Keeping It All in Perspective

When I was learning about geology – many decades ago – we were shown a diagram comparing Earth’s natural history with a 24-hour clock. That was presented to give us an idea of the relative lengths of the various geological eons, era and periods, as well as a perspective of the age of the Earth in relation to how long people have been around.

Retrieved from Eras of the Geologic Time Scale

Few people drive through a mountain range, for example, will have a proper perspective of the time it took to first have the primary material be deposited as sediment, turn the accumulation into rock and later uplift the whole succession into what we see now in the towering cliffs. In the Rocky Mountains of western North America, the rocks we now see were formed as far back as the Middle Proterozoic Era (about 1,500,000,000 years ago). The uplift and deformation of the strata began in the middle of the Mesozoic Era (about 175,000,000 years ago) and continue today.

Retrieved from Wikitravel: Rocky Mountains (Canada)

Different forms of the clock-comparison diagram have been produced over the years but the stories are still the same: the Earth took a long time to reach its present form; hominids, in various forms, have existed only for about 5,000,000 years. The human segment of that period is only about 2,000,000 years which takes up the last minute and a quarter when history is viewed in relation to the clock. Within that most recent, very small interval, the human species has developed from forest-dwelling hominids to modern man.

Retrieved from The History of Life: Represented on a Clock

Retrieved from What is a timeline of human evolution?

One might argue that humans have always been organized around families but there was no clear evidence of that prior to the last 10,000 years (the Holocene Epoch) unless you count the cave paintings by hominids in Europe about 40,000 years ago. The beginning of the Holocene interglacial period is when people began to expand their geographic range, gather in small communities, eventually build cities, live in family units and transform the environment around them. Communication in the form of writing – such as cuneiform script – was only invented a few thousand years ago. Civilization, indeed all of mankind’s entire recorded history, occurred during the Holocene.

Retrieved and modified from Skeptical Science: We’ve been through climate changes before

The oldest document I have come across is called the Elphantine papyri, from 449 BC (2,500 years ago) which appears to be a formal recognition of the marriage between a Jewish temple officer. Ananiah, and Tamut, an Egyptian slave. Most of us won’t find records that old that relate to our own families.

When genealogists research their roots, they are only looking at a very recent fragment of time in which humans have inhabited the planet. They are not really researching family history, or the history of families, but only studying the events of families preserved in the written record. Most of what we can view in terms of records go back only to about the early 15^th century – about 600 years ago. It is true that certain types of records were kept in previous eras but few made mention specifically of people and their families. As a result, they are not of much value in constructing true and continuous family histories.

The following shows how all these time periods relate to the age of the Earth (according to the charts shown here):

      Period                                          Time (Years)           Proportion                  Clock Interval

      Age of Earth                               4,550,000,000                     100%                            24 hours

      Hominid History                                5,000,000                    0.11%       7 minutes, 22 seconds

      Modern Humans                                2,000,000                0.0004%        1 minute, 17 seconds

      Civilization                                              10,000                0.0002%              0.154 of a second

      Limit of Genealogy Research                      600              0.00001%          0.00924 of a second

      My Personal Years of Study                          50            0.000001%          0.00077 of a second

           

My experience in geology and genealogy take up an exceedingly small slice of time relative to Earth’s history!

Just to keep it all in perspective!

Wayne Shepheard is a retired geologist and active genealogist. He volunteers with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. Wayne has also served as an editor of two such publications. He provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Connecting People Through Their Occupations

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have been doing a lot of work recently on our Scottish ancestors. These involve the McKay family. And you cannot imagine how many are named John, James, Alexander or Hugh. Not to mention Margaret, Isabella, Janet and Jane. The common surname and not inconsiderable times the forenames were used, among related and unrelated families, has often left us wondering who really was related to whom and if any were related to us.

Luckily, in Scotland birth, marriage and death records often show the parents’ names and the maiden names of mothers. They can be very helpful in sorting out families and certainly have been in the case of those people I have been chasing.

What I did not expect, when I started back in on the McKays, was that they moved around a lot, probably because of what they did for a living.

We know that the most recent generation of our Scottish McKays lived and worked in Findhorn, Morayshire, Scotland. And many of the men were blockmakers. That is not an occupation that will be familiar to most people. We still debate exactly what it was that they did. As they lived primarily in seaports I am quite sure they were involved in the manufacture of blocks for pulleys used for tackle, sails, fishing nets, etc.

Census records showed me where many spouses had been born for those families that spanned the 1851 to 1911 periods. From there I could navigate backward to find marriage records. For example, a James McKay (1813-1872) was born on the north coast of Banffshire, in a little village called Macduff,  but married a girl from southern Perthshire, about 130 miles to the south. That could not have been easy travelling in the 1840s. Likely they went by ship around the east coast of Scotland.

I had been looking for James’ brother, Hugh, for a long time. I had information on his two marriages. The first was in Auchterless, Aberdeenshire, about 20 miles south of Macduff.; the second was in Dallas, Morayshire, 45 miles to the west of Macduff. He and his second wife ended up in Findhorn, on the Morayshire coast, 50 miles from Macduff.

The father of James, Hugh and six other children had been born, as far as we can determine, in Nairn, Nairnshire, which is another 15 miles to the west of Findhorn. My wife has four generations of grandfathers named Hugh which has added to the confusion at times. All of them appear to have been born in Nairn. They were farmers and weavers, for the most part.

Many of the McKays made their way to Banffshire around 1800 where Hugh McKay (1772-1850) took up, or brought with him, the trade of weaving. I have not yet sorted out whether any of his relatives came with him but I suspect there were a few given the profusion of McKays in the Macduff area. Hugh married a lady from Macduff in 1802 and they had eight children there. All three of his sons who survived to adulthood, became blockmakers.

As I said, I knew that James had married in Perthshire. He had already left home by the time of the 1841 census and I was sure he had married around 1845, so I looked for him in Perthshire. What convinced me I had found him were entries in the 1841 census, in Perth, for Jas. D. McKay and Hugh McKay, both blockmakers, and both born outside the County of Perthshire.

Looking for one brother led me to find a second one that had eluded me for some time. I would not have looked for Hugh in Perth as his working and personal life was in the northern part of the country. In this case seeing their occupations helped identify both men.

The oldest brother, John, had moved west to Findhorn in the early 1840s and is shown on censuses through 1881 as a blockmaker there. He did expand into other businesses but his main trade helped identify him as part of our family.

Hugh was working as a blockmaker in Macduff in 1851 but had relocated to Findhorn by 1861. Similarly, James plied the trade in the seaside town of Montrose, Angus. But by 1861, he had joined his brothers in Findhorn. All of them lived the rest of their lives there, as did one sister who had arrived with her family around the same time.

As I indicated, the McKay families were found in many different locations around northeast Scotland over the decades. One of the simple things that helped me tie these men with very common names together, though, was their occupation.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications. Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated

Searching on ScotlandsPeople Website

I have lately been researching my wife’s Scottish ancestors and gone back to look at documents on the official ScotlandsPeople website.

The site was redesigned over the past few years and is now much easier to navigate and search. Not to say that one will always find the people they are looking for. It always seems like there is one individual in any family who resists discovery.

What is a great improvement over the past is that we can now search all manner of records free. No funds need change hands until you actually find a document worth looking at. And, of course, you can save the searches with unique names to go back and look at again.

There are many helpful hints and suggestions as to what is on the site and how to go about looking for information.

You can do quick searches for people or advanced searches for specific types of records. Once you find the records you want, you can easily download them to your own computer or leave them on your account. All purchases are recorded so you can go back and look at them any time. Formal certificates can be purchased for personal use – online.

None of this is cheap! If you are like me you buy dozens of images to augment your family history. My credit card got really heated up this past week but I have made incredible progress in assembling information about our Scottish roots.

Wayne Shepheard is a volunteer with the Online Parish Clerk program in England, handling four parishes in Devon, England. He has published a number of articles about various aspects of genealogy in several family history society journals. He has also served as an editor of two such publications. Wayne provides genealogical consulting services through his business, Family History Facilitated