Ardchattan book with family interest

Through the Hall side of the family there’s a branch of the family that settled in Ardchattan, Argyllshire. Thomas Cavers Hall’s sister-in-law Mary Fair (b. 1837, Crailing, Roxburghshire) married gamekeeper William Anderson at Otterburn in 1865. The couple moved around a lot, but eventually settled in Ardchattan, where quite a few of their children were born. None of the children had children themselves, so the line has died out. But I was still grateful to be able to research it.

There’s a dedicated parish history website for Ardchattan, where I found some references to the family. And I was able to research more, online, to discover what had happened to them all.

And now there’s a new book about the parish, showing the area, and recalling memories from the past. I’m going to order a copy, to be able to look at pictures of the area my ggg-aunt lived.

A series of death certificates with wrong details

A big advantage of tracing Scottish ancestors over English ones is that Scottish death certificates (started 1855) record the names of the father and mother of the deceased person. In England no parents are recorded on death certificates, and this adds to the difficulty of reliably tracing a family tree back in time.

Of course this depends on information given to the registrar being correct, and relies on the informant at the death knowing the right details, and being in an ok state to pass on information correctly. Usually parent information recorded on Scottish death certificates is pretty reliable. But there’s a series of death certificates in my Scottish family where time and again it was wrong.

On my granny’s side my ggg-grandfather was William Scott, a farm servant born in Sprouston. He and his wife Jessie brought up my great-granny Elizabeth Scott, their granddaughter. William died at Yetholm in 1895 in his 80s. The informant at his death registration was his son Andrew. Sadly Andrew did not know the names of his grandparents, so that part of the death certificate is blank.

I’ve been able to trace William’s likely parents though: hind Simon Scott and his wife Isabella Hermiston, who had various children baptised at Sprouston, and appear in the 1841 census, just across the border at Mindrum in Carham parish, two doors down from William and family. By the 1851 census Simon Scott was back in Scotland, but his wife had died. Simon died at Chirnside in 1864 in his 80s. The informant at his death was his son Simon, who didn’t know his grandparents’ names. So again that part of the certificate is blank. And, so far, I haven’t been able to trace back beyond Simon, though I have a working theory about his wife’s parents.

Dodgy information on certificates continues in the family though. When Mark Scott, brother of William and son of Simon, died in 1866 at Edrom the informant for his death certificate was his son Simon. Unusually for this family he got the names of his grandparents correct on his father’s death certificate. But something went wrong when he was asked what his mother’s name was i.e. Mark’s widow. He seems to have given his granny’s name, rather than his mother. Ah well. It was nearly right.

Started digitising family photographs

Last night I started scanning the family photographs. I have a system now where I can sit on the sofa, with my laptop, and place the USB scanner beside me, and digitise a few photos at a time.

I’m scanning the photos in high quality archive mode, into TIFF files, to extract as much detail from them as possible. Sadly some are slightly damaged, but at least digitising them gets as much possible from them now. After scanning I place them in archival quality (acid free) envelopes, and then into my dedicated archival storage box to hold the photos in as good a condition as possible long-term.

I plan to post various photographs of the ancestors on this blog over time. To start with here are a few to be going on with.

Firstly here’s a photo (we have others) of my great-grandparents John Dodds and Margaret Hall. I assume this was taken around the time of the First World War, when John enlisted as a soldier. He fought at Gallipoli, but was invalided out, due to severe dysentery.

We also have a photo of Margaret’s father, Thomas Cavers Hall (1850-1917), who was originally from Wilton parish in Hawick, and later farmed at Gattonside Mains near Melrose.

I wish we had a photo of Thomas’s wife, Agnes Fair. I wonder if any of the family have any photos of her? The Australian cousins, descended from their son Alexander, don’t have one either.

We also have an older Hall photo. This is assumed to be two of the five sisters of Thomas Cavers Hall, possibly Euphemia (“Phemie”) and Sarah or another. This photo was taken in a Hawick studio.

Got almost all my archival storage supplies

My husband fetched the goodies for me today from the university archives. I’m just missing the tissue paper, but hopefully he will get that in the next few days.

I’ve got three big cardboard storage boxes: one for each of family photographs, family documents, and family artefacts.

For the photographs I have a large number of paper envelopes to put each one in to protect it, before putting the envelopes into the dedicated storage box.

For the documents, such as the receipts from the time of John Dodds and Margaret Hall getting married, I have a number of expanding gussetted cardboard folders, each to hold multiple documents.

And for the artefacts, such as the bible gifted to Catherine Mary Helen Dodds as thanks for acting as beadle while her brother John was away during World War One, I will wrap each one carefully in tissue paper, before putting it into one of the storage boxes.

All of the storage items are archival quality, so acid free, so will protect the family items really well.

I will be scanning everything gradually, as I put it into proper storage, and will share the results here.

Jean Veitch, Mrs Somner (ca 1770-1804)

This blog post is about one direct ancestor, my 5xg-grandmother Jean Veitch.

She was the only known child of her parents, and was named after both of her grandmothers. Her father’s mother, Jane Thomson, Mrs Veitch, was a minister’s daughter from Peebles. Her mother’s mother, Jean Logan, Mrs Henderson, was the daughter of a landowner from near Lauder, whose family traced back directly to the last of the powerful Logan Barons of Restalrig.

I’ve never been able to trace a birth record for Jean, but she was probably born circa 1770. Her parents had married at the Tron parish in Edinburgh in 1768, when her mother was 41, and her father about 34. Her father William was the son of a landowner in Peeblesshire and later Selkirkshire, but as a younger son he took on a trade, and became a watchmaker, establishing himself in Haddington.

Jean would have grown up in Haddington, and shows up in some of the library borrowing registers which I analysed for my PhD. These are the borrowing records of Gray Library, a public library free for all residents of the town to use. In 1785, when Jean was probably aged about 15, her father William started to borrow volumes of Fielding’s Works for Jean. I know this because this library’s rules at this time requested that people borrowing books for others should record the name of the person they were borrowing for, and William did this, writing that he was borrowing for his daughter Jean. Five years later Jean appeared as a borrower on her own behalf, borrowing Cook’s Voyages. Her maternal uncle Logan Henderson also appeared briefly in the Gray Library borrowing registers around the time he married the local minister’s daughter.

Jean married in February 1794, in Canongate parish, Edinburgh. Her husband was Richard Somner, a farmer’s son from rural East Lothian, born in 1767, whose father was also a surgeon and pharmacist in Haddington. After their marriage the couple lived at various farms, such as Townhead in Yester parish, and then Gilchriston in Saltoun parish. Over the next 10 years they had 8 children: Anne, Margaret, Richard, William, Mary, George, Francis and Jean Veitch.

Sadly the last of these births proved fatal for Jean. The family bible which has survived, mainly because it is a fine example of Scottish bookbinding and so was preserved in a private collection which ended up in Westminster Abbey Library, records that the child’s “mother died about an hour after she was born”.

Jean Veitch was buried in Saltoun churchyard, and her husband left to bring up the children on his own. He did remarry, but 16 years later in 1820, after his children had grown up, which is quite unusual for a time when a widowed husband with children would commonly have remarried soon after his wife died. I shouldn’t read too much into it, but I do wonder if he adored his lost wife. When Richard died he was buried by his first wife in Saltoun, and their eldest daughter Anne.

Jean’s name was carried forward in the family, not only through her daughter, but also through many granddaughters and great-granddaughters. I’ve never seen a picture of her, though I have a copy of a painting of her husband, and a copy of a painting and photo of her son Francis, my 4xg-grandfather, and several photos of his sister Jean Veitch Somner, Mrs Maclaren. But I have seen a reference in a will to a likeness of their mother Jean, that was being passed down through the family. I wonder if it still survives somewhere today.

More on the 1915 valuation rolls

I posted about these earlier, but didn’t mention that the rolls also include information about the value of each property, specifically the “Yearly Rent or Value”. Trouble is I don’t really know enough about these figures then and the wider economy to put them into proper context in terms of what was a large or small rent. However I thought it might be worth pasting in the rental figures for my ancestors’ homes.

Firstly Mrs Catherine Dodds at Abbey Gate, Abbey Street, Melrose, was in a property valued at £10. Her son John Dodds, plumber, was in a property, St Cuthbert’s Cottage in Abbey Street, valued at £12.

Elsewhere in Melrose parish John’s father-in-law Thomas Cavers Hall, together with his two oldest sons, was tenant of Gattonside Mains and various related properties. The valuations there included £111 3s for Gattonside Mains farm and house; £29 5s for part of Hoebridge farm; and £10 and £30 for two parts of Campknowe farm.

And my great-grandfather Michael Kerr’s property, Belford in Morebattle parish, was very modest: valued at just £3 annually.

As I said I can’t really put these figures in context. I could look at valuations of individual estates from the time – for example Thomas Cavers Hall died in 1917, and so there is an inventory of his financial affairs then, as well as a will he wrote on the back of an envelope giving legacies to his children. Or I could look at other properties in the same area, since each detailed page from the valuation roll includes many dozens of nearby properties. But this would require more time. For now though I have the figures for the immediate ancestors.

Hunting ancestors in 1915 valuation rolls

The ScotlandsPeople website today launched the digitised 1915 Valuation Rolls, which record proprietors, tenants and occupiers of property then. They plan to release the 1905, 1895, 1885, 1875, 1865 and 1855 valuation rolls later.

I did wonder how well the searching was going to work on these records, because I have looked at them, in undigitised form, before. The big issue is that names are recorded in lots of different ways. Not everyone has their full name, or even first name and surname, recorded. So you can get Mrs Scott, or Dr Smith, rather than the full name. And sometimes people can be recorded with initials, like T.C. Hall, rather than Thomas Cavers Hall, or Thomas C. Hall.

Having just tried searching for my ancestors some of my concerns have been vindicated. But I found them in the end, so that’s the main thing.

The first ones I searched for were Cavers for my one-name study. That was an easy search, I just pulled out all the index references, and will work through them slowly later.

Then I looked for Mrs Catherine Irvine or Dodds at Abbey Gate in Melrose. She died in 1917, but should show up in the 1915 Valuation Rolls. I didn’t find her, trying searching for forename Catherine and surname Dodds. But luckily when I searched for her son John, who I did find, Catherine appeared further up the same page. She is down as Mrs Dodds, widow, tenant of a house and garden at Abbeygate, Abbey Street, Melrose. Her son John Dodds, plumber, is down as tenant of St Cuthbert’s Cottage, Abbey Street. So to find Catherine I’d have had to search for Dodds in Melrose, which could have been quite a big search.

Next up was Thomas Cavers Hall, John’s father-in-law, who by this time farmed at Gattonside Mains near Melrose. The only reference I could find for surname Hall and place Melrose was indexed as Thomas Hall, for land Gattonside. So I clicked on that to see the whole digitised page from the original printed valuation roll. He had tons more! But not under a name that seemingly the search facility picked up on, and I’m doubtful that widening the search beyond the default exact surnames search would have worked too well either. There are masses of properties under the name “Thomas C. Hall & Sons, nurserymen – being Thomas C. Hall, Hugh Hall, and Peter F. Hall, Gattonside Mains, Melrose” – subsequently abbreviated to “T.C. Hall & Sons, aforesaid”. The family were tenants variously of:

• Farm, part of, and house, Gattonside Mains
• House, Gattonside Mains
• Land, part of farm, Hoebridge
• Part farm, Campknowe
• Part farm, Campknowe
• + (under “Thomas Hall, farmer”) Land, Gattonside

So that wasn’t entirely successful. Next up was my great-grandfather Michael Kerr. I searched for anyone of that name, and that found him, “Michael Kerr, rabbit-catcher”, tenant of a house at Belford, Morebattle parish. Didn’t know his occupation then was rabbit-catcher! He’s usually recorded in official records as a shepherd.

So that’s all the immediate ancestors found. I’m quite happy, but still somewhat concerned about how well searches work in these records where names are recorded in such various ways, and – as shown by the Hall example – searches may not always be that successful.

I’m doubtful about how well these records could be used for one-place studies since there isn’t for example a facility to step page by page, even paying for the privilege, through the pages for a given place. It would probably be much more sensible and economical to get photocopies of the printed volumes for a given place. Not necessarily from the central archives in Edinburgh, the now-called National Records of Scotland, who charge very expensive copy costs for people at a distance, much more expensive per page than people visiting the search room themselves. But if a local archive has the printed volumes then they would probably be a good place to get copies from.