Sometimes Those Family Stories Have a Grain of Truth

Parts of this post were originally published in an article titled Twists and Turns in Search of Elizabeth Cooper: A lesson in family research, in the October 2010 issue of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society and in the Summer issue of Cootin Kin, the quarterly journal of the Shetland Family History Society.

Many of the stories told by the family of my wife, Linda’s maternal grandfather, Alexander Cooper, proved not to be entirely accurate. But after unravelling his history we found that they all had just a grain of truth in them.

Alexander was born illegitimate. Yes, it’s true! It says so on his birth record. The name of his father was not recorded but on many documents completed later in his life he did state a few different men as being his father. It is probable that his children knew about his origin but it was never discussed. Growing up in the early part of the 20^th century, these things were not mentioned.

A story has been told that, as a young man, he ran away from home and joined the army. It was said that he apparently did not get along with his father and took his mother’s maiden name instead.

On Alexander’s military attestation record, dated August 19, 1885, he indicated his father’s name was John (no surname), then of 2 Albert Street, Govan, Glasgow. His mother, Elizabeth, did marry a man named John Blackburn, a dockyard worker, but not until April 4, 1871, over four years after Alexander’s birth. John was living in the same apartment building as Elizabeth’s sister, Ann, and her family in 1871. There seems little doubt that is where Elizabeth and John met. The couple appears to have split up prior to April 1881 when the census for that year was taken. He was then living on Main Street in Govan, Glasgow, while Elizabeth and Alexander were on John Street, about six blocks away, both using the surname, Blackburn. Main Street was just off Albert Street. John Blackburn died in November 1885 and his death record shows he was then living on Greenbaugh Street in Govan, which location I have not yet found. [See Note below about a previous post.]

There may well have been a rocky relationship in the family which may have been the source of the story that he did not get along with his “father” but it begs the question of why Alexander chose to put his step-father’s name (we presume “John” was in reference to John Blackburn) on his attestation form rather than his mother’s. He did join the Scottish Rifles as Alexander Cooper. There was no formal adoption process in Britain in the late 19^th century so Alexander would not necessarily have taken the name of his step-father in any case. That could have been the reason why he registered for military service using his mother’s maiden name.

To our knowledge Alexander never talked about his mother, or her family, whether that was due to a natural reticence about speaking about personal things or embarrassment about his birth status we can never know. Perhaps the use of his step-father’s name on his military service record is an indication that he did not get along with his mother, but remained on good terms with his step-father, and thus the true story of familial discord was not quite what was told later.

Alexander also told his children he was brought up in the Lossiemouth area, in northern Scotland. His first wife, Margaret Scott, who he married in 1890, was born in Lossiemouth, as were his two children by her. These facts may have contributed to the story of his own upbringing in that area or perhaps the children just got the story wrong in the retelling.

We did search for Alexander and his mother on records from the Lossiemouth area but did not find him. We even posted a message on Rootsweb’s Moray email list for any information about Elizabeth and/or Alexander Cooper and his participation in any area schools. A local researcher took a personal interest and looked at all of the school registration records between 1873 and 1880 but did not find anyone of that name. Out of curiosity she also looked at the 1881 Scotland census for anyone with just the first name of Alexander (a search criteria we had not thought of using alone), born within 2 years of 1868 in Shetland and came up with one interesting possibility, a Elizabeth Coupar Blackburn, aged 47 with a son Alexander Blackburn, aged 14, both born in Delting, Shetland and living in Govan. That was an interesting and valuable revelation which led us back to the Glasgow region to search further.

Interestingly, on both of his marriage records, Alexander lied about his background. On the first he put his mother’s name down as Elizabeth Cooper, nee Spence and his father as William Cooper. On the record of his second marriage, to Elizabeth Walker, Linda’s grandmother, he put down his mother’s name as Elizabeth Cooper, nee Lawrence and his father as William Cooper. The name William may have been borrowed from his great-grandfather, although William had died before Alexander was born. His grandmother’s maiden name of Laurenson was not far off the name Lawrence.

Elizabeth was not entirely truthful at times either. She never used her true age on any census record. On both of her marriage records, to John Blackburn, in 1871, and James Ross, in 1891, she gave the names of her parents as Andrew Couper/Cooper and Eliza, nee Marshall. We have good evidence from other documents, including her birth and death records, as well as the birth, marriage and death records of her sisters, that her parent’s names were Andrew Couper and Margaret Laurenson.

Stories passed down through generations are often prone to some embellishing, or even outright fabrication as family member may have sought to hide the most embarrassing events of their lives. But there may sometimes be a grain of truth to them, too, so that when the true facts are known one might understand why certain things were said.

References

Shepheard, Wayne. (2010). Finding Elizabeth Couper. Cootin Kin, number 75, pp. 6-15.

Shepheard, Wayne. (2010). Twists and Turns in Search of Elizabeth Cooper. Chinook, 31/1, pp. 16-22.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.

More About Using Old Maps

Regarding my post of 22 July 2014: It seemed like a great story – Alexander Cooper meeting his first wife at the candy store in Glasgow. Unfortunately, I have since found the location of John Street on which he and his mother lived in 1881. It was actually way across the Clyde River, in Govan District. So it is unlikely they met near Hutcheson Street, in the City of Glasgow, where Margaret Scott lived in 1881.

I finally found a map on the National Library of Scotland website, dated 1896, that shows all of the street names in Govan. From this map, it is clear that the family lived in the Govan area from at least 1871 through 1891.

 

Portion of map of Govan, Lanarkshire, Sheet 006.09 – 25 Inch Ordnance Survey Map, published 1896; downloaded 12 August 2014 from National Library of Scotland website

Residences of Elizabeth and Alexander Cooper:

1871    Elizabeth and Alexander Couper at 22 Hamilton Street, Govan with sister Ann Jackson and her family; John Blackburn, Elizabeth’s first husband, lived at same address

1881    Elizabeth and Alexander Blackburn at 4 John Street, Govan; John Blackburn lived at 7 Main Street, Govan, six blocks east of John Street

1885    Alexander indicated his father, John (Blackburn?) lived at 2 Albert Street, also six blocks east of John Street

1890    Alexander Cooper lived at Hamilton Barracks at the time of his first marriage

1891    Elizabeth Blackburn at 18 White Street, Govan (just north of John Street)

1892    Elizabeth was still at White Street at the time of her second marriage while her second husband lived on Fairfield Street just to the west

The lessons here are: look at all the old maps you can find and pay more attention to what the censuses and other documents actually say with regard to addresses. When you do find the right map, as I did this week, it really ties the family history together.

Reading Old English

In my work as an Online Parish Clerk, as I discussed in a previous post on August 14, 2013, I have pored through hundreds of pages of old parish registers looking for ancestors and transcribing the material for the use of other researchers. My first foray into reading these old documents resulted in not a little confusion and consternation. Over time I was able to develop a passable expertise is reading not just old style English but poor handwriting as well.

One important benefit of my homework was that I learned how to recognize my own family’s surname in very old documents at first glance, such as the 1630 marriage entry for my 8^th great-grandparents, in the Plympton St. Mary parish register, and baptism entries for two of their children in the Bishop’s Transcripts for Cornwood parish, the only source available as the Cornwood parish registers themselves had been destroyed in a fire in 1685.

 

Page in Plympton St. Mary parish marriage register, for April to July 1630: second entry in April – “the 5th daie was married Nicholas Shepherd to Margerit Lee” (insert – blowup of name Shepherd)

Surviving page of Cornwood parish Bishop’s Transcripts for baptisms and marriages in 1638: baptism entry for “William sonne of Nicolas Shepheard bap. the 19 of Feabruary” (insert – blowup of name Shepheard)

When I review some of my early transcribing work now, I see the errors I originally made in reading the documents that resulted from my inexperience in identifying old handwriting. Gradually my library is being corrected. No doubt many other researchers have experienced the frustration of both reading old English as well as trying to sort through published indexes that have been incorrectly done. In those cases there is no option except to try to look at the original documents or copies of them – which, of course, is a good idea anyway.

Recently I have been spending time preparing a presentation to a local genealogical group about the subject and have found innumerable websites where help is available. (I wish that I had seen them a dozen years ago!) I have discovered that the more I search for material about the subject the more resources I find.

There are several organizations that offer online tutorials and courses. Readers of this post may be familiar with some or all of the following:

Ancestry

This commercial subscription site has a Help & Advice section that includes good advice on Understanding Old Handwriting. They have some useful tips for reading old documents.

Brigham Young University

The Department of History and The Center for Family History and Genealogy at BYU has a series of tutorials on Paleography: The Study of Old Handwriting, designed to help in reading old documents of English, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese origin. Their lessons will be helpful to “students, researchers, historians, genealogist and indexers.”

Cambridge University

Another online course on English Handwriting 1500-1700 has been organized by Cambridge University. The course is “designed for students and scholars of early modern English letters, history, theology, and philosophy – for anyone whose research will embrace original English manuscript sources in this period.” The 28 lessons in the course are all downloadable.

FamilySearch.org

FamilySearch also has an English Script Tutorial about reading and understanding old English documents. They also list a number of other websites where help can be found for Scottish, German, Dutch, Italian, French, Spanish and Portuguese writing.

National Records of Scotland

There is quite an interesting tutorial, Scottish Handwriting.com, on palaeography of historical records written in Scotland in the 16^th, 17^th and 18^th centuries. The website is maintained by the National Records of Scotland. The subject matter is very extensive, covering: BMD registers; Burgh records; church court records; legal registers; state and Privy Council papers; tax, customs and excise records; and wills and testaments.

Pharos Teaching & Tutorials Limited

There are also a few commercial, educational enterprises which offer printed guides and/or online courses for analyzing old English handwriting. Pharos has a course titled Old Handwriting for Family Historians. Pharos offers a full range of genealogical courses focused on British and Irish family history.

Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research

Recently I found an entire online course called The Electronic Introduction to Old English authored by Peter S. Baker. The 16 chapters plus appendices are fully downloadable or one can follow them online. They cover all aspects of reading and interpreting old English documents. The material was supported by the Richard Rawlinson Center for Anglo-Saxon Studies and Manuscript Research at Western Michigan University.

The National Archives

TNA has a great “practical online tutorial” called Palaeography: Reading Old Handwriting 1500 – 1800. The website offers tips on reading and transcribing documents; dating, numbers, money and measurements. They present copies of many actual documents with which readers may practice. These examples are “of varying levels of difficulty, information about the documents and their historical backgrounds.”

University of Nottingham

If your research goes back a little further than the 16^th century, you might find the Introduction to Reading and Understanding Medieval Documents, prepared by the University of Nottingham, of interest. This online unit in their Manuscripts and Special Collections section has information on format, languages, authentication, provenance, handwriting styles and letter forms used in documents from the Middle Ages.

Researchers can also consult Cyndi’s List for a long list of websites concerned with handwriting and script.

I will admit that I have not been through all of the material in all of the websites. What I have generally observed in my brief review of the courses and tutorials, though, is a high quality and comprehensive treatment of the subject. Any of the websites should offer genealogists valuable information on using old English records.

All images reproduced here are used with the kind permission of the Plymouth and West Devon Record Office, Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy and is a past Editor of Chinook, the quarterly journal of the Alberta Family Histories Society. Wayne also provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated.