Collins Tracing Your Irish Family History. Ryan Tubridy

Great Famine, by her own mother, Jane White. Her family has a story that Jane ‘was so ill on the voyage she swore to settle in the first house she saw. This was not far from the truth’, Ruth tells me, ‘for she settled in rooms in Canal Parade – a stone’s throw from the river wharf where the family arrived.’

       CHAPTER 4 Scotland

       Scotland was originally called Alba. The Scots were Irish invaders, and by the expansion of their kingdom to encompass the whole of Alba, the name Scotland was born.

      Scots later migrated into Ireland due to the Plantations (see p. 201), but in the 19th century, there was a great backwash of Protestants and Catholics alike, fleeing the Great Famine. By December 1846, Glasgow had acquired a population of 26,335 Irish paupers. Many moved on to the Grassmarket, West Port and Cowgate areas of Edinburgh, where they lived crammed into the city’s narrow wyndes and closes. Anti-Irish rioting led, in June 1847, to many being sent back to Ireland – but those who survived this trauma often had no choice but to return nonetheless.

      Archives

      The National Archives of Scotland (NAS), General Register Office and National Library of Scotland (NLI) are all in Edinburgh, and there is an excellent network of local record offices and archives, detailed at the Scottish Archives Network website, www.scan.org.uk/.

      Civil Registration

      This started on 1 January 1855. Births 1855–1905, marriages 1855–1930 and deaths 1855–1955 can be searched and seen at www.scotlandspeople. gov.uk: coverage is likely to be extended, but for the years not covered you can search at Scotland’s General Register Office.

      Births: mothers’ maiden names appear in birth indexes from 1929. Certificates for 1855 and from 1861 onwards show the same categories of information as recorded in England and Wales, with the addition of date and place of parents’ marriage – which, if it is in Ireland, is a massive advantage. Those for 1855 alone also record the ages and places of birth of the parents and details of the child’s older siblings.

      Ancient Scottish pedigrees

      Rightly or wrongly, the pedigrees of many prominent Scottish clans and of the Scottish kings themselves connect back to the ancient Irish genealogies and thus to the stem of Milesius, the traditional ancestor of the Gaels.

      In the 3rd century AD, Eochaidh Dubhlen, son of the Irish High King, married Alechia, daughter of Updar, King of Alba (Scotland) and had three sons, known as the Three Collas (princes). Colla Uais, who died about 337 AD, was ancestor of Fergus Mac Carthann (sometimes incorrectly conflated with Fergus Mor Mac Erc – see below), father of Godfrith (d. 853), Taoiseach (Lord) of the Isles. Godfrith’s descendants included Dughgall, ancestor of the MacDowells, and Somerled (d. 1164), Thane of Argyll and founder of the Kingdom of the Isles, whose own 3 x great-grandson was Domhnall, ancestor of the MacDonalds. The Campbells, Earls of Argyll, meanwhile, claimed descent from Dairmuid Ua Duibhne, 4 x great-grandson of Fedhlimidh Rachtmar (d. 119 AD), 108th High King of Ireland (the father of the famous Conn of the Hundred Battles, legendary High King of Ireland).

      The Medieval pedigrees of the Scottish kings, as recorded in both Scotland and Ireland, show their descent, rather confusingly, from two King Fergusses, both of Irish origin. The first (surely legendary) Fergus was the 3 x great-grandson of Fiacha Firma, son of Aeneas Tuirmeach-Teamrach (d. 324 BC), High King of Ireland. Fiacha was abandoned at sea in a small boat, but drifted to safety in Argyll, where he established the Irish colony-kingdom of Dal Riada. Later, when the Irish colonists were under attack from the native Picts, his descendant Fergus returned to become the king.

      By the 2nd century AD we hear for sure of the Irish kingdom of Dalriada that spanned north-east Ulster and the Argyll Peninsular of Scotland. It may have had its roots in that earlier Dal Riada, or that may have been a legend, created to give ancient legitimacy to the Ulster tribe’s presence on the mainland. The later Scottish Dalriadan kings claimed descent from the second King Fergus Mor Mac Erc (d. 501 AD), son of Muireadach of Ulster (a grandson of Niall of the Nine Hostages – see p. 165) and his wife Erca, daughter of Lorne, descendant of the earlier Fergus (but note that somewhat contradictory pedigrees make Fergus Mor son of a king called Erc, who was in turn son of this king Lorne). Fergus Mor was sent to Scotland to help the Dalriadans against the invading Picts, and ended up being elected king. He was the ancestor, through a line considered by many to be highly accurate, of Kenneth MacAlpin, King of Dalriada in 848–9 AD, who also ruled the Pictish kingdom to the east and thus became first king of all (or most) of Scotland, the ancestor of the subsequent Scottish monarchs. From Fergus Mor’s brother Lorne, meanwhile, descended the Mormears of Moray, of whom the most famous was MacBeth (d. 1057), and the Earls of Moray and Ross.

      The ancient genealogies make both Ferguses descendants of Milesius and thus of the Egyptian princess Scota (see p. 179), who in Scottish eyes was the eponymous founder of their race.

      Marriages: married women are indexed under both maiden and married names. Certificates include names of both parties’ mothers and fathers, including mothers’ maiden names. Women often kept their maiden names after marriage.

      Deaths: ages are given in the indexes from 1868 and dates of birth from 1969. Mothers’ maiden names are given from 1974. Certificates for 1855 alone record names of offspring, and those from 1855 to 1861 record place of burial. For 1855 and since 1861 they provide name of spouse and the deceased’s parents, including father’s occupation and mother’s maiden name. This may identify a whole generation back in Ireland, though as everyone concerned is likely to have been dead this offers much scope for error.

      The General Register Office also has indexes to:

       consular births and deaths from 1914 and marriages from 1917.

       army births, marriages and deaths for Scots in British bases worldwide from 1881.

       deaths of Scots in the armed forces for the Boer War and World Wars I and II.

       births and deaths of Scots or children of Scottish fathers in British aircraft from 1948.

      Censuses

      These were taken every ten years between 1841 and 1901 and are indexed at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. They are almost identical to Ireland’s and England’s, but from 1861 they state the number of rooms with one or more windows, whether people were employers, and if so how many people they employed. In 1841, births outside Scotland are identified ‘I’ for Ireland, ‘E’ for England and ‘F’(foreign) for everywhere else.

      Directories

      Edinburgh’s directories started in 1773, and Glasgow’s in 1783. For most poor Irish immigrants they’re more useful for providing background on communities and chapels than naming individuals. As time passed, however, they became broader in their coverage and Irish families became more established, making directories an increasingly useful source.

      Religious registers

      In 1560, through the work of John Knox, Presbyterianism became Scotland’s

      established church. Presbyterianism differed from the CoE, CoI and Catholicism by scrapping the hierarchy of archdeacons, bishops and so on. Each parish was self-governed by elected elders meeting in ‘kirk sessions’, choosing its own ministers. Representatives of neighbouring congregations met in Presbyteries, which sent representatives to the General Assembly.

      All surviving registers are indexed to 1854 at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. Some go back to 1553, but few survive before the mid-18th century. The newer editions of the Phillimore