Instant Cousins

Instant Cousins : archiving my ancestry

  • 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…

  • Ticker Tape

    Information and news can spin around the world in a matter of seconds, or faster sometimes. In 2025 most people in the world have access to the internet, mobile phones and tablets, televisions, radios and more. Very few people read newspapers, the Royal Mail is struggling with providing a cost-effective service because people are no…

  • 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…

  • Rachel

    This is the start of my research journey into the family history of my wife’s maternal grandmother, Rachel Welsh, who married Andrew Nicol in 1918. Rachel was known to my wife because for a short while Rachel lived in her daughter’s house in Gloucester until she died in the 1960’s. Her connection is not just…

  • Searching for Elspeth

    I have been trying to put together a piece about a member of the Nicol family who has left only a very small footprint in the records available both on Ancestry and Scotland’s People. Although the British Newspaper Archive has given me some hope of finding more. You will recall from earlier posts that the…


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