Welcome to my family history website where all my posts are 500 words or less.
Family Stories
Family history is all about stories. But sometimes stories can get lost in the lists of names, dates, and places that good genealogists love to find. While those lists contain important pieces of the complex puzzle of an ancestor’s life and are necessary to good research, they are not the story. And sometimes those details, when recounted in excruciating detail, can detract from the story, resulting in those eye-rolls and stifled yawns that the detail-oriented genealogist is so familiar with.
So here you will find the stories of my family in short form - just the interesting bits. 500 words. Of course, I am also doing the background research that is essential to good genealogy - I just won’t tell you about all of it. If you are interested in the details, a PDF family tree for each family can be downloaded. Please reach out if you want more information about anything you read here, or if you can add new information.
This website is (and always will be!) a work in progress. Sign up below to be notified when new stories are added.
Balch/Feichtlbauer Family
Rogers/Baguley Family
Williamson/Lindsay Family
Mud Row: Life and Death in a Scottish Mining Community
Many of my Lindsay ancestors were coal miners, working in the coal mines of Lanarkshire and living in miner’s accomodation provided by the Clyde Ironworks company. The street they lived on was called Mud Row.
Oddly, it was the grimness of that name that inspired me and got me wondering about the people who lived there. Were they in poor health? Did they all die young? Who did they marry and how many children did they have? Did they lose their children too early? These questions got me started on a One Place Study of Mud Row, in which I will examine the physical, social and health conditions of the residents of Mud Row in the last half of the nineteenth century. It is a work in progress and updates will be added as they are complete.