The Search Begins

I wrote earlier about wanting to find out more about my mother’s family in Scotland. I spent several hours last week starting to see what I could find. Before I logged on, I read a number of books so I had some idea of where and how I should proceed. The books included a “dummy’s guide” to genealogy as well as two books on genealogy in Scotland. The consistent advice is to start by interviewing the older family members about what they know (hopefully) and remember. Then collect any source documents that the family has, such as birth and marriage certificates.

What I Started With

The interviews aren’t an option since the people who might know passed away, although I have some notes based on a conversation I had with my grandmother when I visited her in California in the early 80s. I also have a long article in the San Pedro News Pilot about my grandmother as she approached her 91^st birthday (it was published shortly before she died getting ready for lunch for her “poker buddies”).

The original documents goal is a little easier: I have my mother’s original birth certificate and digital copies of her parent’s petitions for naturalization (which they filed separately for reasons unknown). My brother, Ken, found the naturalization papers last summer when he tried to determine if/when our Mom became a citizen. I also have my father’s birth certificate, but I’m not planning on looking into the Polish side of things at this time.

Going Online

I started with ScotlandsPeople.com, the main source of genealogy information for those were born, lived, and died in Scotland. You can search and get match counts for free but you need to pay to see the list of possibilities and pay again to look at a particular record. I took the plunge and bought 30 credits, quickly spent, and bought 30 more. Each set of 30 credits costs about $23.

I started looking for people I had specific details about: I knew my grandmother was born on October 11, 1892 and my grandfather on February 22, 1897; they married on September 9, 1919. I wasn’t able to find my grandmother’s birth registry (I found one match but the names and birth year were wrong – based on other things I know). A search for my grandfather’s birth registry resulted in 26 matches, more than I could easily narrow down more than I already had. The search for their marriage certificate yielded the “right” one although it’s very hard to read (it's also the same record my brother found last summer during his research). You can make out the information you know, but trying to read the unknowns (like my grandmother’s parents’ names and address) aren’t really legible enough to do anything with.

I then tried to find records of my great grandmother (my grandmother’s mother) but no luck – no records at all based on what I “know.” I also tried to find her death record, again no luck. I tried various census records (although the latest census available online is 1911 (due to privacy concerns) and looked at several records (chewing through the credits) but the ages and the names and relationships didn’t match. I also looked for some other family members, hoping to find someone somewhere but I either ended up with no matches or way too many (there are a LOT of McDonalds in Scotland, also a lot of Moneys and Christies). I have several credits left but I’m not sure exactly what I should look for at this point.

Where From Here

I then spent some time poking around CyndiLiast.com, which is a genealogy resource site. I checked out US death registries (looking for my mom’s sister, Sara’s, death information (for some family medical history I’m trying to put together) but found nothing – maybe because she never worked??? – the sites were all based on the Social Security Death Index (I did find my Mom’s and my Dad’s but since I have their death certificates – as family pack-rat – I didn’t really need to find them).

After a little thinking, I decided to look and see if I could find my dad’s military records (I’d read a book about the Second World War in the Aleutians and that was where he was stationed). Unfortunately, all military records for US forces are through Ancestry.com – a pay to “play” site. The prices for annual world access (which is what I need given that so much, on both sides of the family, happened overseas) is pretty steep, but only $30 for a month. So I think I’m going to wait a few weeks (have some busy times planned) and do some planning for what I want to look for where, with priorities, then buy into the site for 30 days to see what I can find. Then decide where I go from there.

I’ll keep you posted!