Genealogical whispers.

Just been writing an editorial for a local magazine about the perils of believing everything your relatives tell you concerning your ancestors. Should be published in a  week or so :-)

Here's a little preview:

Don’t buy that kilt just yet...

Hands up if your family has an interesting tale about some distant relative. You know the sort: “My Great uncle Jimmy was Wellington’s aide at Waterloo.”  That sort of thing. Most families have them. They are passed down from generation to generation. However, here is a little cautionary tale about these genealogical Chinese whispers.

When I was a lad, my father, a Mancunian by birth, said to me, “Martin, you should be proud of your heritage. We’re Scots through and through. My granddad, Archie, Gaswegian, you know.”

So it was that through my teenage years I researched all things Scottish, from haggis to heather. I looked up which clan I must surely be descended from. I even started to affect a little Scottish lilt to my accent in honour of my forbears.

However, it was all to come crashing down.

When I was an adult and the internet was this wonderful new gizmo to be played with, I started to research my family tree and sure enough I found my great-granddad Archie’s birth record north of the border. However, it was with much confusion that I could not find Scottish birth records for his parents.

It was not until I widened my search to encompass England that I found them tucked away in Gorton, just a short distance from where my dad had grown up. It seems that the family had only been in Scotland for a few years, during which period my great-grandfather had been born. I never had the chance to tell my dad, but I think it would have made him smile.