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Davy

Davy

get off yer bum an sing radge
Private Member
Joined
Mar 23, 2005
Or are we? We might all be Scots now, but if we traced our ancestry where would we be? I have done a lit of family ancestry, and without getting bogged down in too much stats here is basically where my family came from over the last few hundred years

MUM'S SIDE: Father: McCallum. Family from South West of Scotland. MacCallum history does teach of one branch which headed South West from Argyle. Found a family grave of great Grandad's family in Old Luce. Also a cottage in East Ayrshire, they tended to be farmers. MacCallum's from Argyle were mainly RC (Sons of St Columba) and most fought on side of Prince Charlie but some also fought on Royalist side. MacCallums on my side are not RC. Great Grandad was killed at Ypres in WW1

Mother: Reid: Quite extensive history in East Lothian (Pencaitland, Musselburgh etc) But also some migration to and from Fife (Glenrothes, Methil etc) various jobs but miners predominately in Fife


Dad's Side. My Dad was from Edinburgh (Causewayside) Part of the poor extended RC community in the South side, but his Dad was from Liverpool (Bootle was def an address he lived in) Difficult to find much more family history

Dad's Mum. Mary Murphy who appears to have roots in Dundee where her Mum was from Dundee but her Dad appears to be from Dublin, or at least that is where he married the Dundonian but I cannot find any records from Ireland, possibly been destroyed

So there is dominant Scots with a chunk of English and a little Irish in me.

Where could life have taken you?
 
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Mum's side was catholic and parents were born in Ireland and in Scotland to Irish parents. Life was slums and no Irish need apply graduating to post war housing scheme.

Dad's side is nominally protestant, parents were born in the North of Ireland and Scotland, more genteel.

So I'm pretty much all celtic in composition and a mixture of Scottish and Irish.

Maybe one day I'll look into it all but I believe it's quite hard to get much info from Ireland as it was so poor and there was less in the way of infrastructure and institutions. Church records is about your lot I believe.
 
I haven’t done any research on mine but a few years ago I entered as much of my mother’s family tree, as I knew of, into an online app only with the intention of seeing what it looked like laid out. Unbeknown to me the app sent a notification to anyone who had also populated it with matching details. I later received a message from a woman in York who was from another branch of the tree. She had researched the family as far back as 1750 and sent me a copy of her research and our family’s history.

The earliest she could reach was that we were descended from the Lannon, Feeney and Donoghue line around the town of Roosky in Co. Roscommon, prior to the immigration to the eastern Scottish borders.

Wish I had time to look into it further.

As for my father’s side, all I know is that his mother’s family were from Abbeyhill/St. Leonards area by the name Trench and one of the great uncles was a Glasgow detective who, it was suggested, may have been used as the basis for the character Sherlock Holmes as he was acquainted with Arthur Conan-Doyle.
 
Davy said:
Or are we? We might all be Scots now, but if we traced our ancestry where would we be? I have done a lit of family ancestry, and without getting bogged down in too much stats here is basically where my family came from over the last few hundred years

MUM'S SIDE: Father: McCallum. Family from South West of Scotland. MacCallum history does teach of one branch which headed South West from Argyle. Found a family grave of great Grandad's family in Old Luce. Also a cottage in East Ayrshire, they tended to be farmers. MacCallum's from Argyle were mainly RC (Sons of St Columba) and most fought on side of Prince Charlie but some also fought on Royalist side. MacCallums on my side are not RC

Mother: Reid: Quite extensive history in East Lothian (Pencaitland, Musselburgh etc) But also some migration to and from Fife (Glenrothes, Methil etc) various jobs but miners predominately in Fife


Dad's Side. My Dad was from Edinburgh (Causewayside) Part of the poor extended RC community in the South side, but his Dad was from Liverpool (Bootle was def an address he lived in) Difficult to find much more family history

Dad's Mum. Mary Murphy who appears to have roots in Dundee where her Mum was from Dundee but her Dad appears to be from Dublin, or at least that is where he married the Dundonian but I cannot find any records from Ireland, possibly been destroyed

So there is dominant Scots with a chunk of English and a little Irish in me.

Where could life have taken you?
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Funny this appearing now as I found out only 3-4 weeks ago that my maternal grandfather was 100% Italian.

My wife's been big on genealogy since I've known her (26+ years) and has traced her side going back 2-300 years. There was a lot of farm workers who moved around for work so this involved a lot of guesswork in tracing their routes then visiting a shitload of rural town halls to look through records.

She made a good start on mine but it was pretty complicated trying to do it from abroad, especially since on both my parents side there are kids born out of wedlock and divorces everywhere. There's even a brother & sister who got married & had a kid - that must be a clerical fuck up!

One of the biggest complications is that my mum's dad wasn't named on her birth certificate and she always avoided speaking about it.

My big sister recently retired and has started looking properly into our side. She did one of these DNA test things which showed up an Italian grandparent. At first we thought it was probably nonsense but within days a bloke got in touch through ancestry.com who'd been trying to make sense of a link he'd found between an Italian ancestor of his and my family. So my wife, sister & this other bloke pooled their resources and mangaged to fit the pieces of the jigsaw.

So ladies, gentlemen & bouncers, meet Francesco Rizza my grandfather and shagger extraordinaire (a couple of wives, and loads of sprogs both legitimate & illegitimate) as well as being the founder of a string of ice cream shops which still exist in the North to this day (my mum was from Forres).

IMG-20240107-WA0003.jpg

So the outcome of all that is that on my Dad's side it's nearly all Edinburgh apart from Irish paternal grandparents but I don't know where from.

On my mum's side it's nearly all North of Scotland. a bit of Welsh and a huge chunk of Rome!

Add all over Brittany for my wife's family that makes for a real mixed bag for my girls - Scottish, Breton, Italian, Irish & Welsh, all without going back very far.

No English anywhere though, which doesn't displease me (though I do have a fair bit of English family now, going sideways & diagonally downward.).
 
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Peevemor said:
Funny this appearing now as I found out only 3-4 weeks ago that my maternal grandfather was 100% Italian.

My wife's been big on genealogy since I've known her (26+ years) and has traced her side going back 2-300 years. There was a lot of farm workers who moved around for work so this involved a lot of guesswork in tracing their routes then visiting a shitload of rural town halls to look through records.

She made a good start on mine but it was pretty complicated trying to do it from abroad, especially since on both my parents side there are kids born out of wedlock and divorces everywhere. There's even a brother & sister who got married & had a kid - that must be a clerical fuck up!

One of the biggest complications is that my mum's dad wasn't named on her birth certificate and she always avoided speaking about it.

My big sister recently retired and has started looking properly into our side. She did one of these DNA test things which showed up an Italian grandparent. At first we thought it was probably nonsense but within days a bloke got in touch through ancestry.com who'd been trying to make sense of a link he'd found between an Italian ancestor of his and my family. So my wife, sister & this other bloke pooled their resources and mangaged to fit the pieces of the jigsaw.

So ladies, gentlemen & bouncers, meet Francesco Rizza my grandfather and shagger extraordinaire (a couple of wives, and loads of sprogs both legitimate & illegitimate) as well as being the founder of a string of ice cream shops which still exist in the North to this day (my mum was from Forres).

View attachment 13020

So the outcome of all that is that on my Dad's side it's nearly all Edinburgh apart from Irish paternal grandparents but I don't know where from.

On my mum's side it's nearly all North of Scotland. a bit of Welsh and a huge chunk of Rome!

Add all over Brittany for my wife's family that makes for a real mixed bag for my girls - Scottish, Breton, Italian, Irish & Welsh, all without going back very far.

No English anywhere though, which doesn't displease me (though I do have a fair bit of English family now, going sideways & diagonally downward.).
Click to expand...
Do a DNA test then work from there
 
I've no idea of my family tree. Thank feck.

It seems to be terribly important to some, particularly on Hibs sites who can trace some sort of Irish history.
I just support the team and don't wave any flag other than a Hibs one.

My missus is Leith born, and her dad is of Irish Catholic roots so I suppose I could sorta claim roots. Or at least for my kids.

Not that they care.
 
numptyploom said:
Do a DNA test then work from there
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The Irish bit showed up on my sister's test but location wise it was everywhere. In saying that I understand that the McDonaughs were well know Derry Gypsies so that could explain things.
 
Doc Shrink said:
I've no idea of my family tree. Thank feck.

It seems to be terribly important to some, particularly on Hibs sites who can trace some sort of Irish history.
I just support the team and don't wave any flag other than a Hibs one.

My missus is Leith born, and her dad is of Irish Catholic roots so I suppose I could sorta claim roots. Or at least for my kids.

Not that they care.
Click to expand...
I'm only mildly interested going back the way and I have to fake enthusiasm whenever madame makes a breakthrough.

I'd be far more interested to know what distant sideways relatives I have dotting about and where, though that's obviously another shit load of work.
 
egb_hibs said:
Mum's side was catholic and parents were born in Ireland and in Scotland to Irish parents. Life was slums and no Irish need apply graduating to post war housing scheme.

Dad's side is nominally protestant, parents were born in the North of Ireland and Scotland, more genteel.

So I'm pretty much all celtic in composition and a mixture of Scottish and Irish.

Maybe one day I'll look into it all but I believe it's quite hard to get much info from Ireland as it was so poor and there was less in the way of infrastructure and institutions. Church records is about your lot I believe.
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I heard a lot of documents were burned during uprisings.
 
Doc Shrink said:
I've no idea of my family tree. Thank feck.

It seems to be terribly important to some, particularly on Hibs sites who can trace some sort of Irish history.
I just support the team and don't wave any flag other than a Hibs one.

My missus is Leith born, and her dad is of Irish Catholic roots so I suppose I could sorta claim roots. Or at least for my kids.

Not that they care.
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FWIW I wasn't too concerned about whether there was any Irish and was a bit surprised when one appeared. I was more interested to see how our loyalties to Scotland might be in contention to our ancestors. That and hoping to find some billionaire who only has me to hand his loot to
 
Peevemor said:
I'm only mildly interested going back the way and I have to fake enthusiasm whenever madame makes a breakthrough.

I'd be far more interested to know what distant sideways relatives I have dotting about and where, though that's obviously another shit load of work.
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Right then.

You obviously know something, and you're hinting at it.

I can only say, if you find out I'm related in some way, then she was gagging on it.
:coffee1:
 
Doc Shrink said:
Right then.

You obviously know something, and you're hinting at it.

I can only say, if you find out I'm related in some way, then she was gagging on it.
:coffee1:
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I’d have expected your records to be under lock and key with quite a strict ‘eyes only’ designation Doc?
 
egb_hibs said:
I’d have expected your records to be under lock and key with quite a strict ‘eyes only’ designation Doc?
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It's the blood tests.

A simple gonorrhoea test which I'm sure you take anally .. err I mean annually . can be hijacked to expose all sorts of alleged wrongdoings.

Allegedly.
:lookaround:
 
I did one of those Ancestry tests and no surprises it was equal Irish and Scots since my Dads side settled in Little Ireland. I also had a few % Norwegian which I assume is a result of some good old Viking raping and pillaging!
 
My Mother's side of the family is very well researched all the way back to a guy called Sjovald from Norway who settled in Aywick in Shetland in 1500.

Father's side not so much but my grandfather, who I never knew was from Stafford-shire and a gunner in the Royal artillery in WW1.

Both my grandfathers moved to Leith and married local girls.
 
hibbybilly said:
My great great great grandfather returned from a place called Botany Bay, where ever that is, where I think he emigrated tae 20 years before where I think he was a hard labourer, whatever that was.
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Dads side
His dad, grandad ,great grandad as far back as we can check all from Edinburgh, his parents lived on causewayside,I was born there, grandad worked in the printers there.
His mum was from felling tyneside.
Mums side.
Her dad was from caithness/sutherland, fought in the 1st World war moved to leith and worked in the docks, mum born in leith.
Her mums family were from the borders/ peebles /ayrshire.
Apart from dads mum all were Scots protestants as far as I'm aware
 
My Mum's side are from Irish Catholic stock, although they took a circuitous route to Leith from Ireland via Dundee. My Uncle traced us back to Ireland, there was a couple of Spanish names in there and there has always been a story in the family that we had Basque blood in there.

My Dad's side are Leith, and protestant, with a dash of Liverpool on my paternal nana's side. My cousin traced my Dad's lot back to Orkney in the 16th century, she even visited the graves of our ancestors.
 
1875 said:
My Mum's side are from Irish Catholic stock, although they took a circuitous route to Leith from Ireland via Dundee. My Uncle traced us back to Ireland, there was a couple of Spanish names in there and there has always been a story in the family that we had Basque blood in there.

My Dad's side are Leith, and protestant, with a dash of Liverpool on my paternal nana's side. My cousin traced my Dad's lot back to Orkney in the 16th century, she even visited the graves of our ancestors.
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Interesting. There was a long standing belief that dark haired Irish in some cases owed their colouring to Spanish DNA, with marooned sailors from the armada sometimes quoted as the originators. However it appears this is a myth (based on dna studies), and very few sailors actually surviving being hunted down by the Saxons. So you might be among a rare number who are the real deal!
 
egb_hibs said:
Interesting. There was a long standing belief that dark haired Irish in some cases owed their colouring to Spanish DNA, with marooned sailors from the armada sometimes quoted as the originators. However it appears this is a myth (based on dna studies), and very few sailors actually surviving being hunted down by the Saxons. So you might be among a rare number who are the real deal!
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It runs through my Mums family, we were once at mass in Andalucia and a lady sitting beside my mum was the spit of my Aunt. However, my family story suggests it was a wealthy daughter of a Spanish noblemen who ran away with the Irish gardener! Never been able to prove it other than the dark features of many of my Mum's side including my own two sons.
 
Bangkokhibby said:
My Mother's side of the family is very well researched all the way back to a guy called Sjovald from Norway who settled in Aywick in Shetland in 1500.
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An interesting wee aside to this folks may or not be interested in. Our family tree clearly shows the tradition of the eldest son taking the surname of his father, so for example Peter Robertson's first born son became Robert Peterson. I thought this was purely Icelandic but obviously not all those years ago. This tradition stopped when a Hosea Johnson had a son John Hoseason. This name stayed and can still be found in Shetland today. I'm told one branch of the family became rich and famous (sadly not mine) as the Hoseasons holiday mob. Anyway my point is, sticking to tradition it should actually be pronounced Hosea sons and not Ho seasons.
Sorry if that bored you 🥱
 
I seem to remember reading in the dim and distant past that some viking invaders of ireland/ Scotland from Sweden Norway were called fingal( fair strangers) and those from predominately Denmark dougal( dark stranger/ intruder).
But its probably more romantic to think your ancestor ran away with a rich Spaniard rather than be raped and pillaged by a dougal.
 
Bangkokhibby said:
An interesting wee aside to this folks may or not be interested in. Our family tree clearly shows the tradition of the eldest son taking the surname of his father, so for example Peter Robertson's first born son became Robert Peterson. I thought this was purely Icelandic but obviously not all those years ago. This tradition stopped when a Hosea Johnson had a son John Hoseason. This name stayed and can still be found in Shetland today. I'm told one branch of the family became rich and famous (sadly not mine) as the Hoseasons holiday mob. Anyway my point is, sticking to tradition it should actually be pronounced Hosea sons and not Ho seasons.
Sorry if that bored you 🥱
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Not at all ,interesting. Up until fairly recent history patronyms were used and not surnames
 
paigntonhibby said:
I seem to remember reading in the dim and distant past that some viking invaders of ireland/ Scotland from Sweden Norway were called fingal( fair strangers) and those from predominately Denmark dougal( dark stranger/ intruder).
But its probably more romantic to think your ancestor ran away with a rich Spaniard rather than be raped and pillaged by a dougal.
Click to expand...

Interesting and as I said there is the odd Spanish name in the records too.
 
1875 said:
My Mum's side are from Irish Catholic stock, although they took a circuitous route to Leith from Ireland via Dundee. My Uncle traced us back to Ireland, there was a couple of Spanish names in there and there has always been a story in the family that we had Basque blood in there.

My Dad's side are Leith, and protestant, with a dash of Liverpool on my paternal nana's side. My cousin traced my Dad's lot back to Orkney in the 16th century, she even visited the graves of our ancestors.
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If you look at a lot of Bretons, particularly in the west of Brittany, you can see there are definitely Moorish/N African roots. This is borne out by the DNA results of pals/wife's family. The Moors went on to rule Spain until the end of the 15th century.

All this Celtic stuff (bits of Spain, Brittany, Wales & Ireland among others) coincided with a load of travel and immigration between these areas (and not just to get pished at the festivals)!
 
Peevemor said:
If you look at a lot of Bretons, particularly in the west of Brittany, you can see there are definitely Moorish/N African roots. This is borne out by the DNA results of pals/wife's family. The Moors went on to rule Spain until the end of the 15th century.

All this Celtic stuff (bits of Spain, Brittany, Wales & Ireland among others) coincided with a load of travel and immigration between these areas (and not just to get pished at the festivals)!
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Yes, it seems to be a bit more of a complex picture according to recent research and stuff I have seen on You Tube.

Apparently in even pre-Roman times, Britain and Ireland were a popular target for trading shippers from the East Med who would go through the Med, up past Spain, Portugal and France to reach their goal.

Their main target? Metals - tin mainly from Cornwall but there are also possible religious and cultural links to places as far as Shetland.

The current theory is that we intermarried with these traders and built cultural links with them as artefacts from the Med are found in all these faraway parts of Britain.
 
HaarlemShuffler said:
Yes, it seems to be a bit more of a complex picture according to recent research and stuff I have seen on You Tube.

Apparently in even pre-Roman times, Britain and Ireland were a popular target for trading shippers from the East Med who would go through the Med, up past Spain, Portugal and France to reach their goal.

Their main target? Metals - tin mainly from Cornwall but there are also possible religious and cultural links to places as far as Shetland.

The current theory is that we intermarried with these traders and built cultural links with them as artefacts from the Med are found in all these faraway parts of Britain.
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The Moors also raided western England, Ireland and western Scotland for slaves for a long long time. They may have done a bit of viking style contribution to the gene pool while they were at it I guess
 
egb_hibs said:
The Moors also raided western England, Ireland and western Scotland for slaves for a long long time. They may have done a bit of viking style contribution to the gene pool while they were at it I guess
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Yup, and good to point out that it was the West coasts that were most visited - they swung right round the left hand side and kinda just didn't go up through the Channel.

Mind you, a lot of Vikings were dark-haired too, that being very much the default for the Indo-Europeans as they swept westwards from the Caucasian area thousans of years ago.
 
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