Valuations now available for Scotland

I started this year working on the new valuations now available from the General Registrar’s office for Scotland, on which it was easier to identify ancestors than in Ireland which also has at least one valuation available.  I know a lot of information about my Scottish ancestor’s location from records I got from their web site www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk , but know next to nothing about my ancestors when they lived in Ireland. The valuations is a list of owners and tenants on prosperity showing the address of the prosperity and  just show the head of households with  their occupations  and how much they paid for rent.  Good confirmation has well at a little more of what their lives must have been live back in 19^th century Scotland.

What’s in a name?

I have been looking for my Grandmother’s birth record, on my father’s side for over ten years thinking her name was Annie Wallace, hell Annie was even on her Tombstone. No matter how I tried I could not find it, so as I was trying yet again without luck, I decided to look again at the UK Census on which she was listed. Low and behold on the 1881 UK Census which was only two years after she was born in 1879 her name was listed as Ann not Annie. So I tried Ann instead of Annie and Bing-ho her 1879 Birth Registry came up. Now in hindsight in comes to me, why didn’t I think of that before. Everyone since she was a little girl probably called her Annie so even she thought that was her name and not just a nickname.

          The funny thing is a similar thing happens on my mother’s side, only I knew about it since my mother told me of it. See my mother was named Jeanette after her mother, who thought her name was Jeanette only to learn that her name on Birth Registry that her name was actually Janet not Jeanette, but it was Jeanette that was passed down.

          Another time that I had trouble with a nickname that wasn’t from the family, but from a Census taker, who put my Great-Grandfather name on the 1881 UK Census as Paddy instead of Patrick, which might have been a slur because he was an Irish Catholic in Protestant Scotland. I was able to find the Census from his son Robert, my Grandfather.

          Even our last name Boyle is actually a Norman name meaning woods, but what is appeared is that my family changed their last name probably from a Celtic name to get along in occupied Ireland.  

Free Family Tree of Family Search

While using https://www.familysearch.org/ I found that they offer a free family tree similar to the one offered by wiki at http://www.werelate.org/wiki/Main_Page, only the Family Search site is only the basics, but it does help on my searches of their site. It does have where you can put your source and it will reference your on line sources. I always make free Family trees Dead people trees since anyone has access to it. Sometimes when I put in a person’s information it will fill in the next generation I guess from the data they already have in their data banks. I personally like on line trees as it makes me think that I am not wasting my time collecting all this information for people that will ignore it or even throw it all away when I become an ancestor and that it will be available to future generations anywhere in the world.

My Genealogical work in 2012

January seem like a good time to write about how my genealogical research went in 2012, well I did make some progress on my wife’s side on the tree, Eiermann, Stark and not much on my side. I did get my parents Marriage certificate from the New York City Archives, getting the information necessary from the New York City Library on 5^th Avenue, along with a list of information that would be necessary for more certificates from the New York City Archives about my wife’s Aunt and Uncles.  

I used information that people such as Eileen Stark put on Facebook to get both photos and information about Eileen’s family, the Stark family is connection to the Eiermann line through one of my wife’s Great-Aunts who married a Duffy, who married a Karasz, who married then divorced Eileen Stark, so the relationship is through Eileen’s four children who are cousins to my wife. Well with all that as clear as mud I used the photos and companying information to research the Stark family back to Hungary, they ended up to be a very interesting addition to the tree with her Grandfather owning a restaurant in downtown Manhattan with a lot of newspaper articles about it during prohibition. I did get the permission of Eileen to use her data.

Family Search the Web Site of the Church of Latter Day Saints helped a great deal on my breaking through on the Eiermann front, where I am now all the way back to the 15^th century. My son Michael helped by getting a microfilm from the LDS in Salt Lake City to the Patchogue Library, We viewed the microfilm at the Patchogue Library, even with the fact it was hand written in German on the pages an old book we could make out the names and dates. Now we could the same information from the transcription of the microfilm on the LDS web site, but by put to images of the original church record on a flash drive then onto my computer the information became first hand, direct instead of second hand indirect information, confirming the information you already have is very important in that it make your family tree more accurate. I am still working on the Eiermann branch of the tree, now putting it on my Roots software.

I have three different genealogical programs on my computer, the one I am now working on is RootsMagic 6, I like it for it has good templates for source information, but I am afraid it is too completed for people not familiar with genealogy. I also have Family Tree Maker 2012 which is easier to understand and can be synced up with Ancestry.com, but I have trouble syncing it up and then I have MyHeritage Family Tree Builder Which is cheaper, good for connecting with other peoples trees, but poor on sources templates.