Hints on tracing your ancestry!

**sirdaniel1975** · 31st August 08, 09:04 AM

Collecting family documents can shed a whole new light on your investigative case. Because, genealogical research is an investigation into the past. Birth certificates, marriage certificates, blah blah blah... Yes, they are very important, but they actually only reveal maiden names, dates, and places...

When you're looking for the real interesting information, you have to dig up something a wee bit harder to find. Here I will share some documents that an aunt had in her possession and new I would be interested in seeing them. She wouldn't let me have them, but she aloud me to photo copy them. So the images you see will be compressed versions of the scans of the photo copies. One of the documents, I disguised the #'s with a swirl effect because the document is legal in nature.

The first set of images are of a "Second Passenger List" form a trip from NY to Glasgow, in 1908 on the S.S. Caledonia. I have no proof for a certain theory, but I suspect it is from the very trip my family used to go back to Scotland to bring my Great Great Grandmother Henrietta to America.

**sirdaniel1975** · 31st August 08, 09:06 AM

Continued...

**sirdaniel1975** · 31st August 08, 09:07 AM

Continued...

This is the zoom in on my family.

Navigation route.

**sirdaniel1975** · 31st August 08, 09:13 AM

The below document is of a US patent, my grandfather's sister Catherine, invented a "Knitting needle." She is the child listed in the manifest above. I have swirled the # to protect the document. It is a photo copy and it took two copies and scans to get the image of the document. That explains the poor alignment of the document.

**sirdaniel1975** · 17th December 08, 08:55 PM

Well, www.ancestry.co.uk has been very helpful for me. Especially since I already had a good wealth of info from the family. A really wonderful thing that has happened is meeting a distant relative through the site.

As any good detective one is always a wee bit cautious when something like this happens. When the other person starts sending you photos from over 100 years ago with family members that you have photos of... well confirmation of the relation is pretty solid. Unless the person has somehow come up with the most unbelievable con that is imaginable. 100 year old photos with you direct relations is quite impressive.

So I'll first show what I think is the best proof of our relation. He acquired the photo from his Aunt in NJ, over Thanksgiving. The picture clearly has my GG Grandmother Henrietta in it from 1904. In his email that he sent me, he said most of the people are named on the back. There is a child in a kilt and he appears to be wearing the very sporran and possibly a Glengary I've inherited.

The next photos he sent are from previous emails and probably of no direct ancestry, but I'd thought it great to share them being as they are awesome kilt photos. The are both military men...

Unknown person, but he has several of this gentleman in two different uniforms.

This one is of a James Lawrence of Glasgow from WWI.

I hope you all enjoy these and can use this as inspiration to get "Crackin" ! Even the most amateurish investigator can turn up startling results.

**macwilkin** · 18th December 08, 11:53 AM

Originally Posted by sirdaniel1975

The next photos he sent are from previous emails and probably of no direct ancestry, but I'd thought it great to share them being as they are awesome kilt photos. The are both military men...

Unknown person, but he has several of this gentleman in two different uniforms.

This one is of a James Lawrence of Glasgow from WWI.

I hope you all enjoy these and can use this as inspiration to get "Crackin" ! Even the most amateurish investigator can turn up startling results.

Those appear to be civilian attire very heavily influenced by military dress. Do you know the units these men served in?

Todd