Instant Cousins : archiving my ancestry
- Cheesemongers and Dairies
- House History
- Other Stories
- Reviews, Reports and Research
- Stone, Steam and Dynamite
- The Welsh Connection
- The Wordsmith
- Wheelwrights, Publicans and a Country Lad
-
Williamina
A Welsh Family Post There is little to know about Williamina. Not one of her descendants known to me who are living in Scotland have any real knowledge of her. She has left neither footprint of her life that I can find, nor any photos. We know her parents, her brothers and sisters, her nephews…
-
The Youth Vote
A Wordsmith Post In 1969 Peter Carver was 25 years old and a lobby correspondent in the House of Commons. This meant he was an accredited journalist sitting on the bench above the Speaker’s chair at the other end of the Stranger’s Gallery. Peter had left school at 15 and become a cub reporter on…
-
Caution
The first thing that I discover when I reach the top floor of the Mitchell Library, the Archives and Genealogy Centre, is a sign on the Gents toilet before you enter the Archive room. “Caution (in capitals) this door is liable to slam shut unless it is held”. This is not the only sign that…
-
Without a Flutter
A Wordsmith post Horseracing has been regulated for centuries by the Jockey Club. The associated betting industry which started on the racecourse was regulated by law. Cash betting could only legally be undertaken on the course. Off the course, betting could only be undertaken by credit account. An off-course punter could only place a bet…
-
Peter, the Wordsmith
This story started in September last year during a conversation with my niece. I know that my late brother Peter would have been a treasure trove of memories and artefacts of family history, but I never found the time to speak with him specifically about this new strand of storytelling that I was thinking about,…
-
Scrapbook of 2025
This is my annual review of what has happened on Instant Cousins since the beginning of the current year. I’m looking back to make sense of how I have been mapping my family’s ancestry and other stories. It has been quite a journey around the UK, seeking out stories that I have pieced together from…
-
Visiting Aunt Susie
In the late 1970’s, before I met my wife, she was living in a flat in the West End of Glasgow. Not far from where she lived, in Dudley Drive, lived her Aunt Susie. The road that she lived in is made up of a row of Glasgow tenements, four stories high, and very typical…
-
Mr and Mrs Welsh Come to Saltcoats
Saltcoats is a coastal town in Ayrshire. It is part of what is known as the Three Towns: Stevenston, Saltcoats and Ardrossan. The history of this coastline is built upon coal, iron, shipbuilding, dynamite, and trains. It was possibly one of the busiest industrial hubs of Scotland at the turn of the 19th Century with…
-
Homework
Homework A surprise request to offer assistance to my grandson with his school project on Remembrance and the stories of great grandparents, or in his case, great great grandparents, led me to revisit the piece that I have written previously, about John McKie M.N. John served in the Merchant Navy throughout the Second World War…