1851 Census Argyll: Constable Colin Campbell .....

[Thrall]

As my first post on this great forum, could some kind person do a 1851 or 1861 Census look up? My gr.gr.grandfather would seem to have been a Colin Campbell, police constable in Duror, Appin, cited Aug.16 1846, in the Kilchrenan Kirk Session minutes as father of a natural son, born "19th. May last" (presumably 1845). He was deceased in 1873, as was also the mother, Ann Sinclair. Amazingly, after nine pages of speculation, threats of oath taking, and referral to the Presbytery of Lorne, or to the sheriff, the birth does not seem to have been registered. At a guess, he, Colin, would have been 25 - 45 years old in 1851.

Thank you,

Thrall

[CatrionaL]

Hullo Thrall

From the lack of response to your request for a look up, it appears that noone on the Forum has easy access to the Argyll Census for 1851 and 1861.

At the top of the Forum up on the right hand side, you'll find the button "Societes". It contains a list of the Scottish Family History Societies in Scotland. Perhaps the Highland one could help you in your quest.

Unless of course you have near you an LDS Centre who could order the films in for you.

Sorry we can't offer more help

Catriona

[Thrall]

Thank you Catriona - in fact I was regretfully coming to the same conclusion. As far as I know, there are no published indices to the 1851 and 1861 censuses in Argyll, so I think I will just have to be patient, and hope SP will not be too long in putting them on line. Perhaps when next in Scotland I'll have a bash at ploughing through the most hopeful parishes. HFHS does not seem to cover Appin, or am I mistaken? I've tried looking for Colin Campbell and Ann Sinclair's deaths, but with those names in that area its fairly needle in haystackish. I have made one attempt to use the local LDS resources but here in Iceland the whole nation has been catalogued back 1000 years and is online, so research is really considered only for professionals trying to correct the data base! However, patience is a virtue, and............

Anyway, finding my gr.grandfather's paternity through a kirk session's ongoing witchhunt as retold in their minutes was incredible luck - I think I'll try to be grateful for small blessings!

Thrall

[AndrewP]

Hi Thrall,

Argyllshire seems to come into the territory of the Glasgow and West of Scotland FHS http://www.gwsfhs.org.uk/

They have done many census indexes, but none for Argyllshire 1851 and 1861 (1841 indexed for some parts of Argyllshire, not including Kilmallie).

So until such time as ScotlandsPeople has these censuses online, then there is only the old-fashhioned method of searching through miles of microfilm. Do the LDS have an FHC in Reykjavik? If not, then the various local studies libraries in Scotland would be your nearest.

As Kilmallie (sometimes spelled as Kilmalie) was moved over a county boundary, you would have to check on which libraries hold that microfilm before you travel. As for 1851, Kilmallie would be on microfilms with other Argyllshire parishes, I would suggest the libraries to consider would be The Mitchell Library (Glasgow) or the Argyll & Bute Library HQ (Dunoon). Inverness Library would be a possibility. In Edinburgh, it would be in New Register House and probably in the Scottish Genealogical Society's library. Edinburgh Central Library's Scottish Room has a fair amount of counties' censuses, but I don't think it includes Argyllshire.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson

[Thrall]

Andrew,
Thank you for the details of locations of the censuses outside Edinburgh - and the warning to check before travelling. When in despair at the number of Campbells in Argyll, I like to dwell on the retort I heard once, that Campbell was definitely not a common name, but perhaps it could be said to be frequent!

Thanks again,

Thrall

[DavidWW]

.....snipped.....born "19th. May last" (presumably 1845).
....snipped..........

Góðan dag Thrall

Nope!, - that expression means the May just past, i.e. May 1846.

Sjáumst síðar!

David

[Thrall]

Þakka þér fyrir, Davið.

Gangi þér vel að finna alla áana þína!

Thrall

For those not so conversant with Icelandic as David, I merely thanked him, and wished him good luck with forebear searching!

[DavidWW]

Þakka þér fyrir, Davið.

Gangi þér vel að finna alla áana þína!

Thrall

For those not so conversant with Icelandic as David, I merely thanked him, and wished him good luck with forebear searching!

As ever, the danger in establishing such phrases in another language is that the person then answers in that language

I'm reasonably confident that, if it had been spoken, that my fluent Swedish could have allowed me to get the jist of Thrall's post, but as written, with "þ" - now unique to the Icelandic alphabet as a letter, but once shared with Old Scots, - as the "thorn" = "th", - and sundry Icelandic diacriticals, I have to confess that I'm struggling , - the other Scandinavian ones I can handle - å æ ä ø ö, as well as the French ç é ê è.

If you ever want to see the massive range of diacriticals that exist just look at Insert/Symbols in MicroSoft Word.

And that's without expanding on the Scottish thorn, or the old form "s" as "ƒ", or even the yogh which just has to deserve an extract from the http://www.scottishhandwriting.com site, -

Yoghs

When reading sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth century documents written in Scotland expect to come across two letters which are now defunct, and which, confusingly, look like a z and a y. These are the archaic letters the ‘yogh’ and the ‘thorn’. Both were ‘done for’ by the standardization of letters by printers.

The yogh looked like a z with an extra loop descending below the line. It represented a guttural 'j' or 'gh' or 'yh' sound. An example appears in the word ‘sonze’ (meaning ‘excuse’ or 'delay').

It crops up in words such as ‘Tailzie’. Other words and place names contained the yogh, such as the place Lenzie (which used to be pronounced Linghie), and the surname Mackenzie. The form 'Zetland' (for 'Shetland') was originally an error, based on a misreading of the 'yogh''. The name was adopted as the official title of Zetland County Council from 1890-1975. However, many Shetlanders and scholars detested it, and the form 'Zetland' is now obsolete. The Concise Scots Dictionary devotes a page to words beginning with the yogh, between the sections devoted to words beginning with the 'y' and the 'z'.

Printers used a z instead of a yogh, and, over the years, pronunciation has changed to match the spelling. An exception is the name Menzies, which in Scotland is pronounced ‘Ming-is’ (the ‘z’ like the 'gh' in Genghis Khan).

See genealogy, see the arcane areas of knowledge that it takes you into

David

[Thrall]

Þank you again, David. Obviously lots to be learnt about the relationship between Old Scots and Icelandic. Sailing round the Hebrides, one sees Old Norse/Icelandic names galore and even Hecla which is presumably older on South Uist than the famous Icelandic entrance to hell!

Straying from the censuses I´m afraid.

Þræll.

[DavidWW]

Þank you again, David. Obviously lots to be learnt about the relationship between Old Scots and Icelandic. Sailing round the Hebrides, one sees Old Norse/Icelandic names galore and even Hecla which is presumably older on South Uist than the famous Icelandic entrance to hell!

Straying from the censuses I´m afraid.

Þræll.

Many people, on the basis that Scotland is part of the UK, don't realise that there were major links between Scotland and the Scandinavian and Baltic states, including Finland and Russia, as well as links with Poland and the Auld Alliance with France. I suspect that there were also links with Iceland.

The further back one goes in Scottish history the more it becomes obvious that Scotland not only had strong trading links with Northern Europe but was also linked linguistically with the Scandinavian countries, as well as there being other such links, e.g. French, as well as Old English, Gaelic, etc.

One of my major problems when learning Swedish, apart from the sore lips deriving from learning how to produce certain sounds, e.g. "u", "y", and "sj" , was the confusion produced on my part when I came across more and more similar sounding words to Scots when I had learnt the correct Swedish pronunciation.

But only a few still have a full overlap in meaning, such as kirk and kyrka, with there only being a small overlap in meaning left for the majority of such words, - hence the confusion - as my Scottish meaning was often distinctly misleading

Not only that but, similar grammattical forms, e.g. the supposedly pure Glaswegian slang of "I am going for to do something...." has an exact and quite correct direct equivalent in Swedish,- "Jag ska för at göra någonting ..."

David