14 January 2023
ScotlandsPlaces for Family Historians

Presenter: Robert Urquhart   

The ScotlandsPlaces website (www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk) is a resource well-used by local historians in Scotland, but it is also a very useful site for family historians with Scottish ancestry. It combines data and historical records from three national institutions in Scotland: National Records of Scotland, Historic Environment Scotland and the National Library of Scotland. As well as providing some key information on specific places and administrative units (like parishes, counties and burghs), it allows free access to 17th and 18th century tax rolls. This presentation gave some practical examples of how genealogists can get the best out of the site

14 January 2023
Untangling "Family Thickets": Cornwall to Canada

Presenter: Wesley Johnston http://www.wwjohnston.net

Families can be like thickets, full of intermarriages over multiple generations. The multiple connections made for a very complex familial landscape, just as real to our ancestors as the terrain where they lived. Putting the families of a locality back together yields deep insight into their lives and the choices they made, but doing it successfully requires a solid research method. This presentation looked at three related case studies of family thickets: St. Blazey in Cornwall, Columbus in Ontario, and the voyages that connected them. Wesley showed how their interconnected family histories were reconstructed into databases, web pages and analytical presentations.

Handout