Life during lockdown began with several projects in mind. Make a dent in my reading backlog, tick off the local walks still lingering on the list, reduce the number of films clogging up the SKY Box, tidy up the garden, sort out my piles of books, get stuck into the vast musical library that is Spotify, learn more about local history. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. To be fair, I tackled all of these tasks with varying degrees of commitment. What I hadn't planned was taking up a new interest. Until I found myself opening an online account with the National Library of Scotland. I was on the lookout for access to a newspaper archive and indeed found The Scotsman catalogued online up until 1950. This aided my local history research topics and I also discovered the complete British Newspaper Archive offered via the British Library. This cost £80 per year so I declined initially. This vast resource shall however make a reappearance in the story.
As I was perusing the various digital collections on the library website, I noticed a couple of links pointing to Family Search and Find My Past. Something must have piqued my interest. I think I clicked on the former option first and set up an account before having a look around. Family Search is a non profit genealogical website run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS or simply "Mormons" to the layperson). It has apparently indexed one billion records although heavily biased towards America. I entered a few basic details before becoming bored and never thought any more about it. At some point afterwards I navigated towards the Find My Past website which was tailored to the UK. Again, I created an account but didn't do very much initially other than perhaps enter the names of my grandparents. A seed however had been planted and I would come back to these two websites in due course, particularly Find My Past. Until this point, I'd never actually had a burning ambition to investigate my family tree but it's something I had vaguely thought about over my life. I knew three of my grandparents until adulthood and therefore learned a lot about their lives. I was sometimes at family gatherings with my great aunts and uncles present. I could reel off a fair amount of my parental cousins. I do remember occasionally asking my folks and grandparents for information about their relatives and I definitely enquired about the maiden names of both my grans. My mum's father died a year before I was born. I had long known his name was David Howieson, he worked down the pit and his family came from the Lothians. There was a general interest in my family history floating around but I never attempted to take it further. Lockdown suddenly gave us all this time to sit at home and - although I can't pinpoint the exact moment - I decided to have a look at this family tree stuff. It made sense to start with my maternal side as Howieson is a less common name than Fraser and it would hopefully be easier to narrow down searches. I also wanted to find out more about the Howiesons and hopefully fill a gap. As it turned out, I would also unearth a lot of information my mum didn't know as her family had become fragmented and not all branches kept in touch. So far, I'd enjoyed a brief play around with genealogy websites but the most important discovery that set me on the road to becoming a family historian was stumbling across Scotland's People.
A government resource, the Scotland's People website is fee based but the access charges are very reasonable and well worth the cost for the amount of information you obtain. The most important documents for initial family research are certificates of birth, marriages and death. On the Scotland's People site, you can view electronic versions of original register entries for £1.50 a pop - prior to a certain cut-off point. It's a simple pricing structure, you buy credits and use them up as you view. No discounts for buying in bulk nor flat rates for unlimited certificates. As I would discover, obtaining English documents is more expensive and time consuming. Moreover, the Scottish records contain more comprehensive data than those south of the border.
It has been compulsory since 1855 for all Scottish births, marriages and deaths to be nationally registered. Before this year, individual parishes kept track of these events but there was no legal requirement for the population to complete the paperwork. The church records are therefore patchy (although surprisingly good in some areas) and the information recorded was often minimal. Sometimes no more than the names of the people tying the knot or the newly born child's name plus the parents. Along with a date of course. However this is way better than nothing. Scotland's People offers access to all of the above but there are time constraints for cheap online access. Only birth documents from over 100 years ago can be examined. For marriages and deaths the figures are 75 and 50 respectively. Certificates outwith these ranges must be ordered by post and cost around £12 each.
Anyone can see basic online indexes of civil registration but they only show year, place and name(s). For example, a casual browser could discover that Brian Fraser arrived on this earth in 1971 and the birth was recorded in Tranent (I was actually born in Simpson's Hospital, Edinburgh). Likewise, it's free to locate my marriage to Nicole Bertermann in 2008, listed in Stirling (although the ceremony was conducted in Doune). The actual register entries would contain the names and occupations of my parents (including Mum's maiden name) as well as the exact time and place of birth/marriage. Death certificates obviously show the cause(s) of death but also reveal the name of the informant and his/her relationship to the deceased. The latter can sometimes provide a vital clue for further tracing.
A handy way to access the complete catalogue - including recent additions - is to visit a Scotland's People centre in person. For a daily payment of £15, you can trawl the system and view as many documents as you wish. This is something I've been wanting to do for months but Covid has decided otherwise. The headquarters are at Register House, Edinburgh, and I've heard it's worth the trip just to see the interior of the building. I assume you are allocated a computer for the day but I believe the insertion of removable storage devices is prohibited. Trusty old pen and paper is required for note taking. You can also access the Scotland's People server from other locations around the country, notably the Mitchell Library in Glasgow - another architectural gem. I once went there on a two-day work-related course and it is indeed a fine place. The closest access point for me is actually Alloa but I think I'll go to Register House for my first visit, when I'm finally permitted to do so. My ex-boss (now retired) goes on regular research missions and says it's one of his favourite days out. He can travel there on the bus for nothing. Lucky devil!
As with any database search, the more information you can provide, the narrower your results will be. Requesting a John Wilson born somewhere in Scotland between 1900 and 1920 is going to yield a slew of potential candidates but trying George Parker, Dunfermline, Fife, 1912 will whittle the possibilities right down and possibly even provide a unique result. For a death enquiry, knowing the approximate age at death can help. Alternatively, entering the year of birth enables the software to project forwards and find all future deaths of people born in that year with the supplied name. You can tweak the system to look several digits either side of a suspected age or birth/death year but - as always - the wider the conditions, the more results are liable to appear. A marriage query with both spouse names is a solid bet but even just knowing that your great uncle William McDougall was married to someone called Margaret can considerably reduce the matches found. Adding years and locations is of course beneficial. Remember that every document you open costs money so it's best to try and avoid a guessing game and source as much information as you can before eating into your credits. It's interesting to note that many people married in their late teens until fairly recently. Nowadays we seem to defer responsibility among young people. There's even talk of raising the school leaving age to 18 when some folk would clearly be better off seeking gainful employment. Anyway, the starting point for my family tree project was my maternal grandfather David Howieson. Here he is below, pictured as a young man. Many people have commented on the resemblance between him and me.
David was born at the tail end of 1899. Therefore I have a 19th century Victorian grandad. How cool is that? He married my grandmother Annie Harvey in 1937 and first child Mary was born two years later. My mother arrived in 1945, making David a middle-aged dad. One generation occurring in a period of time where two could comfortably fit. This meant I was transported right back into the 1800s when investigating my great-grandad Howieson and his siblings. Mum never knew her paternal grandfather as he died 12 years before she was born. It turned out he was also called David Howieson. Perhaps I'd been told that at some point in the past but it was no longer fresh in my mind. The easiest way to back-chain through your direct ancestry is to follow a trail of marriage records. Thankfully (from the genealogy point of view), unmarried couples rarely lived together in days gone by. Today's more permissive society may offer a greater amount of individual freedom but perhaps it will also pose problems for future family historians. No doubt the search tools will be more sophisticated though. There's also the fact people now document their entire lives on social media. I found my Howieson grandparents' marriage from 1937 and the certificate revealed the parents of both spouses, along with occupations and maiden names. I then repeated the process for the next generation back. Obviously this method falls down once you cross the 1855 threshold. You can often find parish records for earlier weddings but you hit a brick wall as far as the mothers and fathers of the bride and groom are concerned. My great grandad Howieson married Elizabeth Forrest in West Calder, Midlothian. Mum had already told me the name of her paternal gran but said she had never met this ancestor. Mum reckoned her granny Elizabeth had died a couple of years before she (Mum) was born. (I could probably get away without parentheses here as the alternative implication would make no sense whatsoever). It transpired Elizabeth had actually passed away two years after Mum's birth. An early lesson that oral anecdotes - while incredibly useful - cannot be taken as Gospel. In time I would come across several instances where an old family legend didn't quite tally with the truth. People of course give you information in good faith but it should always be checked against official documentation wherever possible.
I had one aunt on my maternal side. Mary Howieson had cerebral palsy and lived with my gran. Mary was always present when we visited the house in Cardenden and she later moved to the purpose-built Leonard Cheshire Home in Glenrothes. A real bunch of characters in there! Mary lived out the rest of her days in this excellent facility and Gran met a sudden end aged 78, suffering a fatal heart attack on her way home from a shopping trip. She was the first of my grandparents (with whom I'd grown up) to die. Mary's middle name was Elizabeth and she was named after her two grandmothers. It would soon become apparent during my research that certain forenames often percolated the generations. Another pattern was maiden names of mothers and grandmothers cropping up as a child's middle name one or two generations down the line. This sometimes makes life easier when confronted with a host of results from a database search. A familiar term can leap out at you.
The census (taken every 10 years) is a vital resource for investigating your ancestry. The first survey was conducted in 1841 and lists the inhabitants of every UK address along with ages and occupations. Regarding birthplace, the document simply states whether or not a person was born in the county where the enumeration took place. Exact ages of children are recorded but adults are rounded downwards to the nearest five. I'm not sure why that was the case. It would actually have been easier to simply write the correct age for every person, no arithmetical process required. From 1851 onwards, the census becomes increasingly more detailed, identifying the heads of each household and their relationship to each occupant. Exact ages are shown for everyone and more information given about lengths of marriages, places of work and numbers of children. Statistics about physical housing are recorded. Birth towns are listed and the county specified. The census doesn't enter the public domain until 100 years have elapsed. I'm eagerly awaiting the imminent release of the 1921 data as I type. Actually it's now March 2022 but the pandemic caused a delay in the publication process. David Howieson senior and Elizabeth Forrest had six children, of which my grandad was the oldest. My mum's Auntie Jean was the last born and a full 20 years younger than David junior. Such a situation was not at all unusual back then. With people tending to marry as young adults, it meant that uncles and aunts could be around the same age as their nephews and nieces. Sadly, a very common situation in the pre-NHS days was the death of infants and young children. This occurred in many branches of my ancestry. My grandad's sister Mary passed away aged just six. As I began relaying my findings to Mum (over the telephone, as lockdown was in full swing), it seemed to jog her memory and stories she's heard in the dim and distant past came back to her. Mum's dad had told her that his father never learned to read and write properly until he married and was taught by my great granny Elizabeth. Yet old David went on to manage several pits and worked as a lecturer in mining technology. This highlights the lack of opportunities for working-class kids in terms of education. My paternal grandad left school at 13, as did his brothers. Their father had been killed in WW1 and money was incredibly tight for a single mother with five children in the days before state benefits. I remember Grandad Fraser as a voracious reader and you wonder how many clever boys went straight into manual work because there was no viable alternative. As for the girls, childbearing and mothering duties were mapped out for them.
Back to the Howiesons. My grandad David was born in the now-vanished shale mining village of Mossend, near West Calder. He must have moved to Fife as a young child because the Ancestry website threw up a document showing his enrolment at Townhill Infant School, near Dunfermline. The 1911 census also places the family in Townhill (extract pictured above). David senior is listed as a colliery manager and I later narrowed this down to Muirbeath on the excellent FifePits.co.uk site. He moved around several times during his career and I unearthed a photo of him during his spell in charge of Loanhead Colliery in Midlothian. He died in Airdrie aged 60 and was most likely employed there at some point. Also on the 1911 census at the Townhill address are David's wife Elizabeth, sons David, James and Matthew, daughter Mary and sister in law Jemima Forrest. A 27-year-old boarder was also resident. This was another common occurrence in households from this era. Many families took in lodgers even though several children were already present. I assume the rental income helped put food on the table. Must have been pretty crowded though. Youngest daughters Betty and Jean were born around 1920 and Jean's son John McBurnie is one of only two of my mum's surviving cousins from the Howieson line. His brother Neil died prematurely at 46. We visited John, his wife Bilen and daughters Rachel & Amy at their home in Earlston (Berwickshire) last year. John has a large cardboard box of family photos and documents (currently on loan to me) that provided the images immediately above (my great grandparents) and below (Grandad with his mother). A very interesting resource to trawl through but also a frustrating experience as none of the photographs have names written on the back. John had managed to identify his grandparents along with his aunts and uncles. I was able to make educated guesses as to who a couple of other people might be, but it was largely a case of strange faces staring out at me. The box contains an assortment of other items: letters from Great Auntie Jean's employers, her mother's confirmation of a widow's pension, certificates awarded to sister Betty (who was registered blind and pursued a career of teaching the visually impaired). Betty - who never married - was awarded an MBE in 1976 and John apparently has the medal in his possession. My grandad had two younger brothers - Jim and Matt. I found a few photos of Jim on Ancestry. He died way back in 1963 and his seven children are all gone. I haven't managed to make contact with any further descendants. Matt had one daughter - May - who is Mum's only other surviving Howieson cousin, besides John.
I tracked down May's daughter Elaine on Facebook and we exchanged a few old family pictures. I learned that her grandfather (my Great Uncle Matt) had managed a slaughterhouse in Loanhead. Elaine and I share a common ancestor in our great grandfather David Howieson. He was born in 1872 at Bellsquarry Huts, Mid Calder, Midlothian. Initially I was unable to find his birth details which proved frustrating as his age was stated on his marriage and death certificates and I therefore knew the correct time period to search. Finally the mystery was solved when I realised the registered surname was Howatson - my first lesson in the fact that spellings can shift over time. This was an age where compulsory schooling was only just being introduced and I think it's fair to assume literacy was not necessarily widespread among the working classes. David was the sixth of eight children and his older siblings are listed on the 1871 census. Here, the family surname is recorded as Howeson. Possibly an administrator wrote it that way, or perhaps a letter was lost during the digital transfer. The database allows you to circumvent these issues by ticking an option that will also look for close matches to the spelling you provide. Another useful feature is the wildcard character in the form of an asterisk. For example, specifying How* will find all surnames beginning with these three letters. In this case, Howard, Howie etc would appear in the results, but it's a handy tool to employ. Three lodgers were sharing the 1871 Howieson Bellsquarry Huts household. It must have been cramped and the sanitation probably doesn't bear thinking about. All eight children reached adulthood but four had their lives tragically cut short by tuberculosis between the ages of 17 and 25. John's box contains a selection of funeral cards, one of which is pictured below. Margaret Howieson - the youngest sibling - died in 1902. Her death followed that of Andrew, Agnes and Allan. Presumably the cards were handed out to inform the local community of a death or to invite people to the burial. The card for my great great grandmother Elizabeth Howieson does contain a specific request for the recipient to attend. Nobody had telephones back then and perhaps the local paper was an unreliable source as literacy among the adult population was variable, whereas a card could be thrust into someone's hand or dropped through a letterbox and read out by someone, if required.
That left my great grandad and three of his brothers - Matthew, Robert and Joseph - as the only survivors. All four lads began working life in the local shale mines that sourced the raw materials for the burgeoning oil industry. Even today, the shale bings are prevalent throughout the area where the shires of West and Mid Lothian converge. Eventually deep drilling became the dominant method of extracting the black gold but the domestic shale plants limped on until the aftermath of WW2 - the final oil works closing in 1962. Just to confuse matters, my great great grandfather Howieson was also named David. His profession was listed in 1871 as a joiner employed in the oil industry. His roots lay in Ayrshire and he probably came to the central belt to find work - at least that's the assumption I made initially. I'll get to his backstory in due course. At some point in the 1870s, the family moved into a purpose-built dwelling in the newly-erected settlement of Mossend. Funded by the Young's Paraffin Light & Mineral Oil Company for staff supplying the Addiewell Chemical Works, the stone houses contained just two rooms but it must have been a significant step up from the quarry huts. Water was supplied via four standpipes. The toileting arrangements were dry privies, emptied weekly by the oil company. Waste water ran down the street through an open channel. The 1881 census records the Howiesons based at 23 East Street, among a village population of 683. My great great grandmother Elizabeth (age 43) is listed as the head of household and now a widow. David senior had died earlier in the same year - aged 50 - and I located this certificate without difficulty. Elizabeth's occupation is given as annuitant which I assume means she was in receipt of a pension of some description. Interesting to note the census now had a column for registering those classed as deaf, dumb or blind (fair enough) but also the rather more brutal categories of lunatic, imbecile or idiot! The three oldest sons Matthew, Robert and Allan are by this stage in their mid-to-late teens and working as shale miners. Their combined wages must have been sufficient to run the household as no lodgers are present.
Elizabeth Howieson died from cancer in 1888, aged just 48. Her four surviving sons didn't spend their entire working lives doing manual labour, as was often the case in working-class communities. Something else lay in store. David and Matthew became mine managers and also worked as lecturers in mining technology. Robert was a highly-regarded footballer, skippering Mossend Swifts who achieved regional success and claimed a few notable Scottish Cup scalps, notably a defeat of the mighty Hibernian who held the trophy at the time. I found a newspaper report of Robert playing in Glasgow against a newly formed club going by the name of Celtic. The match ended 3-3. The Swifts were eventually elbowed out by the emergence of professional football. A small village team couldn't realistically compete in an environment where hard cash ruled. Robert served as a Fife councillor and managed the Michael Colliery, later becoming an agent for the powerful Wemyss Coal Company. He had 11 children and I managed to track down four of his great grandchildren, although they weren't able to give me any further ancestral details. Matthew had a family of six but I haven't yet traced any descendants. One son died in a mining accident in India and Matthew himself had a lucky escape from death as a young man when a winding cage containing six miners plunged down the shaft. Four were killed but Matthew miraculously escaped with superficial injuries. Which brings us to Joseph, whose tale turned out to be an interesting piece of side research, leading all the way to leafy Surrey.
Joseph Howieson was born in 1875 and married Jessie Brown in 1899. By this time he had quit the shale mines and was serving as a sergeant with the Royal Scots regiment.
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