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 .....