Hi Russell.

Perhaps you, and AndrewP, should rig up a flashing strobe alongside your forum's SEARCH function (top right of screen). We get in such a hurry to scroll down, to see what's new, too often we forget it's there. The more I use the search function, the more I like it. Found the target every time for me, after it was brought to my attention. Proir to that I had spent an hour scrolling through RootsChat, one day, for KennethM's post that was on the TalkingScot Eaglesham thread.

Apologies again Lynne.

Alan SHARP.

[lynne smith]

Hello Carol

Thank you, I found the Aberdeen and NE Scotland Family History Society this morning, and they have everything you said and more. Membership can be purchased for $25.00 Canadian for one year, and that includes their quarterly magazine (might be every three months I forget). Right now they are offering a special if you subscribe September 1st membership will be to December 2011. Have to wait until September 1st though. In the meanwhile, I browsed around their site, submitted my querry, and got the following:

Stone 27 ... James Smith 29 April 1871
... Margaret Eggo 13 July 1872
... James Smith 29 October 1874
... Jane Coutts Smith 6 November 1874
... Charles Smith 5 March 1875

I am not sure about the names Margaret Eggo, Jane Coutts Smith or Charles Smith. And all the dates are so close. Was their a plague or something then? And then, perhaps unrelated people were buried together? I'm very new at this so maybe I should not jump to such suspicions or conclusions. But this is fun, read in the same website that one of the James Smith and (forget her name) were fined quite heavily for fornication, oh my goodness !! Recently I found out one of my great grandfathers who lived in the same area I live died in an insane asylum - was that ever a well kept family secret, poor old fella, they probably buried him in potters field too !!

Lynne Smith

[speleobat2]

Hi Lynne,

The ANESFHS people are a great bunch! They also have a library full of research materials and will do research for you for a very modest fee. One thing you might want to check on after you join is the ancestor charts. The index is available to download from the website. You will receive a blank chart and they ask that each member fill it in and send it back. You can order copies of other members charts from the index. I found an uncle of my grandmother's in South Africa this way. I also found that a cousin of my grandmother's and his wife had drowned in Austrailia from a MI booklet. If you get lucky, the gravestones sometimes read like pages of book with stories on them not just dates and names!

On the deaths of so many members close together, it's hard to say. Typhoid fever was a major killer then, but there were many unnamed fevers that were around then too and TB was rampant.

Good luck with your searches and keep asking us questions!

Carol

[lynne smith]

I am just vibrating at the moment, I followed your instructions to the letter and pulled up 28 relatives in the burial ground Migvie and 11 in burial ground Tarland, the first 5 were from burial ground Coldstone (those are the ones I talked about previously) , and I had stumled across that discovery. I am learning to print off anything that can help, and most certainly your information, thank you so much! My hubby keeps checking on my progress, and is really happy also. The only Smith family he new was his father and one cousin, so he is really pleased and reads any literature I can find for him. One of these, without looking up anything, is my husband's grandmother Isabella Kellas. I have enough research now to keep me out of mischief for a few days. Does Kirkyard mean graveyard in gaelic? I am not letting our kids know until I put this all together, or they will nag me for information!! I have already done my father's ancestry, but never had any brick walls, but had quite a lot of information to start with. This really is fun! You do agree then, that there might have been some kind of sickness for the first 5 discoveries dying so close in date to each other. Don't think I put your name on the top of this note Jean - Jenie, sorry.

Lynne Smith

[Alan SHARP]

Greetings Lynne.

Those of us who have been digging for information for years, know the thrill of finally digging up something significant. And share with you the excitement of a successful find. That's what keeps us ALL going.

Reading your thread, I venture to offer a suggestion or two.

Printing out every thing, can get quite expensive, but scraps of paper notations always manage to get lost. What I now try to do is put all my hand written notes, press cuttings etc into note books or clear files, dating each page. You never know, when you may want to go back to it. Just yesterday I had a request for namesake electoral roll information, I noted 30 years ago, then lost some where in old files or suit cases, as that family was not related. (Bombay SHARP'S)

For research on the web, I now buy the largest, and cheapest, memory stick I can get, from the discount store, and at first save anything, vaguely interesting, to the stick. Later I sort through (tidy up) what is important, on the stick, and file it in the relevant repository, be it on the hard drive, a dedicated memory stick, or written to a storage disc. What I print out, is normally short editorial pieces which I laminate for display, and handling purposes, or put in to a made up clear file, on that subject.

I also have several, non family research projects, on the go, so hours can be wasted trying to re-discover information seen on the web, but passed over the first time.

Regarding any post you have written, you will notice an icon in red (top right of page – but only on your threads) that states [edit]. You can use it, at any time, to adjust your text, correct typos etc, or just update that thread. The process of editing is similar to placing the original thread.

All the best,

Alan SHARP.

[AndrewP]

Does Kirkyard mean graveyard in gaelic?

Hi Lynne,

Kirk is a Scots (not Gaelic) word for church, derived from kirkja in the Norse language. The kirkyard, or churchyard is the ground that the church stands in, which was often used as the parish burial ground, before it became the local council's job to set up public cemeteries.

All the best,

AndrewP

[lynne smith]

Thank you for your note of encouragement! For the last couple of days I continued to look for Isabella Ellis, my husband's grandmother. I knew she was born around 1884, that she had been married to someone by the name Morgan and that she had a son from that marriage. After that marriage she married my husband's grandfather John Smith b. 1858. So when looking I gave the information as Isabella Ellis, born UK, death 1926 which is the date on her grave stone.I got nothing time after time. So I thought I'll give them very little information,and see what happens. I put in just Isabella Ellis, born UK. Bingo, up came not only her information, but her parents, and their parents and their parents! Also, her name is Elizabeth Isabella Ellis! But there are still some things to sort out. There is still no information about her first marriage, her first son from that marriage, and no information of her second marriage to John Smith b.1858, nor is there any information of the children from that marriage, one of which is my husband's father Alfred John Smith b. 1898 who had two Smith siblings a brother and a sister. My hubby told me today that he really does not know if there were more than the one Morgan child (I hope that makes sense).

There is a mistake on stone 66 in the burial ground Migvie. Her last name on the stone is Kellas and of course should be Ellas. Is it appropriate for me to let them know at the same time I sign up with them on September 1st? Also the information that I found today was apparently given by a couple in New Zealand, and their Email address is included. Is it appropriate for me to Email them? I do have a question to ask, I have a picture of Isabella Ellis and her two sisters, but there is only one sister recorded. I would like to trace that information down also.

Lynne