26 August 2019

Seeds of a Novel: Part Two

Scotland/wikimedia/Sam Fentress

I attacked my ancestry.com search systems, combing databases of birth, death, marriage, census, prison, asylum, gravestone and land records databases for anything I could find on Caroline Rae near Glasgow, Scotland. One of my problems is that I did not know Caroline's surname, only her married name. 

Needless to say, I ended up at what genealogists call a brick wall. There were a few records that could be her, but there was something about each of them that didn't match what I already knew. Either she was not in the birth year range I'd established for Caroline or she was living in a distant region of Scotland or she'd been married in England or something that made me think "this is not my Caroline". Since Caroline is not a common name in Scotland, it didn't take long to come up with several slim possibilities, but still end up basically empty-handed.

I decided I needed to reach out to others for help and suggestions. Where to look? I checked out Cyndi's List, a genealogy resource clearinghouse, and found a genealogy forum that I thought might be useful. It was called RootsChat. I created a username and password and logged in.

I found that the site was divided into geographical areas of interest. You are directed to post your question or request for help under the country and county your question is concerned with. Those who live in that area, or others who have maybe researched in that area already, are encouraged to respond with suggestions and possible solutions.


Glasgow St. Mungo's Cathedral/public domain image
I posted everything I knew about John Rae and his mother, Caroline Rae, which wasn't much, in the Lanarkshire and neighboring Renfrewshire sections of RootsChat, since both would be considered "Glasgow area" of Scotland. And I got a response right away! A very helpful woman named Margaret and her friend Amy, both residents of that region, volunteered to check Scotland's People (a database that you have to pay for, and it's not cheap), which they both had subscriptions to.

I was pleased to have help in the actual area of interest in Scotland and even more pleased at the information they were soon to provide for me.

..... to be continued .....

24 August 2019

Seeds of a Novel: Part One

So, how did I come up with the idea to write a novel based on the life of my great-great-grandmother? It was the success of my process of researching her life combined with a deep admiration for her and the hardships she endured that ultimately convinced me to share her life, obscure and "ordinary" though it was, with the world.


public domain image
I had been interested in family history since childhood, when I'd come across some ancestors' graves in the cemetery down the street from my home. My mother, who was the town historian and an avid amateur genealogist, told me about who they were, where they had lived, everything she knew about this ancestor family of mine. One man had even fought in the American Revolution! I was hooked even then, though I had no idea how involved in genealogy I would eventually become.

Fast forward to about the year 2010, when I signed up with a membership on ancestry.com. Immediately I was engrossed in the task of building my family tree, generation after generation. My mother's family was fairly easy. Her ancestors were almost all early settlers in New England, with several Mayflower ancestors in her lines. But when I got to my father's family, it was a different story.

My Dad's mother's family wasn't so hard. They too had been early settlers, mostly in Connecticut and New York state. But his father's lineage was much more murky. His father had been brought to an orphanage at the age of 4 and, while his parents names were known, little else about them had been passed down in the family lore. I went to work.

My grandfather's mother wasn't hard to trace. She had emigrated from England to New Jersey in the late 19th century along with family members to find work in the silk mills of Paterson, NJ. I was able to trace her ancestors back several generations in England. She had met and married my great-grandfather, John Rae, in Paterson. John had emigrated from Scotland, but nothing else was known about him. Here was my mystery!


Scotland flag & thistle
My brother, Derek, had also caught the genealogy bug and had, in recent years, been trying to solve the mystery of my great-grandfather's origins. He had come up with two facts: John Rae came from the Glasgow region of Scotland and his mother's name was Caroline. That was it. I took it from there.

....... to be continued .....