Aberdeen University Records

DorothyCoe · Post by **DorothyCoe** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 11:41 am

My great grandfather William McCurrach (but spelled och in the 1881 census) is listed there as a Student of Arts at Aberdeen University.
Can anyone help me to find where to look to see if he graduated, and whether he got some kind of scholarship to go?
Thanks

Post by **Liz Turner** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 6:33 pm

Hi there and welcome Dorothy

Here's a link to the Special Collections and Archives area of the University of Aberdeen web pages:-

http://www.abdn.ac.uk/historic/Intro.shtml

Have a hunt around there and try contacting the archivist. I had a relative who attended the University of Edinburgh and found their archives very helpful. They explained that attending university back then was very different to modern times. Back then students signed up for individual classes with their professors and got certificates when they completed. My relative seems to have been at Edinburgh for less than a year, but left with enough that he practised as a doctor and went to China!

Good luck.

Liz

DorothyCoe · Post by **DorothyCoe** » Tue Jul 15, 2008 6:59 pm

That's very helpful Liz. Thank you. I'll follow that up.
Dorothy

Currie · Post by **Currie** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 8:18 am

Hello Dorothy,

Examination results were often published in newspapers. You could check them at “19th Century British Library Newspapers” down this road viewtopic.php?t=11449&start=0

A search for the name McCurrach or McCurroch produced an absolute zero but that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. If you search in the Aberdeen Journal you’ll find a list of Local Examination results published on 21 July 1880 and 15 July 1881. I couldn’t see your name there but may have missed it. It’s only a list of those who passed.

There’s an article 9 August, 1879 and it looks like these Local Exams were some sort of Entrance Exam and only started in 1880. On 24 August 1881 there’s a large advert which seems to set out how things work

It might be worth a look as maybe there’s other information or lists of graduates etc buried in there somewhere.

Hope this helps,
Alan

DorothyCoe · Post by **DorothyCoe** » Wed Jul 16, 2008 10:48 am

Thank you so much for all your help Alan, on this post and my other one. You've given me lots of lines of enquiry to follow up and pointer to a set of books about the north east which I didn't know existed. Tracking them down will be the next challenge as I see that the most obviously useful is out of print

I'll trawl the Aberdeen journal and see what I can find.
Thanks again.
Dorothy