A Tale of Genealogy, Fraud
and Poverty by John Arthur
What makes
us the sort of people we are? It is certainly
not only our environment or our upbringing
but it’s the attitudes and traits that are
passed on to us from generation to generation
and it’s by understanding our genealogy and
family History that we come to understand
ourselves.
So how
do we go about doing this? The first step is
to find our own birth certificate and from
this we will find out where we were born, who
our parents were and when they were married
and so on. From our parents marriage
certificate we can trace our grand-parents
and again from their marriage certificate
this will give where they lived, how old they
were on marriage, what trade they followed
and so on and then by using this information
we can then find our great-grandparents and
so on back into time. Also by using this
information with the help of the many
genealogical online sources we can trace
without too much difficulty if there were
children of these unions. I must add although
not difficult the tracing of siblings can be
very time consuming. There is certainly no
royal road to success just perseverance.
Further, I must admit that I have over
simplified the above process for clarity as
many complications can come into it such as
divorce, re-marriage and so on.
However in Scotland statutory registration
started in 1855 and prior to this the
recording of Births, deaths and marriages was
the responsibility of the church and this
record is called the Old Parish Record (OPR)
and the earliest known record of this dates
back to 1555.
So taking Scotland as an example everybody
can trace their family back to 1855 and most
back to the 18th century and some to the 16th
and 17th century and there are many reasons
for this. In the first place the spellings of
names change through time only becoming the
accepted version in the later part of the
19th century but despite this various
spellings of family names still exist to the
day. So unless we know the form of spelling
of the family name we won’t be able to find
the ancestor we are looking for. A further
problem is the actual record itself and that
is as good or as bad as the person who
originally made the record in the first
place. Some Session Clerks of the Church of
Scotland were first class at recording and so
they will record for example, for a marriage,
the names of the people being married,
parents and witnesses along with their trade
and where they lived etc. However in some
OPR’s all we have are the names of the people
being married and that is it. Apart from this
records can be lost, destroyed, defaced, and
can be simply wrong or confusing and if the
family historian isn’t absolutely sure about
how to approach or handle records this can
cause no end of problems and people can be
totally misled. Not only this, but couples
have been married under completely false
names.
Talking about marriages and the OPR. What
people don’t realise is that a couple could
be married according to the law of Scotland
but never recorded in the OPR. The reason for
this is until quite recently a person could
be considered married in several different
ways without a Church or Civil marriage
taking place (Civil marriage was originally
consented to by the granting of a Sheriff
warrant) and that was by sexual intercourse,
by agreement, and by habit and repute. There
was also what was called an Irregular
marriage which was in fact a form of fraud.
The idea was to take advantage of a young
lady for sex. Taking Leith as an example.
Leith is a port and being a port has seen
many sailors and soldiers passing through it
over the years and not only this but Leith
has many Public Houses. So a Sailor or
Soldier visits a Public House and wants a
night’s pleasure with a young lady who he
fancies. The lady in question says she is
respectable and would not consider sex before
marriage. The Soldier/Sailor says that isn’t
a problem because he had someone that could
marry them there and then and so they go to
the back room of the Public House where they
go through a form of marriage with a so
called “Celebrant” and the lady gets a
certificate. However the marriage is a total
fraud and by the time the woman discovers she
is expecting the Soldier/Sailor is long gone.
The problem for the woman is because if she
can’t produce a valid marriage certificate
she couldn’t claim any help from the Parish
and that is why if the fathers could be
traced the Church insisted on them being
properly married. So if this happened to your
ancestor the record of the marriage won’t be
found in the OPR but in the Kirk Session
Records. In this the Church wasn’t being
narrow minded it was because Edinburgh up to
the beginning of the twentieth century,
incredible though it may sound, the greatest
cause of death was starvation and if a woman
couldn’t work or get money in some way or
another she could well starve to death.
Forget about the Shortbread tin idea of
Scotland, Kilts and all the rest of it. Scots
left Scotland to go overseas because,
especially in the late 18th and 19th
centuries, to escape from bad housing,
disease and shocking working conditions.
Visit any Churchyard in Scotland that is
reasonably ancient and you will find whole
families wiped out by disease and want. As
one writer put it writing about poverty in
Scotland in the 19th century “Live in misery
and die at thirty seven”
So when you come to do your family tree try
to find out something of the history of the
area of where they lived and if possible try
to find the streets mentioned in your
certificates in maps of the period in which
they lived. That will help to put some flesh
on the bones so to speak instead of you just
having a name or a list of names.
What is most important is not to have any
romantic ideas about your ancestors. They
were human beings and lived within the
context of their times and it would be wrong
to judge them by our standards. If you wish
to see what living conditions were like in
the past then visit my “The History of Leith
Website” at www.leithhistory.co.uk it will
surprise you.
John Arthur is a Local Historian for
Leith,Edinburgh,Scotland and a Genealogist,
married with two sons and has websites at
www.lineages.co.uk,www.leithhistory.co.uk