Welcome

This is a new website, still in the creation and setting up stage. The aim is firstly to share some of the work that I have been doing. I've been a Family Historian and Geneaologist for about 15 years. Three years ago i did a masters degree in History, choosing the Open University becuase I could work while I was with my husband who worked abroad. But it also foccussed on local history, relating what happens at a local and sometimes at a micro level (studying a small area over many years) to what is happening on a National scale. I undertook this in middle age partly because I did not know enough about using Archives and Databases and knowing the questions to ask. I did not know what existed and where those collections were held.

The research I did was on emigration of single women from the United Kingdom, and mostly from Scotland to the New World in the latter half the the 19th Century.  The questions I wanted to answer were why did single women travel, how and what happened to them. Only some of that was covered and I hope to continue the stories of some of the women and children I came across in my writing. Many of these girls were in Orphanges and Girls Homes in Aberdeen. Some of the birth certificates I looked at in Aberdeen City Archives do not show up in the National Records of Scotland. I hope to reunited some of those children and women with family members and to have those recorded whose births I can prove are not in the public records. Along the way I have the knowledge and facilities to help trace families in Scotland, in the UK, in the US (where I originate and can trace with great accuracy to early early settlers) and in Canada. I'll have a go at anything and have a small group of folk who might help me translate.

So. Lets go.

Far Ye Fae

Where are you from?  Who are you people? There are so many books written about the heritage of Scotland. Try The Scottish Nation by Prof T Devine. For Scottish Emigration the expert is Marjory Harper who is Professor of History here in Aberdeen Scotland. In Aberdeenshire, life has been mainly agricultural for centuries. Still, on Deeside, a system of estates managed by single families still prevails with farming and fishing very much part of every day life. Of course there is still an Oil Industry and Fishing Industry there.  There has been Paper Mills in Aberdeen for over two hundred years and Aberdeen itself has always been a hub of Industry leading to the same poverty, mortality and overcrowding that was seen in Glasgow and Dundee in the 18th 19th and 20th centuries. Families lived together in small flats and dwellings. I lived in a tiny first floor flat in Chattan Place in Aberdeen and could never get over that the flat must have held large families at one time. In villages such as Kincardine O'Neill large families may have worked as tenant farmers, with children sent out to farm for their father, or for other farmers. The girls often went into service for wealthier families locally or sent into the city or larger towns such as Banchory.

If your family are from the North East of Scotland what do you know about them? I plan, when my designer tells me how, to have a log in area of the website so people can leave comments and with luck, be able to upload trees and information.