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who originally made the record in the first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