Caithness is focal point of Scottish family history at national conference
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FAMILY history enthusiasts from the length and breadth of Scotland gathered in Caithness at the weekend to share their passion for genealogy.
The Pulteney Centre in Wick was the venue for the 30th annual conference of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies (SAFHS), with a programme of talks for more than 40 delegates running alongside a family history fair featuring groups from as far afield as Orkney and the Borders.
Also on hand were specialists from organisations such as Findmypast, GenealogyUK and the Association of Scottish Genealogical Researchers in Archives (ASGRA), offering advice on how to get started on investigating your family tree.
The conference was hosted for the first time by Caithness Family History Society (CFHS) whose chairperson, Janet Mowat, said the delegates and visiting groups had been delighted with the friendly atmosphere.
After an evening reception on Friday, the conference – under the title of Northern Roots – was officially opened on Saturday morning by Lord Thurso, Lord-Lieutenant of Caithness and chairman of VisitScotland. He highlighted the county’s “tremendous heritage” and spoke of his own Sinclair family history going back many centuries.
Master of ceremonies was Wick historian Harry Gray, who outlined the work done by the four sections of the Wick Society before introducing the first speaker, Doreen Leith.
Doreen leads the Wick Society’s online oral history project, Wick Voices, and her presentation featured a mix of visual elements and sound clips as she explored how “oral history meets family history”.
She concentrated mostly on Wick’s fishing heritage, making use of photographs from the Johnston collection and audio extracts from the growing Wick Voices collection. Her talk covered the history of Wick harbour, with an insight into occupations such herring-gutting and barrel-making, while delegates also heard about Robert Louis Stevenson’s eventful stay in Wick in 1868.
Doreen pointed out some of the pleasing coincidences that can occur when different lines of enquiry cross over.
“I feel oral history adds another dimension to the written word,” she explained later. “We become so bogged down in going back to primary sources, and proving that things are right, that sometimes the human element helps to make you aware of social history and the stories around it."
She added: “I like when people laugh, when an audience responds that way, because you become so familiar with some of the recordings that the humour can disappear."
Nick Hide then talked about his work as a researcher for the Clan Davidson Association, focusing on the Davidsons of Buckies, near Thurso.
He drew attention to the exploits of several prominent Davidsons with local roots, including Captain Sinclair Davidson, who fought in the Peninsular War; the Rev George Davidson, a leader of the Free Church during the Disruption; William Davidson, an architect and builder who was one of Thomas Telford’s contractors and was involved in constructing Wick Town Hall, the nearby Commercial Bank and the Parish Church; and Sergeant Benjamin Davidson, a Waterloo veteran. He also spoke of John Davidson, a watchmaker, jeweller and inventor, whose daughter Georgina (Gena MacKinnon) and her husband developed the Drambuie liqueur brand.
Nick pointed out that historic Davidson family papers were now being donated to the Nucleus archive centre in Wick.
Afterwards, he explained how his Davidson links to Caithness go back some six generations to his ancestors Jeane Baine, of Carsgoe, and her husband William Davidson, who was a notary in Cromarty.
“I’ve been interested as a researcher for the Clan Davidson Association for about 16 or 18 years,” Nick said. “When I joined the Clan Davidson I only knew a little bit about my own family but increasingly I’ve been involved in a network of researchers following up the family stories all around Scotland.
“In Caithness there’s this big cluster of Davidson families. Some go way back to the 16th century.
“One very old family is the Davidsons of Buckies. One of the descendants has collected a large amount and we’ve been encouraging him to hand over his documents to the Caithness archive. It [Nucleus] is a great success story and a fabulous building. Wick should be incredibly proud to have that facility.”
He added: “We have a vast archive of material – it is colossal. Very few clan associations have anything like the resources which we’ve got, so we try to share it.
“Today I’ve had about six major enquiries so I will try to get back to people. If you can’t share the history, what’s the point in having it?
“It’s fun getting around and meeting people, and there are fantastic resources here in Caithness.”
The final speaker was Neil Fraser, of Historic Environment Scotland (HES), who took delegates on a journey through the organisation’s online research resources and collections.
Items that featured in his wide-ranging presentation included a letter from 1773 relating to the emigration of 200 people from Caithness and Sutherland to North Carolina; footage of a Land’s End to John O’Groats road trip in a leisurely age of motoring; Luftwaffe aerial reconnaissance images of Wick and Castletown; and industrial photography from the early days of Dounreay and Caithness Glass.
Neil, who is from Inverness, also showed architectural plans of local buildings including the Castle of Mey, explained the process of overlaying modern maps on old ones to observe differences between past and present, and found time to touch upon artworks and photographic portraits, all of which can be accessed through HES sites.
“We travel the country and as a Highlander myself I’m always delighted when we get the chance to come back north,” Neil said later.
“There is so much expertise here today. I feel I’m not the expert and the focus is very much to bombard people during the session with different opportunities that might ring a bell or might make a connection with them.
"To some people it’s archaeology, to others it’s architecture, and for a lot of people increasingly it’s family history. I’m trying to hopefully make a connection with them and they can then explore at their leisure from home or using their local library.
“Sometimes we will have the answers that they are looking for, other times we won’t, but we often have quite a good way of pointing people in different directions.
“It might be another national agency or it might well be a local archive. It’s designed very much to give pointers.”
One delegate had travelled all the way from New Zealand. Christine Bennett, a farmer from just outside Dunedin, had planned a three-week family research trip to Scotland and decided to book a place at the conference.
“I’ve got some Mackenzies and Cormacks and Keiths so I was coming to look for them and I heard this was on and just combined it,” said Christine, who was spending three days in Wick.
“I think the one that came from here probably went out looking for gold in New Zealand, but people have lost all those stories now.
“I’ve been searching lots of cemeteries and graveyards. The weather has been wonderful and I’ve met some lovely people. I went to the Wick museum and it was amazing.”
Delegates were taken across Wick for a tour of Nucleus in the afternoon while the family history fair continued in the Pulteney Centre’s main hall and foyer.
John Durham, a retired local authority computer manager, has been part of the Inverness-based Highland Family History Society since its inception in the early 1980s. He revealed the Caithness origin of his surname.
“I should be John Durran, because my great-grandfather was James Durran, from Thurso, but he named all his 11 children Durham – which is unfair, because I would have liked to have been called Durran,” he said.
“My maiden aunt had done some research and got me interested in it, and because she lived in Edinburgh I used to drive down and stay overnight with her, get up early, go to New Register House and look up all the records there. And because of that I’ve got all the records relating to the name Durran – every single one transcribed, births, marriages and deaths, for the whole of Scotland.
“The Durrands with a ‘d’ on the end are basically Wick, and they’re from the sea – they’re merchant seamen, they’re coopers, they’re fishcurers, whereas the people who were Durran without the ‘d’ were farm servants, they became farmers, teachers, solicitors, lawyers, doctors.
“By 1927 the name Durran without the ‘d’ had disappeared from Caithness, whereas the name with the ‘d’ is there today. I checked both sides and realised that they were not the same... Not only did they do different things, they seemed to use different Christian names as well.”
John added: “The reason I come to events like this is to talk to people, to try and enthuse them into doing their family history, pointing out perhaps some of the pitfalls they might encounter, but advising them where to go for the next step if they so wish.”
Wick was a relatively short journey for the delegation from Orkney Family History Society. Anne Rendall said: “We have a very successful family history society in Orkney. To date we’ve got 1700 members, and it’s a worldwide membership.
“It doesn’t matter where you go in the world, you seem to find an Orkney connection.
“Maybe there would be a small croft with just 30 acres and they couldn’t support a large family so the older children would go off to Australia, New Zealand or Canada for work. There was an Orkney chap who went to Canada and ended up being one of the First Nation chiefs.
“Even in Argentina and places like that there are small colonies of Orcadian names.”
She added: “We’ve had a good day, quite a busy table, and it has been well worth the visit.”
Societies like the ones that attend here are absolutely the lifeblood of family history
Myko Clelland, Dundee-based regional licensing and outreach manager at the subscription website Findmypast, was keen to praise the work carried out by family history groups throughout Scotland.
“Societies like the ones that attend here are absolutely the lifeblood of family history,” he said. “Their volunteers transcribe records in libraries, archives and cemeteries around the country and even around the world, and to see so many of them gathered in one place, and really honouring their heritage and their ancestors, is a wonderful thing.
“There are many new faces coming through the door as well as seasoned hands who have really got to grips with their ancestors and are helping each other to find more connections to the past, having their own Who Do You Think You Are? moment in their own home.
“Only yesterday at Findmypast we published records of the Caithness Family History Society online for the first time, which means that people around the world can share in this and share in their connection to what a wonderful place Caithness is. This is my first visit and I am definitely going to be back.
“I’m just happy to be basking in it, really. All of the things I do wouldn’t be possible without the hard work of all of people in this building and it’s wonderful to see them all come together.
“We’ve got one of the largest collections of Scottish records online, and records for the rest of the world. We specialise in British and Irish research. We work in partnership with the societies to bring their records to a larger audience and really help everyone to find out just much tartan blood they really have.”
Edinburgh-based genealogist Lorna Kinnaird, a council member of ASGRA, said: “We’re the association of professional genealogists in Scotland and all our members are accredited, so we’ve gone through a rigorous process.
“We do client work all over the country and all over the world. We do full family tree, we do legal searches, we do adoptions, we do house histories... we do anything and everything, from the small to the massive.
“It’s looking at the paper trail, finding who connects to who. It’s a lot of work – it’s not simple, it’s not easy. A lot of it is process of elimination and using the fabulous records we have here in Scotland.
“Every single client is totally different, no two reports are ever the same, and you’re learning all the time. We work as a good team, sharing information and sharing experience.
“There’s a lot of fantastic genealogists in Scotland and we learn from the best.
“It’s very enjoyable. It has taken over my entire life and it’s a passion, an absolute passion.”
Lorna was making her first visit to Caithness and was impressed with what she had seen. She said: “It’s good for genealogists to travel to different archives, especially coming up here. The culture, the people, the records here – it’s a joy.”
Anna Rogalski was in great demand as the CFHS representative on an “Ask the Experts” panel.
“I met loads of people from all over who had Caithness ancestors,” she said. “I think I must have had six or seven folk in who all needed about 40 or 45 minutes of time for the things they were looking for. And I was able to help everybody, basically, which doesn’t always happen in family history, because sometimes they’ve done as much as they can and really it’s too difficult to go any further back. But no, it was very, very interesting.
“It was busy but successful and great fun. Even if it’s somebody else’s family history you can get quite obsessed by it and you want to find that extra piece of information for them. On a few occasions today I’ve managed to find that extra piece of information, so they’re all going home to be even busier – because you just get one bit of help and what happens? You’ve got to go on and do the rest. So all these people have gone home with homework!”
CFHS chairperson Janet Mowat said: “It has been a wonderful conference, and the family history fair seems to have fairly taken a trick. I’ve seen lots of local people, including people from Thurso, so the signs are all good for the future.
“Speaking to the stall-holders they’ve all been delighted with the centre here, the reception on Friday night, and the general friendliness of the whole event.
“We were delighted to get 44 delegates, and then there are all the stall-holders after that. I hope they found that Caithness is not as remote as they thought it was.
“The team that organised it consisted of Ian Leith, Nancy Swanson, Gus Mackay and myself. Ian was given the lead because he is our SAFHS representative so he was more aware of what was required and he did a lot of the groundwork. Nancy took all the delegates and Gus looked after the money.
“It has really been a team effort and we’ve all worked together. I’ve never been in a committee where people are so willing to do things. They were coming from all over the county to help.”
As the conference drew to a close, Ian Marson, secretary of ASGRA, announced that Musselburgh will be the location for the 2020 event.
In her closing remarks, Janet Bishop, chairperson of SAFHS and ASGRA, said: “Caithness has really pushed the boat out and done us all proud. The venue was great, everything was here, and they couldn’t have been more helpful.
“I would like to thank everybody who came and made it such a success. Thanks to the Caithness committee, and here’s to next year.”
