gathering dust

I will admit that everything fell to the wayside last year when I found myself working full time with a 3hr round trip daily commute. I love my job but doesn't leave much time for anything other than sleep and housework on the weekends. So with a week or so off at the end of December/beginning of January I was looking forward to settling in and getting some prime genealogy and crafting time in. If I have a limited number of days to devote to research I really want the most bang for my buck. Now this is Shetland . Current population: 25,000ish. Historic population: about the same. The biggest island; that's Mainland . The one directly above it; that's Yell . Current population: 800ish. Historic population: 1000 in a good year.  Yep; having had generations of ancestors born and raised in Yell - or more specifically North Yell - is like shooting fish in a barrel. 2 days, 240 scotlandspeople credits and not a single miss.  Ok. I admit I didn't go into the ...

I've posted about this before  but another couple of hours following published family trees of the Royal and famous has turned up another gem. Robert the Bruce is not only my 22nd Great Grandfather  x 2, but he is also my 23rd Great Grandfather. It goes like this: Me, My Mother, Her Mother, VM Tulloch, daughter of LW Tulloch, son of LT Tulloch, son of John Tulloch, son of Ann Elizabeth Sutherland, daughter of Anderina Jamieson, daughter of Ann Tarrell Fordyce, daughter of Andrew Fordyce, son of Hugh Fordyce, son of Andrew Fordyce, son of Alexander Fordyce, son of Margaret Bruce, daughter of Elizabeth Gray, daughter of Marion Ogilvy, daughter of Helen Sinclair, daughter of Henry Sinclair, son of William Sinclair, son of Elizabeth Douglas, daughter of Margaret Stewart, daughter of  Robert III of Scotland, son of Robert II of Scotland, son of Majorie Bruce, daughter of King Robert I of Scotland (Robert the Bruce) So the point of pedigree coll...

"WORE DUNGAREE SUIT AND BOWYANGS."  News (Adelaide, SA : 1923 - 1954) 26 May 1936: 3. Web. 3 Mar 2015 <http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article132204484> Yes I had to google it and then had a "huh, so that is what they are called" moment. Laurence Thomas Tulloch is my gg great grandfather on my maternal side. He arrived in Australia as crew on the City of Adelaide   in 1882.

My Great (x4) grandfather, Walter Le Pelley (c.1840-?), the youngest child of Ernest Le Pelley (1801-1849) the 16th Seigneur of Sark , migrated to South Australia presumably due to the reversal of fortune encountered by the family. He married Elizabeth Gunther, the daughter of John & Mary Ann Rendall in 1863, and the couple had two children: Louisa Elizabeth (1864-1941) and Frances (Fanny) Amelia (1866-1885). In April 1869, Walter makes his first appearance as 'missing.' Going missing of course, is a curious thing. I doubt Walter himself considered himself missing, that is, if he wasn't dead. But he was un-contactable and people rather wanted to contact him. Missing Friends. (1869, April 21). The South Australian Police Gazette (Adelaide, SA.), p. 55 Elizabeth died in childbirth later that year,  and it is rather ambiguous as to whether he had returned by then or not. In any case two years later, a warrant was issued for his desertion of his children. Deser...

The common ancestor is an idea with a long history, and if you have been around the internet or genealogy circles anytime since the late 1990s, the concept that westerners are all descended from Charlemagne is probably something you have come across. This concept originates in Darwinian Evolutionary theory and is pretty well supported by mathematical models, genetics (well mitrochrondial DNA), computer modelling and all kinds of other neat science-y stuff. ( Mark Humphrys  gives the most complete overview, it's pretty fascinating) As a scientific concept I totally get it. Go back far enough and everyone on the planet right now has a common ancestor - Every one (in theory) has 2 parents, 4 grandparents, 8 ggrandparents and so on until you have more potential ancestors than existed on the planet at that time. I was still pretty skeptical when my grandmother showed me her family tree which included Robert the Bruce. Skeptical to the point where I found copies of Rob...