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View Full Version : Upsides and Downside of a breakthough!



Rubina
09-11-2008, 1:34 AM
Hi!

Since finding this forum I have spent more time on it (admittedly greatly widening my knowledge and attempting to give info to others) than I have in researching my own tree which was the whole point of joining the forum in the first place! I just love the thrill of a new research I guess!

However, having decided today that I needed to pin down my Scottish forebears so that I could attempt to complete my 89 year old Dad's "Cullen History Book", I bit the bullet and bought some Scotland's People credits.

The Upside is I have managed to get marriage certs and birth certs two generations back than I was before. Also, excitingly, I now have a retired coalminer who has become a shepherd and a widow who has become a flowerer! (note previous thread of prostitutes versus Ag. Labourers!). Makes a change to my consistent Coalminers and Bricklayers for over 200 years paternal and maternal respectively. Mind you, as my Dad pointed out, there's no shame in coming from a hard working, working class family!

The downside My research today has also revealed that two of my coalmining forebears died in the mines. William Winning in 1858 was crushed in a mine and his son John Winning died in 1865 in a mine explosion.

Another thing: I suspect, but haven't yet proved, that my GG Grandmother was in the Magdaline Home in Glasgow in 1881. This was a place for "Fallen Women" which could have been anything from prostitutes, petty criminals, unmarried mother and any other woman who didn't fit into the normal social respectable norm of the time. (There was a horrifying documentary a year or so ago on Magdaline Homes in Ireland that showed the harshness of the regime). If I prove that my relative spent some time here I doubt I will tell my Dad this about his Grandmother!).

Rubina

Procat
09-11-2008, 1:42 AM
Well done Rubina.

It's funny how different people react when you find things like that.

My 88 year old Mum is interested in everything warts and all. Yet there are others in the family who I need to be very circumspect about sharing things with.

Astoria
09-11-2008, 10:36 AM
Congratulations on your finds, I agree with Doug you are right to keep certain information secret from your dad, I think he would be more upset by her possible treatment than the reason she was there in the first place.

Peter Goodey
09-11-2008, 11:03 AM
The only downside for a researcher is getting stuck :)

Aislin
09-11-2008, 6:01 PM
The only downside for a researcher is getting stuck :)

But the upside to being stuck is you get to help others chip away at their ancestors. Sometimes working with another's genealogy leads to insights for your own.