A Grand Day Out - Research at PRONI in Belfast

I've been on something of a roll with my Irish family history in the last month, meaning that on a visit to Belfast last week I had a lot of work before me to pursue various leads! The main reason for my visit was actually to attend a PRONI user forum meeting on Friday - I participate on the forum every three months as a 'remote user' (i.e. I assume they heard I came from Largs, looked it up on a map and realised I qualified!) - but on this occasion I decided to go a day earlier to get in some research. Although I've been to the archive a few times, and carried out the occasional look up, this was my first real chance to test the new facility since it opened two years ago. As such, here's a quick run down of the experience.

PRONI is open Mondays to Fridays, but an advantage with Thursday based attendance is that it is open late into the evening. I arrived and first had to register for a reader's ticket, which required just one piece of ID (in this case I had my passport on me), and I had to have a picture taken for this. The camera was actually connected to a pole from the ceiling next to the reception desk, so I was simply asked to sit down, look up and smile! Within a couple of minutes I had a nice shiny visitor pass, and with this I made my way up to the search room.

To access the rooms you merely hold your pass against a sensor, and the doors then open automatically. Once inside you are in one of the most modern archive search rooms in the United Kingdom. On the first part of my day I decided to access the self-service microfilms at the far end, and was soon browsing Presbyterian records from Templepatrick. There were a few others in the room, it was not packed, but I bizarrely bumped into two people I know - one a student from the Strathclyde University course I tutor on, who I met at WDYTYA in London in February, and a genie from Belfast who I met at the previous London show in 2012. It's a very small world - and they do say everyone in Northern Ireland knows everyone through everyone else!

I made a substantial number of finds from Templepatrick, taking up most of the morning, and then decided to turn to another branch of my family from Ulster, this time from Islandmagee in County Antrim. One of the great things about PRONI is that it is Wifi enabled throughout - something every archive should absolutely adopt in the 21st century - although I had a slight issue with accessing a personal family history site using this, with the address blocked for some reason. Thankfully my iPad has a 3G connection, so anything I needed to look up, including some of the details I had forgotten to note down from my site before arriving at the archive, could be done this way if there was a permission issue. Unfortunately, I have a situation where my Islandmagee ancestors, despite having Scottish surnames such as Gordon and Montgomery, were Anglican, rather than Presbyterian, as would be more usually expected. The problem here is that the early Anglican registers for Islandmagee were destroyed in the civil war of 1922, although the Presbyterian records for the peninsula go back to the early 1800s. I consulted the Presbyterian registers anyway - and did in fact find some of my lot - but I needed another source to compensate for those that I couldn't.

I had identified from home via the public online catalogue that there was at least one rental roll for the area from 1855, which seemed worth looking up. In obtaining this via the computer based ordering system, I discovered that the search room's version of the catalogue was considerably more detailed. In fact, far from having one rental roll from 1855, I was astounded to note a series of annual rental rolls from the estate of Viscount Dungannon recorded on an annual basis from 1819 onwards! When I discussed this with one of the staff, he responded that if he ever had to do family history research using the public catalogue, he thought he would have problems - errrr...OK! (Thankfully, whilst that may or may not be true, I did learn from the user forum meeting on the following day that the online catalogue is to be majorly updated in early July, so should not be quite so problematic from then!). You can order five records at a time, and I soon had the rental rolls - generating all sorts of useful leads - as well as many other documents, including a copy of my grandmother's letter of administration for her estate following her death in July 2001.

The staff could not have been friendlier if they tried - at one point one of the  female security staff got talking with a woman on the table behind me and offered her "a wee cup of tea in her hand" at 6.30!!! Throughout the day, the humour and help from the staff could not have been better. One of the other things I am beginning to note is just how easy it really is to get to PRONI from where I live in the west of Scotland - in fact, no sooner was I back on Friday night from Belfast, than I was off to Aberdeen first thing Saturday morning for a Scottish Genealogy Network meeting - and it took longer to get there, with the fare more expensive than the ferry to Ireland. As such, I now hope to make more frequent visits to Belfast, and may even incorporate that as an option within my research service, which is primarily Scottish based just now.

Friday morning was taken up with the meeting, but I did manage to get in some extra research after before heading into the city centre to meet my sister for a drink. One thing to note on a return visit - you need to reactivate your user's card on every visit by holding it against a wee sensor by the main reception desk - if you don't do this, no doors will open, and you can't make orders etc.

Facilities wise, the cafe does great food - and at a very good rate - and next time I think I will stay at the Premiere Inn next door to the facility, rather than head back out to my home town in Carrickfergus as on this occasion, as it would be much more convenient. Not to mention that Belfast 2013 is a new world, and I'm beginning to fall back in love with the place...! :)

And finally, just to give you a bit more of the flavour within, here's an interview I did with Stephen Scarth, Head of Public Services at PRONI, two years ago (the day before the new building opened to the public), giving a guided tour of the facilities:

Bottom line: go visit PRONI - you'll LOVE it! :)  And for news of latest PRONI developments, visit http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/06/proni-user-forum-news-highlights-from.html

One final thing....! If you are just starting out with your family history research, and have still to construct your family tree before making your way to PRONI, my book, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, should help you to locate many of the key resources to help you get underway - not least of which some of the resources digitised and made available online by bodies such as PRONI, the National Archives of Ireland, the National Archives at Kew, and more.

The book is available from publisher Pen and Sword in paperback, Kindle and ebook editions. For a free 13 page preview - and to order a copy - visit www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/. And on the top right corner of this blog page, you will also find a short video of me discussing the book, and what you can expect from it - hope it helps!

Chris

A tragedy within a tragedy - the laughing Mr Wray

I discovered last week the story of the Templepatrick Murder within my family tree, an event that happened in Northern Ireland in October 1874, when my 3 x great grandfather's brother William was accused of murdering their cousin Margaret Langtry.

The story of Margaret's murder is shocking enough, but within the story of this tragedy lay yet another tragedy, even closer to home. Just days before Margaret's murder, another child of my four times great grandmother Rosanna Bill (nee Coulter) had passed away and was buried. I have yet to determine the child's name, but part of the subsequent story between Margaret and William lay with the assertion that there had been an argument between them about the burial, with Margaret allegedly claiming that the burial lair used was one that had been reserved for her. But one of the remarkable things about the newspaper coverage within the Belfast Newsletter of March 18th 1875 was a record of the court testimony from Rosanna, which recalls the added pressures placed upon her during the police investigation into her son William, and the additional suffering that she herself was already enduring as a consequence of her loss.

Rosanna Bill, examined by Mr McMECHAN - 
The prisoner is my son. He came home to me on Wednesday before he was arrested. I was in trouble about the death of my daughter. Quinn was on a visit at the house. He came home from Scotland along with my other son. He was telegraphed for after the death, and he arrived next morning. My son, the prisoner, was digging potatoes all day on Thursday, and he was also working on Friday. My husband went to Belfast about two o'clock on Friday morning, and did not come back to about eleven o'clock that night. I sat up for him, and all the rest were in bed when he arrived. In consequence of the trouble I was in about my daughter my appetite was very bad. Sometimes my appetite is so bad that I can hardly walk for weakness. William, the prisoner, went away up to snare rabbits. He took the snare [produced] with him. He came back with a rabbit. I skinned it, and soup was made of it. I took some of it, and the girls also got some. After he came home he sat down and took a smoke and then wound up his watch. It was twenty minutes to nine o'clock. When he went out he had no gun with him - nothing but that snare in his pocket, and when he came back he had no gun with him. I recollect my husband bringing ham and cheese the second night of my daughter's wake. It was rolled up in a piece of newspaper. The police searched the house, and abused it very badly. There is a man Wray (pointing to the sub-inspector) and I don't say he is a bad man, but he jeered and taunted at me. 

Mr. McMECHAN - That man, Wray, did it, who wears the coat of a gentleman, and is supposed to be a gentleman. This poor woman is jeered and taunted in her affliction. Her daughter dead, and her son in prison. I hope I will have an opportunity of cross-examining this laughing Mr. Wray.

A desperate time.

Another Irish Eureka moment - and another murder

This can't keep happening to me. Last year I had a book published about the murder of my three times great grandmother in Perthshire, Scotland, a story which gained some notoriety as being the longest unsolved murder case by a modern police force in the UK (see www.thehistorypress.co.uk/index.php/crime-history-books/the-mount-stewart-murder.html). As a family historian I deemed it an extraordinary episode, certainly something never likely to be found in my tree again, and as such I wrote the book to let my kids have an example to read in years to come of the sorts of adversity our ancestors had to go through to allow us to exist in the present day. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would find another murder in the family - and yet, last night, not only did I do just that - this time in Ireland - but in the space of a couple of hours I have already identified fourteen new family members.

Coincidentally, I gave a talk at South Ayrshire History and Family History Fair in Troon yesterday about the use of online Irish sources for genealogical research. My opening point was that Irish research is not like Scottish research. Certainly within the Scottish civil registration period a significant amount of detail is handed to us on a plate, with our records here being so comprehensive. Ireland, on the other hand, has a double whammy of problems - less detail in the records to start with, and the possibility that many significant resources no longer exist, such as the censuses. It can still be done - but you may need to take a much more long winded approach!

So how did I find out about the murder? Believe it or not, I was looking at the death of my four times great grandfather, John BILL from the parish of Kilbride, County Antrim, in 1900, and trying to identify where his townland was - Ballyvoy. Virtually every list of townlands online states that Ballyvoy is by Ballycastle, to the north of the county, but that did not make sense in the context of what I was examining. All the family events I had been consulting were in Kilbride parish, near Ballyclare. I finally resolved it by consulting the Belfast Newsletter newspaper, available via the National Library of Scotland platform in the British Library 19th Century Newspaper Collection, which noted a sale in Kilbride within the townland of Ballyvoy, aka Duncansland - the latter being the name it normally went by. So he was from Kilbride parish after all, just outside of Doagh in Ballyvoy/Duncansland. From this I then found John listed in Griffith's Valuation, incorrectly recorded under the name of BELL, not BILL. This name error was in fact why I had previously taken so long to get anywhere with this family, for John's granddaughter, my 2 x great grandmother Elizabeth, had been recorded as BELL also in her marriage record, which had led to my brick wall for so long (I won't go into how I discovered the name BILL to be correct, or I'll be here all day!).

So having found John in Griffith's, I then found him in a probate entry from the wills calendars now at the NAI portal at www.genealogy.nationalarchives.ie (don't always assume that northerners can only be found on the PRONI equivalent at www.proni.gov.uk - it only covers the northern probate districts, but you could prove wills in Dublin also). I decided to go through the Valuation Revision books on the PRONI website. It noted that in 1902, two years after his death, a Mary BILL had taken occupancy of his property in Duncansland. Was she a second wife perhaps? A consultation of the 1901 and 1911 censuses revealed that she was way too young to be so. Perhaps a daughter then? With her in the house in 1901 was a 16 year old son, Robert BILL, and there again in 1911. Surmising he was of the right age for military service, I searched for a Robert BILL on the First World War Soldiers Wills collection on the NAI portal, and found he had indeed died in the war, and had left a will. I then turned to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission at www.cwgc.org. It transpired from this site Robert was in fact the son of a Frank BILL and and his wife Mary COBAIN.

Bear with me! I now looked on Emerald Ancestors (www.emeraldancestors.com) for a Frank BILL marrying a Mary, and found one in Kilbride in 1883, although he was recorded under the name of Francis BILL. The following year Robert was then born. It seemed clear that Frank was a son of John, and the fact that Mary took John's property, and not Frank, was soon explained by the fact that Frank had in fact died in 1899, a year before his father. At this point I decided to search for Francis in the Belfast Newsletter. And then all hell broke loose...

I found Francis - he was a witness to a trial in 1875 for what has become known in the history of Ulster as the Templepatrick Murder of 1874. Not only was Francis there, but virtually every member of the BILL family who seemed to exist in Doagh at that time - brothers, sisters, his father, his mother, his uncle, cousins, all were interrogated at the trial. Why so much interest in them? For the simple fact that Francis' brother William was accused of murdering his cousin Margaret LANGTRY. The information I had already gathered on Elizabeth and her grandfather John is more than corroborated from the article, which gives me details of everything from the food they ate, the work they did, even words that they spoke (including some good Ulsterisms).

If this seems a long winded research route, it is because it is! That's how Irish research is often done, and I have other examples equally as complex. But therein lies another major fact about Irish research - despite the tragedy you may encounter, it can still be a lot more fun.

Virtually every website I mentioned in my talk yesterday was used to resolve this issue (and I am only now getting started). For more details on how to find your Irish ancestors, my latest book is Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet, from Pen and Sword.

You can read the reviews at http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/2013/05/tracing-your-irish-family-history-on.html and can purchase the book from www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-History-on-the-Internet/p/3889/. There is nothing in the book which I don't use myself - and it might just help you shatter a few brick walls like the one I have just described!

Chris

The Tourist's Matrimonial Guide Through Scotland

Scotland differs from England in many ways from a genealogical research point of view. Nowhere is this perhaps more obvious than with the Scottish laws of marriage, based to some extent on both canon law and the ancient practices of Roman Law.

In 1753, Lord Hardwicke abolished irregular and clandestine marriages in England and Wales, but his remit stopped at the border - we did things a wee bit differently up here, right up to 2006, when marriage by habit and repute was finally abolished as the last form of perfectly valid irregular marriage in Scotland, via the Family Law (Scotland) Act.

So to guide you through the many wonders of Scots Law and marriage, how about a wee song?! Well, dear visitor, here's The Tourist's Matrimonial Guide Through Scotland, a popular 19th century work, to explain it all to ye!

Ye tourists, who Scotland would enter,

The summer and autumn to pass,

I'll tell you how far you may venture

To flirt with your lad or your lass;

How close you may come upon marriage,

Still keeping the wind of the law,

And not, by some foolish miscarriage,

Get woo'd and married an' a'.

Woo'd and married an' a',

Married and woo'd an' a';

And not by some foolish miscarriage

Get woo'd and married and a'.

This maxim itself might content ye,

The marriage is made - by consent,

Provided it's done de praesenti,

And marriage is really what's meant.

Suppose that young Jocky or Jenny

Say "We two are husband and wife",

The witnesses needn't be many

They're instantly buckled for life.

Woo'd and married an' a',

Married and woo'd an' a';

It isn't with us a hard thing

To get woo'd and married an' a'.

Suppose the man only has spoken,

The woman just giving a nod ;

They're spliced by that very same token

Till one of them's under the sod.

Though words would be bolder and blunter,

The want of them isn't a flaw

For nutu signisque loquuntur

Is good Consistorial Law.

Woo'd and married an' a',

Married and woo'd an' a',

A wink is as good as a word

To get wood and married an' a.

If people are drunk or delirious,

The marriage of course will be bad,

Of if they're not sober and serious,

But acting a play or charade.

It's bad if it's only a cover

For cloaking a scandal or sin,

And talking a landlady over

To let the folks lodge at her inn.

Woo'd and married an' a',

Married and woo'd an' a';

It isn't the mere use of words

Makes you woo'd and married an' a'.

You'd better keep clear of love-letters

Or write them with caution and care;

For, faith they may fasten your fetters,

If wearing a conjugal air.

Unless you're a knowing old stager,

'Tis here you'll most likely be lost;

As a certain much-talked-about Major

Had very near found to his cost.

Woo'd and married an' a'

Married and woo'd an' a';

They are perilous things pen and ink,

To get woo'd and married an' a'.

I ought now to tell the unwary

That into the noose they'll be led,

By giving a promise to marry,

And acting as if they were wed.

But if, when the promise you're plighting,

To keep it you think you'd be loath,

Just see that it isn't in writing,

And then it must come to your oath.

Woo'd and married an' a'

Married and woo'd an' a';

I've shown you a dodge to avoid

Being woo'd and married an' a'.

A third way of tying the tether,

Which sometimes may happen to suit,

Is living a good while together,

And getting a married repute,

But you who are here as a stranger,

And don't mean to stay with us long,

Are little exposed to that danger;

So here I may finish my song.

Woo'd and married an' a',

Married and woo'd an' a';

You're taught now to seek or to shun

Being woo'd and married an' a'.

(Source: http://archive.org/details/songsandversesso00neavuoft)

I trust that's all clear?! :)

For more about regular and irregular marriage pre-1855, consult my book Discover Scottish Church Records, now available in a handy ebook and print format from Unlock the Past - details via http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html. (Coming soon also is Discover Scottish Civil Registration Records, with even more to say on the subject post-1855!)

Also currently available is Discover Scottish Land Records.

And coming soon - my new guide to Scottish civil registration records. ScotlandsPeople is just the start of the story...!

Chris

1851 Religious Census of Scotland - surviving returns

A couple of years ago I blogged details from the 1851 religious worship census for Scotland, showing how just four years before the advent of civil registration there were some 904 Church of Scotland congregations in the country (which had made a census return), but some 2122 congregations from other denominations in the country that were not the official state church (see http://walkingineternity.blogspot.co.uk/2011/02/how-many-scottish-church-denominations.html).  The importance of this lies with the fact that often people cannot find an ancestor's marriage or baptism pre-1855 on the ScotlandsPeople website (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) - the reason being that ScotlandsPeople only hosts pre-1855 parish records for the Church of Scotland and the Roman Catholic Church, Of the 2122 number, only 104 congregations were Roman Catholic, with some two thousand congregations missing from that period altogether on the website.

In my post I quoted from a summary for the 1851 religious worship census, found on the Histpop website, for a very simple reason. The Scottish returns from that census no longer exist. This is a real frustration, when you consider that not only are the English equivalents still in existence, they have actually been digitised and made freely available on The National Archives website, within the Digital Microfilms collection at http://discovery.nationalarchives.gov.uk/SearchUI/details?Uri=C8993.

As an Ulsterman, I'm long used to the idea that censuses can be destroyed by the simple whims of Government. Ireland is by far the biggest offender, but even in Scotland we have our moments - the household schedules for the 1911 census in Scotland no longer exist, for example, unlike those for the rest of the British Isles, with only the enumerators' returns available on ScotlandsPeople. The 1911 revelation was quite a shock when I first heard of it, but I had long believed that the 1851 religious census for Scotland was a dead duck, with no surviving examples.

Except for the fact that I have now found a couple of examples! Buried amongst the kirk session papers for Speymouth are two printed census forms that have been filled in by hand. I have yet to see whether this means that they were never returned, or whether they are simple copies, but they do provide an interesting glimpse into a record largely now destroyed in Scotland. The returns are for two congregations - Speymouth, and Garmouth Preaching Station, both in Morayshire, both catalogued by the NRS under CH2/839/20.

Officially the census forms were entitled Census of the Population, 1851 Scotland: Return Relating to Public Worship. They each asked nine main questions of the person tasked with filling out the form.

1) Name and Description of Church or Chapel
2) Where situated?
3) When opened for worship?
4) How or why by whom erected?
5) Stipend of Minister?
6) The number of free sittings, and those requiring payment?
7) Estimated Number of Attendants on March 30, 1851?
8) Remarks - any observations in support of the return
9) Signature - of the Minister, Elder, Session Clerk or other duly delegated person to fill the form out.

From the Garmouth Preaching Station return we learn that it was located at Garmouth, being a quoad sacra district of Speymouth parish in Elginshire (Morayshire). It opened in 1849 "for worship in a school in the village, and designed to accommodate those unable to attend the parish church". The station "was erected by His Grace the Duke of Gordon & others for a school". There were 200 free sittings (no others), and normally 180 people attended a service, though none was held on that particular March 30th. Under Remarks the entry notes "There is service during 7 or 8 months of the year in this place, but not in winter owing to want of accommodation". The entry was signed by the minister.

For Speymouth, we get considerably more detail. The church was opened "before 1800", and "when the suppressed parishes of Dipple & Essel (sic) were united by decreet of Court of Teinds into one parish named Speymouth, about 1730". For the salary question for the minister the grain stipend due to him was just over £82, and a money stipend just over £53. The glebe was worth £19 and money for the manse set at £8. Of the church's available seats, only 70 were free, with some 600 other sittings to be leased. On the day of the census 212 members of the congregation attended morning service, and some 18 Sunday Scholars, slightly less than the average number, usually being 280, with 20 scholars. In the remarks section it notes "The charge of this parish is a sole one, the present incumbent has only held it for two years byegone; and the stipend is the average for these two years".

So as with anything in genealogy, there are no absolutes. A couple of entries have survived (and if anyone knows of any more, I'd love to hear from you!), it is just unfortunate that such an interesting resource, for the most part, no longer exists.

The two returns above can be consulted at the National Records of Scotland via the Virtual Volumes computer system, or at various archives across the country via the Scottish Documents platform.

For more on Scottish churches, their history and records, my book Discover Scottish Church Records is available from http://www.gould.com.au/Discover-Scottish-Church-Records-p/utp0281.htm or in a slightly cheaper ebook edition from http://www.gen-ebooks.com.

Chris

Seventeenth century medical care

Before the NHS, a classic example of private health treatment from 1692, courtesy of the kirk session minutes from the Perthshire parish of Aberdalgie:

Septe[mbe]r ye 11th    
After sermon sess[ion] met[.]    This day Issobell Firskin in ye Milton of Aberdalgie shewing that through ane extraordinary swelling in one of her fingers she was in hazard to lose her whole hand if ye finger was not cut off and yt a person had undertaken to cut off yt finger and remove yt trouble for a certain summ of money and she be[i]ng poor and Indigent desired ye help of ye sess[ion] for yt effect[.]    The sess[ion] considering ys desire did out of sympathy wt yr petitioner appoint a Collec[ti]on to be given her and Intimation to be made ye next Lo[rds] day yranent

(Source - National Records of Scotland: CH2/1613/1/5 Aberdalgie Kirk Session Minutes)

Ouch...!

NB: if you're having problems with reading the above, bear in mind the letter 'y' is being used as a substitute for the old letter known as a 'thorn', which was replaced by 'th' in modern type - so 'ys' = 'this', 'yt' = 'that', 'yranent' = 'thereanent', etc.

More about Scottish church records, what they contain, and how to find them, can be found in my book Discover Scottish Church Records, published by Unlock the Past. For how to research historic illness and other tragic occurrences in the past, consult my book Down and Out in Scotland: Researching Ancestral Tragedy.

Both books are available in print and handy ebook formats - see http://britishgenes.blogspot.co.uk/p/my-books.html for details.

Chris

Meeting grandad - the meeting I never knew about

I never knew either of my grandfathers.

Ernie Graham

My mother's father, Ernest Graham was born in Belfast in 1922, and was tragically killed in an industrial accident at Pembroke Dock in October 1972, where he was working as a boilermaker. A person who was supposed to be on a job that day did not turn up, and Ernie, on his day off, volunteered to take his place. A scaffold he then worked on suddenly collapsed beneath him, and he tragically fell to his death. I was only 2 years old, and never had the chance to meet him. In recent times, I did manage to hear an echo of his life, via two letters that he wrote in the 1950s. I had written an article about an earlier family generation in the UK's Your Family Tree magazine, and had included a family tree chart showing how I connected to that person via Ernie. A reader recognised his name, and contacted me to inform me that her parents were very great friends of Ernie, her father having worked with him as a boilermaker in Aden. She sent me copies of photos that her parents had taken of my own grandparents - one of which I in fact already owned - and also two letters. The words in the letters not only told me about activities in his life in the 1950s, but also allowed me for the first time to hear his own 'voice'. It was my grandfather talking, not to me, but to a friend from another time and another place.

Charlie Paton, outside his wireless shop in Belfast

My father's father, Charles Paton, was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1905, to two Scottish parents. He survived the occupation of Brussels in the First World War, later moved to Northern Ireland, survived an encounter again with the Germans during the Belfast Blitz, served in the RAF and later worked as a wireless shop manager. I have spent many years finding out about Charlie also, and have even been to Belgium to trace his war story there as a child civilian, having been enthralled by his life story. My father did not get on with him, however, and I sadly never got to meet him, particularly tragic as I returned from Britain to live in Northern Ireland in 1979, and never knew that Charlie lived down the road from us in Donaghadee. He died in 1987, when I was 17, and I have often wondered if I could have visited him if I had known he was so close. But a meeting with him was sadly not to be either.

Or so I thought... I am just back from a visit to Manchester to visit my mother, currently in hospital for a treatment - and she has just told me, out of the blue, that she actually met him in 1971, myself in tow. We were living in Scotland at the time, and she had returned home to see my aunt Sheila following my christening in Helensburgh, who had then taken her down to Donaghadee, along with my infant self, to see him. So it turns out, 13 years after I first started researching my family tree, that I now learn that I did in fact meet one of the ancestors I have always wanted to know more about.

I have met one of my grandfathers, but what I know of him now still comes from a pile of documents and recollections of others. I have heard the voice of another from an echo on a few sheets of papers from half a century before, but in a conversation to someone else.

But what I wouldn't give to trade all those documents for a ten minute chat with either of them today.