Hi again
After getting that great info from you guys in previous postings re gggg grandparents Alexander Greig and Jane Fraser, I am now trying to find Alexander's parents. I am trying to go back far enough to ascertain if my Greig's surname did originally come from the MacGregor clan as some history sites seem to believe, or if it is just a stand alone surname. From the census records I have worked out Alexanders birth year as 1786 and from the IGI have found quite a few born in that year. However only one in Aberdeenshire : born at Old Deer to James Greig and Jean Simpson. Do you think I would be reasonably correct in assuming this to be Alexanders's parents given the Aberdeenshire connection in all the later generations? Re how far back the surname goes: on the IGI I have found Greigs born in Aberdeen as far back as 1629 but none before that. (I will recheck that in case that was all of Scotland or just Aberdeen)
Thanks
Sandra
Greig Ancestors
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Montrose Budie
- Posts: 713
- Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:37 pm
Hi Sandra
The problem here is the one that there will always be in Scotland.
Just because there's just the one record that fits, doesn't mean that there weren't other records that weren't made, or which haven't survived to the present day.
The history of the presbyterian church in Scotland is full of breakaways from the main Established Church of Scotland. (In such 'breakaways' I'd include the situation that the Episcopalians and the Cameronians who never were part of the Established Church from the re-establishment of presbyterianism around 1690 onwards.) Many such breakaway records haven't survived
There's several things that you can do.
Do naming patterns tell you anything? I'm not suggesting that naming patterns can be used as proof of a link but sometimes they can give strong hints one way or the other. This can be an enigmatic tool, however, especially if there are gaps, i.e. only some children appear in the records, but then those 'gaps' could be miscarriages!
Have a look at the First and Second Statistical Accounts to learn more about the parishes involved including the number of dissenters whose records may not have made it into IGI. You have to become a local historian as well as a genealogist.
Geography can also be a help but, again, it can be a problematic tool, e.g.
just because a family were in just the one parish for several generations, and the only apparant link backwards involves a jump across 5 or 10 parishes, or even a county or two, doesn't mean that this didn't happen. (I can quote you a situation where a family moved from the West coast of R&C to the East coast, in mid-winter, with a week old baby.)
Depending on occupation there can also be other records that may help, even for the lowliest in society, if, for example, they appear in estate records.
Going back to sometime in the mid/late 1700s in the Scottish records is straightforward and can take just a day or two. Getting beyond that, apart from aristoctrats and persistent criminals or 'sinners', can take weeks, months or years ! (Some kirk session records will leave you helpless with laughter, for more than just a few minutes!)
As far as IGI is concerned, you need to be aware of the difference between extracted and submitted records.
Rather than attempt to list all the other sources, their advantages and disadvantages, accessibility, etc., then, if you haven't already done so I'd strongly recommend that you invest in a good book on Scottish research. The two that I use the most are those by Rosemary Bigwood and Kathleeen B Cory.
The only rule is 'Never give up'!
Only I couple of years ago I was fortunate to make contact with a very distant cousin whose father had spend many years researching a mutual line, and whose research took my line back another 3 generations. The way that this was done was by tracking all families of the surname back over a 150 years or so in over 30 parishes. (I know that that's more than 3 generations, but, often, a line has to be traced forward a bit for it to be eliminated.) Apart from anything else, this involved many days at National Archives of Scotland, equivalent to several months research, - luckily he lived a bus ride away from NAS!
Good hunting !
mb
The problem here is the one that there will always be in Scotland.
Just because there's just the one record that fits, doesn't mean that there weren't other records that weren't made, or which haven't survived to the present day.
The history of the presbyterian church in Scotland is full of breakaways from the main Established Church of Scotland. (In such 'breakaways' I'd include the situation that the Episcopalians and the Cameronians who never were part of the Established Church from the re-establishment of presbyterianism around 1690 onwards.) Many such breakaway records haven't survived
There's several things that you can do.
Do naming patterns tell you anything? I'm not suggesting that naming patterns can be used as proof of a link but sometimes they can give strong hints one way or the other. This can be an enigmatic tool, however, especially if there are gaps, i.e. only some children appear in the records, but then those 'gaps' could be miscarriages!
Have a look at the First and Second Statistical Accounts to learn more about the parishes involved including the number of dissenters whose records may not have made it into IGI. You have to become a local historian as well as a genealogist.
Geography can also be a help but, again, it can be a problematic tool, e.g.
just because a family were in just the one parish for several generations, and the only apparant link backwards involves a jump across 5 or 10 parishes, or even a county or two, doesn't mean that this didn't happen. (I can quote you a situation where a family moved from the West coast of R&C to the East coast, in mid-winter, with a week old baby.)
Depending on occupation there can also be other records that may help, even for the lowliest in society, if, for example, they appear in estate records.
Going back to sometime in the mid/late 1700s in the Scottish records is straightforward and can take just a day or two. Getting beyond that, apart from aristoctrats and persistent criminals or 'sinners', can take weeks, months or years ! (Some kirk session records will leave you helpless with laughter, for more than just a few minutes!)
As far as IGI is concerned, you need to be aware of the difference between extracted and submitted records.
Rather than attempt to list all the other sources, their advantages and disadvantages, accessibility, etc., then, if you haven't already done so I'd strongly recommend that you invest in a good book on Scottish research. The two that I use the most are those by Rosemary Bigwood and Kathleeen B Cory.
The only rule is 'Never give up'!
Only I couple of years ago I was fortunate to make contact with a very distant cousin whose father had spend many years researching a mutual line, and whose research took my line back another 3 generations. The way that this was done was by tracking all families of the surname back over a 150 years or so in over 30 parishes. (I know that that's more than 3 generations, but, often, a line has to be traced forward a bit for it to be eliminated.) Apart from anything else, this involved many days at National Archives of Scotland, equivalent to several months research, - luckily he lived a bus ride away from NAS!
Good hunting !
mb
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sandal1
- Posts: 42
- Joined: Sun Dec 28, 2008 5:57 am
greig ancestors
Thankyou mb. I thought it was going too smoothly!!
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Montrose Budie
- Posts: 713
- Joined: Sat Dec 11, 2004 11:37 pm
Re: greig ancestors
Hi sandal1sandal1 wrote:Thankyou mb. I thought it was going too smoothly!!
Back to the mid/late 1700s, even the early 1700s if you are fortunate to find 1855 and thereabouts Scottish death records, it should indeed be 'smooth', - e.g. the death in 1860 of an 80 year old takes you back to a birth ca. 1780, and the marriage of the parents ca. 1745. If the deceased was of a great age in 1855, then that's a bingo, given the extra info in that year alone ! My personal best to date is the death of a 108 year old in Jura in 1855, confirmed by her MI and that of her parents, and the OPR records of her birth and the marriage of her parents !!
It's not so much a question of 'rough' before those dates that, but just that it requires a lot, sometimes an awful lot more time and effort to 'squeeze out', so to write, another generation or two.
To give you another example, illustrating forbye a supreme benefit of the Scottish registration system in terms of the info on the parents on death register entries from 1855 onwards; around 20 years ago, I looked at every record for my own surname in the 40+ parishes based on the general Montrose/Abroath/Forfar/Brechin area.
This included BMD records up to 1901, and tracing back from these in the statutory BMD records, the censuses back to 1841, OPR records in these parishes, MIs, testamentary records, and other readily accessible records.
Incidentally, to have accessed all the BMD records that I looked at in New Register House in Embra would have cost me many £1,000s in England, maybe even in excess of £10,000, never mind the time aspect in the sense of having to wait to see the info on the certificates.
My costs were the daily access fees to NRH, back then £12 per day, so say around £200 for access to NRH - several days were also spent at the cost-free Scottish Records Office next door as TNA was known back then - (that's the NRH figure that my memory produces !!?) plus travel and subsistence.
(BTW I 'cheated' in terms of pre-preparing at home or on the train the then required microfiche order slips; - no self service back then, - just a very strict 3 fiches at a time at NRH!)
It was a fascinating exercise in that it was possible to combine all this info and build a number of extensive trees involving those of this surname in the area.
Sadly, however, in my case, apart from a possible link back to another generation via an apparantly unique naming pattern match, this exercise didn't help me take my tree back further. As is so ever the case, the possible link required belief in a move involving around 30 miles when several later generations were consistently in two of three neighbouring parishes, - not at all impossible, but still subject to further proof that has still to be found.
Wha kens ?
This research took me around 45 days in total, half in Embra, half at home, spread over a period of 6 months (I had recently been made redundant, so had the time to invest in between job searching activities !)
mb