Wisdom Wednesday: Scottish Research Sources

Like all genealogical research abroad, language is an issue when looking in Scotland. On September 19, 2012, I wrote about www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk and http://www.dsl.ac.uk, two potent sites in your Scottish search. Today I’d like to review these sites and add a few more that contain glossaries that will help you.

If you go to ScotlandsPeople and click on “Research Tools” and then “Help & Resources”, you can find three glossaries. There are separate lists for medical terms, occupations and ‘unusual’ words.

The Dictionary of the Scots Language at http://www.dsl.ac.uk is a growing site and the most comprehensive of them all.

However, sometimes we need something just geared to our present research. If you need terms from legal documents defined, try www.scan.org.uk/researchtools/glossary.htm.  This is the site of the Scottish Archive Network. The other research tools under this tab are a currency converter, family history guide, and weights and measures.

For place names, try The Gazetteer of Scotland at www.scottish-places.info, a site created by the University of Edinburgh and the Royal Scottish Geographical Society. In the upper left side, chose ‘Glossary’ from the list. Here are the definitions for brae and cairn. Notice the old maps, and archaic and modern descriptions of places also. As the site’s home page says, find the “bens and glens from the Scottish Borders to the Northern Isles.” 

The Scottish government has a similar website at www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk. In the upper right, you can search for a place by name by typing in a town or parish. Directly under that at the extreme right is a place to click ‘Scotland A to Z’ to view a list of place names, not a glossary. To find out some definitions of terms used, look to the list on the left of the home page and click ‘Scottish Place Names’. Here you can find out what a Royal Burgh is.

©2013, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: historicaldirectories.com

A group at the University of Leicester is digitizing and posting historical directories for England and Wales on this easy to remember website, www.historicaldirectories.com.  Like their U.S. counterparts often called street directories, these reference books have lists of names that fall into two categories – heads of households living in the area covered, and lists of people by profession or job. Not every household head was listed. It appears that social class made a difference. The directories also tend to have a description of the village or city at the time of publication, including its population and names of churches and chapels.

I have not see U.S. equivalents for two other types of directories included on the site. One type is called Post Office Directories which have street lists used for mail delivery. Trade or business directories, on the other hand, only list commercial companies and professionals with work addresses.

While the site has directories from 1750 to 1919, it was the 1850s before the directories were published widely. The website is very easy to use and has its menu on the top left of the home page. There are three ways to search for a directory – by location, by decade, and by keywords.  After you select a directory, you can search by surname.

Selecting 'History Notes' from the menu at the upper left, you will find a list of genealogy websites, many that have been described on this blog.

In the 1869 Directory of Cambs, Norfolk and Suffolk, there were 62 hits for my family name ‘BRETT’, but it was really more like 31 because each person was in the household list and the professional list. My GGG grandfather was a shoemaker. He had a son, John BRETT, who was a shoemaker in Upwell, Norfolk in the 1851 and 1861 British Censuses. I have lost him after that and was quite happy to see a John BRETT, shoemaker in Caston, NFK in the 1869 Directory.  In the 1871 Census, the Caston John BRETT, claimed to have been born in Rockland St. Peters, home of another large BRETT clan, and he was a couple  of years younger than my John. Worse for me, he has an 18 year old daughter who was born in Caston, so he probably wasn’t living in Upwell in 1851. Alas no match this time.

Thanks to my friend, Edy Browne, for introducing me the www.historicaldirectores.com.

                                                                                                                ©2013, Susan Lewis Well

 

Wisdom Wednesday: Research in Wales

Recently I was leafing through a book that gave advice about researching in various countries and noticed a heading for “Wales.” I always tell my students that England and Wales were merged during the reign of Henry VIII, so from the 1530s English and Welsh research is the same. Maybe that is a little hasty of me.

According to both of my sources, surnames are the challenge of Welsh research. Parts of Wales began using fixed surnames in the 16th and 17th centuries. The last areas of Wales adopted fixed surnames in the early 1800s. Before then, a patronymic system was in place where a male child was given a first name followed by the syllable ab, ap, mab or map, then his father’s name was added. For example, Llywelyn ab Owain should be thought of as Llywelyn son of Owen. A daughter had a first name, the syllable verch, ferch or ach, and then her father’s name.

Some documents may list several generations back in a chain of abs and aps. Which syllable meaning ‘son of’ was inserted depended on whether the first letter of the father’s name was a vowel or a consonant.  So it is ab Owen and ap Richard. As time passed, shortened forms appeared so that ab Owen was “Bowen” and ap Richard became “Pritchard.” Some Welsh simply added an “s” to their father’s name. As a result we now have the surnames Johns, Jones, Jenkins, or Richards, Williams and Davies. Many documents were written in Latin or English, but occasionally, they would insert the Welsh spelling of a name; for example, Dafydd for David. In a recent sense of national pride, some Welsh are going back to the old naming patterns.

The resources listed below can help you through the name maze, including the meaning of names and the meaning of place names.  All of the Rowlands’ books are available from their publisher at www.genealogical.com.   

Resources:

Morgan, T.J. and Prys Morgan. Welsh Surnames. Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 1985.

Rowlands, John and Sheila Rowlands. The Surnames of Wales for Family Historians and Others. Balltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1996.

Rowlands, John and Sheila Rowlands. Welsh Family History: A Guide to Research. Balltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2008 (Second Edition).

Rowlands, John and Sheila Rowlands. Second Stages in Researching Welsh Ancestry. Balltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1999.

Sources for this blog:

Herber, Mark. Ancestral Trails. Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2004 Second Edition.

Nevius, Erin and the Editors of Family Tree Magazine, The Family Tree Guide Book to Europe. Cincinnati: Betterway Books, 2003.

©2013, Susan Lewis Well

Happy Holidays

To all my followers and genealogy friends:

May the season of light bring you happiness and peace.

Until next week,
Susan

Land Patents

A land patent is the first deed granting federal land to a private person, company or local government. The federal government received land in 1783 after the Revolution when Britain ceded all lands south of the Great Lakes and east of the Mississippi River to the fledgling country. In 1785, a land ordinance passed authorizing the sale of public lands and establishing the Public Land Survey System to measure and identify the property. (See blog posts from August 15 and 22, 2012 for details of survey system.)

The Louisiana Purchase of 1803 almost doubled the size of the country, all of this land owned by the federal government. In 1812, the General Land Office (GLO) was created to oversee the disposition of ceded and acquired land, first as part of the Treasury and since 1849, as part of the Department of the Interior.

You can find details of the land patents at www.glorecords.blm.gov. Four types of documents are described on the home page. The first two are of most interest to genealogists – land patents, and survey plats and field notes. There were about 7,500.000 land patents issued and about 5,000,000 are now searchable at this site. Like all land records, they put people in a specific place at a specific time.

Click the “Search Documents” button on top of the home page. Select a state from the drop down menu. You must add one more criteria.  Most likely a surname or a county name are the two most commonly used ones. Then click the “Search Patents” button. For example, I chose the State of Ohio and the surname, “Starr.” The first page of the results are below:

 

To see the original document, click on the blue items in column two. The third from the top is a Military Warrant for David Starr, a veteran of the War of 1812, who transfers his rights to the forty acres to James McFarland.

                                                                                                             ©2012, Susan Lewis Well

 

Wisdom Wednesday: Brett Family and Non-Conformity, Part 3

Two of Thomas and Martha HAYLETT BRETT’s daughter were Methodists in this country. Please refer to previous posts for details of other family members.

Hannah BRETT PARSONS, her husband, John PARSONS and three children accompanied her father, Thomas BRETT, to America in 1854. With them were Thomas’ youngest daughter, Eliza, my great grandmother; and his two sons, Thomas and James. They settled in Niagara County, New York, joining family member, Rachel BRETT BARKER at first in the town of Cambria.

Eliza BRETT married William LEWIS on 17 Dec 1856. The ceremony was performed by a Justice of the Peace, witnessed by Joseph and Rachel BRETT BARKER. Eliza and William lived in one more Niagara County town before settling sometime prior to 1870 in the Town of Newfane. The records of the United Methodist Church on Main Street which begin in 1863 show both she and her sister, Hannah PARSONS, were active as early as 1878, while their husbands were ‘probationers’ who never became full members. (See FHL US/CAN Film 1378854)

The first family event recorded was the marriage of Hannah’s son, John B. PARSONS in 1874. In 1878, Hannah, a probationer, and Eliza belonged to the same twelve-member class, led by H.S. Earl that met in the center of town. Hannah was received into full membership on 5 Oct 1884 and remained a member until 1905.

My great grandmother was involved in this church and encouraged other family members, too. Her new daughter-in-law, Addie L. FISK, wife of William N. LEWIS, and her infant son, Clinton B. LEWIS, were baptized on 29 Sep 1897. Addie was on the probationers list for about one year after that; then became a full member in Aug 1898. A German immigrant niece of her husband joined the church and was married in the Lewis’ home by the Methodist minister.

Thomas Brett’s two sons’ religion is harder to track. Like their sisters, they were baptized in the Church of England, according to the registers in Swaffham, NFK. Thomas H. Brett lived most of his life in Michigan. Civil records of his first wife’s death and his remarriage do not include information about clergy. His brother, James Brett, was married by a Justice of the Peace in Ashkum, Iroquois, Illinois before he enlisted in the Civil War and died at Andersonville Prison Camp, Georgia.

Methodism: The Methodists trace their beginnings to a popular movement begun in 1738, when John Wesley and his brother, Charles, later the great hymnist, undertook evangelistic preaching with an emphasis on conversion and holiness. The brothers established a Holy Club at Oxford University devoted to study, prayer and serving the underprivileged. They were labeled "Methodist" by other students because of the way they used "rule" and "method" to perform their religious duties.

Though both Wesley brothers were ordained ministers of the Church of England, they were barred from   most of its pulpits because of their evangelistic methods. They preached in homes, farm houses, barns, and open fields - wherever they found an audience. Neither Wesley set out to create a new church, but instead began several small faith-restoration groups within the Church of England. Soon however, Methodism spread and eventually became its own separate religion in the 1740s.

“George Whitefield (1714-1770) was a minister in the Church of England and also one of the leaders of the Methodist movement. Some believe that he more than John Wesley is the founder of Methodism. He is famous for his part in the Great Awakening movement in America...Whitefield parted ways with Wesley over the doctrine of predestination.”  Source: www.christianity.about.com, Mary Fairchild, Methodist Church History

The website of the Newfane, New York, United Methodist Church states, “Methodists have believed, from the beginning, that each of us is called to participate in the outreaching ministry of Jesus Christ. John Wesley described this work in simple, practical terms: ‘Do all the good you can, in all the places you can, to all the people you can.’ Putting our faith into action is at the very heart of our Christian calling.” The LDS filmed records of this congregation start in 1863, and it is noted that the name until 1881 was the Newfane Circuit. After that, it was called the Second Methodist Episcopal Church of Newfane, and still later the United Methodist Church. See FHL US/CAN Film [1378854]

©2012, Susan Lewis Well

Wisdom Wednesday: Brett Family and Non-Conformity, Part 2

After coming to Niagara County, New York, USA, three of Thomas BRETT’s daughters remained there. One was most likely a Universalist and the other two were active members of the Methodist church in the town of Newfane. (Please see last week’s post for details.)

Second daughter, Rachel BRETT, was married to Joseph BARKER in the Swaffham, Norfolk parish church and had her sons baptized there, but then they moved to Cambria, Niagara County, NY.  They were the family “pioneers” coming to the U.S. about five years before Thomas Sr. and the other children. Rachel and her daughter, Martha, are buried next to her father, Thomas BRETT, in the North Ridge community cemetery. I have not been able to confirm that she was  a Universalist like her father.

Universalism: “Universalists are Christians who believe in universal salvation, meaning that all people will eventually be reconciled with God.” The faith did not become a widespread religious movement until English Universalists came to America in the late 1700s to escape religious persecution. Because of its inclusive doctrine, Universalism became popular in America, and the Universalist Church of America was formed in 1793.

Universalists were best known for supporting education and non-sectarian schools, but they also worked on social issues including the separation of church and state, prison reform, capital punishment, the abolition of slavery, and women's rights.

The Universalist faith declined after the Civil War. As the concept of damnation became less central to many American religious groups, the Universalist faith seemed less unique in its teachings, and its membership waned. In 1961, The Universalists merged with the Unitarians to form the Unitarian Universalist Association, whose website, www.uua.org, details the above history.

“The First Universalist of the Town of Cambria [Niagara County, NY] was organized in 1867, consisting of 34 members; at the present time it has 50.” (1878) A brick church was built in 1868 on donated land at a cost of $6000. Two wooden churches nearby housed a catholic and a German Lutheran congregation with a community cemetery dominating the landscape, directly behind the Universalist and the Lutheran Churches. There was a Methodist Church on the same road a short distance away. Source:_______. History of Niagara County, N.Y., New York: Sanford and Co. 1878

©2012, Susan Lewis Well