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A tale of genealogy, fraud and poverty by John Arthur

So how do we go about doing this? The first step is to find our own birth certificate and from this we will find out where we were born, who our parents were and when they were married and so on. From our parents marriage certificate we can trace our grand-parents and again from their marriage certificate this will give where they lived, how old they were on marriage, what trade they followed and so on and then by using this information we can then find our great-grandparents and so on back into time. Also by using this information with the help of the many genealogical online sources we can trace without too much difficulty if there were children of these unions.

I must add although not difficult the tracing of siblings can be very time consuming. There is certainly no royal road to success just perseverance. Further, I must admit that I have over simplified the above process for clarity as many complications can come into it such as divorce, re-marriage and so on.

However in Scotland statutory registration started in 1855 and prior to this the recording of Births, deaths and marriages was the responsibility of the church and this record is called the Old Parish Record (OPR) and the earliest known record of this dates back to 1555.

So taking Scotland as an example everybody can trace their family back to 1855 and most back to the 18th century and some to the 16th and 17th century and there are many reasons for this. In the first place the spellings of names change through time only becoming the accepted version in the later part of the 19th century but despite this various spellings of family names still exist to the day. So unless we know the form of spelling of the family name we won’t be able to find the ancestor we are looking for. A further problem is the actual record itself and that is as good or as bad as the person who originally made the record in the first place.

Some Session Clerks of the Church of Scotland were first class at recording and so they will record for example, for a marriage, the names of the people being married, parents and witnesses along with their trade and where they lived etc. However in some OPR’s all we have are the names of the people being married and that is it. Apart from this records can be lost, destroyed, defaced, and can be simply wrong or confusing and if the family historian isn’t absolutely sure about how to approach or handle records this can cause no end of problems and people can be totally misled. Not only this, but couples have been married under completely false names.

Talking about marriages and the OPR. What people don’t realise is that a couple could be married according to the law of Scotland but never recorded in the OPR. The reason for this is until quite recently a person could be considered married in several different ways without a Church or Civil marriage taking place (Civil marriage was originally consented to by the granting of a Sheriff warrant) and that was by sexual intercourse, by agreement, and by habit and repute. There was also what was called an Irregular marriage which was in fact a form of fraud. The idea was to take advantage of a young lady for sex.

Taking Leith as an example. Leith is a port and being a port has seen many sailors and soldiers passing through it over the years and not only this but Leith has many Public Houses. So a Sailor or Soldier visits a Public House and wants a night’s pleasure with a young lady who he fancies. The lady in question says she is respectable and would not consider sex before marriage. The Soldier/Sailor says that isn’t a problem because he had someone that could marry them there and then and so they go to the back room of the Public House where they go through a form of marriage with a so called “Celebrant” and the lady gets a certificate.

However the marriage is a total fraud and by the time the woman discovers she is expecting the Soldier/Sailor is long gone. The problem for the woman is because if she can’t produce a valid marriage certificate she couldn’t claim any help from the Parish and that is why if the fathers could be traced the Church insisted on them being properly married. So if this happened to your ancestor the record of the marriage won’t be found in the OPR but in the Kirk Session Records. In this the Church wasn’t being narrow minded it was because Edinburgh up to the beginning of the twentieth century, incredible though it may sound, the greatest cause of death was starvation and if a woman couldn’t work or get money in some way or another she could well starve to death. Forget about the Shortbread tin idea of Scotland, Kilts and all the rest of it. Scots left Scotland to go overseas because, especially in the late 18th and 19th centuries, to escape from bad housing, disease and shocking working conditions. Visit any Churchyard in Scotland that is reasonably ancient and you will find whole families wiped out by disease and want. As one writer put it writing about poverty in Scotland in the 19th century “Live in misery and die at thirty seven.”

So when you come to do your family tree try to find out something of the history of the area of where they lived and if possible try to find the streets mentioned in your certificates in maps of the period in which they lived. That will help to put some flesh on the bones so to speak instead of you just having a name or a list of names.

What is most important is not to have any romantic ideas about your ancestors. They were human beings and lived within the context of their times and it would be wrong to judge them by our standards. If you wish to see what living conditions were like in the past then visit my “The History of Leith Website” at www.leithhistory.co.uk it will surprise you.

Article Source: http://www.familyhistoryarticles.com

John Arthur is a Local Historian for Leith,Edinburgh,Scotland and a Genealogist, married with two sons and has websites at www.lineages.co.uk,www.leithhistory.co.uk

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