We spent our last day in Scotland at the Scotlandspeople Centre in the heart of Edinburgh. I had been there several times before, so all I wanted for myself were the Parnell records from the 1911 census. These showed my grandfather's family that he had left behind when he emigrated to Canada in 1904.
Then Katherine and I tried to be methodical, and located birth/marriage/death records for each ancestor in her Walker line, as far back as we could go. We were able to exclude those records we had already seen in Dumfries where photocopies cost 10p, as opposed to the 50p/image charged by Scotlandspeople, so that helped. The searching in Edinburgh is all digitized as opposed to the microfilm/microfiche in Dumfries - hence the difference in charges I suppose.
We have come away today with 26 images of parish records for events in the lives of Katherine's Walker ancestors, so I'd say that counts as another excellent day. We will have a lot of sorting and assessing to do when we get home, to really understand what we have. Today was really a data collection day.
The day did have both a high point and a low point.
The high point came when we saw the images of the testament and inventory of David Walker after he died in Fourmerkland - it was his house and his grave that we visited on Sunday. We haven't absorbed the details yet, but but the images list and value all his property, down to the plough and the skillets in the kitchen, and it seems to have been necessary to sell everything off following his death to pay outstanding debts. We are wondering if this was the beginning of the end of good times for the Walkers in Holywood, and part of the reason that his grandson Edward emigrated in the 1820's.
And now for the low point. We had decided that Katherine's Andrew Dixon who came to Canada from Dumfriesshire was born in Kirkpatrick-Fleming in 1803, the son of Robert Dixon and Janet Wishart. He was the whole reason for travelling to Gretna on Sunday afternoon. We hadn't zeroed in on this particular Andrew Dixon lightly, but he certainly did seem the best possibility to be Katherine's man.
Well, a little checking today gave us the death record for that Andrew Dixon, in the Gretna area:
So we have been barking up the wrong side of Katherine's tree, sighhh! That Andrew Dixon loikely never left the Gretna area, or if he did, he didn't go out to New Brunswick. So Katherine loses all the Dixon / Wishart ancestors from the Gretna area that we identified in Dumfries last week and yesterday, and we now are right back to the mystery of "Who is Andrew Dixon from somewhere in Dumfries-shire who married in New Brunswick in 1830?".
Katherine now has some "former ancestors", just like most other family historians, myself included.
After being at Scotlandspeople all day, we were walking back to our hotel when we decided to stop for an early supper on the way. We decided to share a pizza.
Here's what it looked like just after we cut it in half:
Oh, we thought. Isn't that nice - they have added fresh toppings to the centre after cooking it. But then we investigated further:
The fresh toppings conceal a pizza hole!
Fortunately this was plenty for the two of us, and it was really quite tasty despite the surprise.
Tomorrow we go our separate ways, Katherine to visit family in England and me to fly home. We've had a great three weeks on our two-part adventure, with lots of excellent memories to enjoy in the months to come.
Thanks for following along!
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