Cemetery, churchyard, graveyard, kirkyard, words that bring a gleam to the eye of family history addicts. Handled carefully, they can be treasure chests but there are a few caveats: not everyone had a gravestone, some stones have gone or are no longer readable and, most importantly, the information on them is not always correct. Cemetery | more…
Storms are a fairly common occurrence in Orkney where the majority of my known ancestors lived their lives. I have a newspaper cutting from the mid 1960s with the headline “Five weeks of gales without let up”. Storm is not used so much: “gey windy”, “blowan a gale” or “right coorse” would be more common | more…
Many of my direct ancestors had hard lives with deaths at sea, loss of children at a young age, poverty and hardship, but their stories and their lives are known. Is the greatest misfortune perhaps to be unremembered? My father knew the names of all his grandfather’s brothers and sisters, married names, where they lived, | more…
