The Child in the Cemetery

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In amongst all the photographs of my Scottish relatives there are several ones taken of children that no-one in my family can now identify. Mostly they are just assumed to be ones of long-forgotten family friends or long-dead distant cousins, and often there is nothing remarkable about them. They are taken in anodyne studios with the young sitters in their Sunday best clothes, their hair brushed and faces scrubbed. The only thing that gives anything away about the time and place is the manner of their dress and hairstyles or the name of the studio. I have filed these images away in a separate folder, knowing that their identity will probably always remain anonymous.

Every so often I look through them again, thinking that I may suddenly recognise something in their immature features that reminds me of another relative or a grown up version of themselves. Sometimes my mother will find it easier to put a name to a face than at other times, a process that has nothing to do with her mental faculties but seems to be dependent on what other images we looked at previously and who we were talking about. So I live in hope that the unidentified children in my photographs will one day become someone one of us once knew, and make occasional attempts to slot them in to the family history. I quite like this game of ‘playing detective’ as it reminds me of those convoluted crime-noir dramas where innocent photographs suddenly reveal something startling to the protagonists and the dramatic arc of the story pivots on one tiny clue hidden in the image. 

Child in CemeteryUnknown Child in a Cemetery 

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, April 2024

P.S. Due to current writing and study commitments, I will be posting every quarter instead of monthly from now on. 

 

A Reappraisal

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When I was a child I used to smirk at this photograph of what I deemed to be an old and ugly lumpen woman. With her hair scraped back unflatteringly from her face and a sack-like dark dress bagging at the waist, I considered her worthy of ridicule. She wore no make up nor had she made an effort to arrange her face into a pleasing smile. She sat awkwardly and rested one plump hand on the studio photographer’s prop of a table, displaying finger nails like horns that were blackened and stubby. And yet there is more to this picture than meets the eye.

Christina WhiteheadMy Scottish great-great-grandmother, Christina Whitehead, circa late 19th C

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

Wishing all my readers a very Happy New Year!

The Incidental Genealogist, January 2024

P.S. Due to current writing and study commitments, I will be posting every quarter instead of monthly from now on. 

 

Costumes and Disguises

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Whenever I’m in Scotland at this time of year I cannot help but think of Halloween and the build up of excitement ahead of the yearly Scottish tradition (for children) of ‘guising’ – the original Celtic version of the American trick-or-treating. As a child the whole month of October would be spend creating an outfit – usually something spooky, but not always – and learning a song or a poem to recite on our neighbours’ doorsteps in return for fruits, nuts or sweets, as well as gouging out turnip lanterns to carry. Nowadays everyone in the United Kingdom knows about the custom through the spread of the American tradition, but in the 1970s guising wasn’t practised much outside of Scotland and Ireland. This was something I only discovered when we had to patiently explain what we were up to in our strange costumes to a new English neighbour, who then confessed he had nothing to give us but coins from his pocket. We accepted the silver five-pence pieces, but rather guiltily, as our parents had told us never to take money from the households we visited. 

Thinking back to that autumn night when we confused our English neighbour, I can remember nothing of what my best friend and our little sisters were wearing, only that my mother had helped me to customise an old red velvet evening dress she’d worn as a teenager in the 1950s (itself created from an aunt’s evening dress) and declared myself to be a pillar box. This was more about the fact that velvet was my favourite material and red my favourite colour than any resemblance to an actual post box. Of course my disguise had to be explained at every door we visited and once that was done I launched into a tuneless version of Ye Banks and Braes o’ Bonnie Doon, which I thought would mark me out as a budding folk singer. A year later I was told by a vindictive teacher that I was tone deaf and never sang in public again. And many years after that, when as a student I started raiding my mother’s collection of retro outfits, I regretted cutting up that dress so much! 

My mother’s youth club Halloween party, Edinburgh 1958

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, October 2023

P.S. Due to current writing and study commitments, I will be posting every quarter instead of monthly from now on. 

 

 

The (Non)-Sporty Life

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None of my direct ancestors could ever really have been described as sporty, including my parents. However, like many young people growing up in the forties and fifties, they had walked and cycled everywhere and played various sports through their schools or local youth groups. Later, in mid-life, my father developed a love of hill walking and round about the same time bought a new-fangled racing bike in a bid to maintain his level of fitness. But there was no membership of teams or sporting equipment in our house when I was growing up – unless you could include my father’s ugly stationary bicycle which was relegated to the garage after my mother refused to have it taking up precious space in the bedroom. There was no encouragement to follow in a parent’s footsteps by playing hockey (something I hated after an initial burst of enthusiasm) or taking up gymnastics or ballet. We had Brownies and Guides and Sunday School and the Church Music Club and that was enough. 

My mother (Catherine McKay) after a game of tennis c1956

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, September 2023

Followers of Fashion: Part 2

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Sometimes it’s just one or two details that draw you into the old photograph of an ancestor: a shy smile, a wayward kink of hair, the angle of a foot. More often than not the details lie in the subject’s clothes and accessories: an outsize hair ribbon, the buckle on a shoe, the unusual cut of a jacket. We are fascinated by all that is strange about the fashions of the past, yet it does not come as a surprise to note that late Victorian women really did wear leg-of-mutton sleeves or Edwardian men carried silver-topped canes. At times, however, it can almost look as if our relatives raided the dressing-up box of 19th and 20th century outfits in order to tell us: Look! We really did dress the way that you imagined we might – and some more!

Susan Connelly and friend/relative c1918

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, August 2023

Followers of Fashion: Part 1

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There is is something rather Emperor’s New Clothes about the world of fashion. What looks good one season may be deemed ugly another year, while the reverse is also true. A case in point is the high-waisted ‘mum jeans’ my female students all seem to be currently sporting. They obviously don’t know that anyone caught wearing these shapeless trousers post 90s was once deemed to be a fashion pariah. Of course, when the style arrived back a couple of years ago it came with the edgy twist of frayed hemlines, but those of us who wore them who first time around would probably not want to be seen in them again, even allowing for age differences.

My grandfather (r) and friend in hats at a wedding,1930s

And so it is with the fashion of our ancestors. There are some pieces that will almost always look good if worn the right way – men’s felted hats, for example – but any fashion when taken to extremes becomes a parody of itself. This was one of the things I found most fascinating as a child when rummaging through the photograph boxes of my Scottish family, and in particular the fashions of the late Victorian/Edwardian period and the strange shapeless garments that succeeded this era.

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, July 2023

 

Reminders of Love

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Last month in A Scottish Family Album I described my delight at finding a lost album of sorts, originally belonging to my grandmother’s oldest brother, Adam Neilson. This book included many studio portraits from the 1920s and early 1930s, mostly of young, single adults who were born around the turn of the century. These pictures – some looking incredibly modern to my eyes – were taken in formal photographic studios and copies had obviously been distributed to close friends and family. Among their peers, the youth of the day appeared to indulge in what was possibly a ‘photo swap’, reminiscent of the small school portraits I exchanged with my favourite classmates at secondary school, fifty years later.

The majority of these images from a century ago were made into postcard format – possibly the cheapest option at the time, enabling the sender to mail out copies, if needed. Although most of the sitters appeared to eschew this activity (perhaps they put them into envelopes first to protect the photographs), many of them were quite happy to sign the corner of their portraits with a personal greeting (see Sincerely Yours).

Yours Sincerely, Lilly, Jan 1920

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, June 2023

 

Sincerely Yours

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When my Scottish great-grandmother moved in with my grandparents in the late 1940s following the unexpected death of her husband, she was only able to bring along a few possessions to the small 1930s four-in-a-block house in West Edinburgh where she’d have to share a bedroom with her granddaughter. The photograph boxes and albums that travelled with her were thus obviously of importance, and often I wonder what would have happened to them had they fallen into the hands of another branch of the family whose descendants were not so interested in social history.

As it was, my great-grandmother only decided to stay with this particular daughter and her husband because they were a one-child family with more living space. However, she did depart for weekends and weeks at a time to visit some of her other adult children and their families, giving my grandmother what must have been a welcome break and a little more freedom in a life that was already circumscribed by the societal pressure of the times in which she lived.

My Great Grandmother with her oldest son, Adam Neilson c1950

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, May 2023

Interruption

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My genealogical research has been interrupted these last few weeks while I was fulfilling a long held dream to take an intensive Spanish language course in the Andalusian city of Granada. But now that I’m back to the cold northern springtime it feels as if it was an experience that happened to someone else. The city was a full-on sensory experience: the light was intense and hot; the narrow streets of the old Arab quarter in front of the school’s apartment echoed day and night with the noise of traders and passers by and revellers, making sleep impossible; the smell of spices and sweetmeats and jasmine lingered in every corner of the whitewashed lanes. I’m not even sure if I was able to really improve my Spanish as my brain was mostly taken up with processing everything going on around me. 

However, while away from home and out of my comfort zone I also was able to view my Scottish family photographic collection with new eyes. Images that seemed strange or surreal jumped out at me and I began to see patterns connecting previously uncategorised photographs. Some startled me out of my rigid way at looking at the album and I thought more about the person behind the lens. Others were photographs that no-one in the family could clearly define or describe and that transcend the normal idea of an image in a family album, becoming surreal and disconnected and forcing the viewer to see the world anew. 

One such photograph I discovered while originally searching for images related to work was of two labourers leaning against a stone wall, one looking absurdly tall next to the other. My mother believes this to be her Great Uncle Adam Neilson – a short man with a great sense of humour who was a blacksmith by trade. But there is something about this image which I find simple and playful, and at the same time it strikes me as rather unusual, even if it was never intended it to be so.

Little and Large

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, April 2023

Their Working Lives: Part 2

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Although my Scottish grandmother gave up her job as a dressmaker after her marriage to my grandfather in 1931, it would be another seven years before they had their first and last child – my mother. But continuing to work while married would have reflected badly on my grandfather’s ability to be a good husband who ‘kept’ his wife. Despite being relatively busy with housework, shopping and cooking, as well as visiting her parents and other members of her family, the new Mrs McKay’s day would not have involved such onerous tasks as previous generations had to undertake.

Throughout the 20s and 30s, houses were becoming electrified and gas cookers were being installed, removing the need to cook on a range and all the mess that entailed, including the weekly ‘blackleading’ (not to mention having to keep a fire going throughout the day, whatever the weather). Labour saving gadgets were also being introduced, and life was becoming easier for the housewife who could afford such items that represented the new modern age. 

Dumbiedykes ‘range’ (c) Wullie and Tam Coal @ EdinPhoto.org.uk

Read more of this post at my new family history blog: A Scottish Family Album.

The Incidental Genealogist, March 2023