Last Friday had an awesome experience searching for my mother-in-law's long lost counsins in Scotland.
Ethan now goes to kindy, Lydia was sleeping, I had done most of the housework so I had hours of free time which of course means family history! A few weeks earlier mum (mother-in-law) came over and asked me to help her start a search for her father's family who he never talked about or visited when living in Britain. Since coming to Australia around 40 years ago there had been no contact at all. So I told mum to bring me everything she had so I could study all the details at hand and make a decision as where to go next. What we knew: her father was George Hay, and his father was William Wilson Hay and mother Jane Stewart Lees and that he had two sisters named May and Jean.
My first attempts for information were made on the the Scottish government website called Scotlands People where for a fee you can search for births, deaths and marriages from the 1500s to 2000s. I couldn't find anything definitive for May or Jean Hay. We already had a death date for William Wilson Hay but no certificate. I realised that certificate was what we needed. It would have an informant listed with their name and possibly an address. So we found his death and sent away for the certificate which I realised now we did without even checking what a Scottish death certificate contains but we had faith and a lot of hope that this certificate would give us a lead to George Hay's family.
A few weeks passed and the certificate arrived. Our prayers were answered and it contained the best possible information citing Mary Murray, daughter of William Wilson Hay as the informant living in Glasgow. It also had his wife recorded as Jenny Rodger Lees with their address also in Glasgow. by going further back in our research we found the clues we needed to start searching forward.
So Friday I had the house to myself and I logged onto Scotlands People. I found a marriage for Mary Murray quite easily since she must have been Mary Hay (who we thought was May). She married Thomas Price Murray in 1951, in Bridgeton, Glasgow and was recorded as Mary Rodger Hay. I was happy to see the Rodger there because I already know that was a family name (Jenny Lees mother's maiden name) and helped me know that I had found the right person. So after they were married I could only assume that they had children. I went to search for births in Glasgow. I entered the surname of Murray and was hoping to filter the search using parents names of Thomas and Mary. Unfortuantely this facility was not available. So I could only narrow the search by year range and location. I narrowed the multitude of children with the surname of Murray down to a list of four pages, with each page costing me one credit. I thought that when I paid to look at the records it would list the parents and I would be able to identify which children belonged to Thomas and Mary. After looking at the first page I was so disappointed to see that the parents weren't listed and I just had a list of childrens names, dates and locations. How was I ever going to know which children were theirs?? I paused for a moment and pondered on the value of paying for another three pages of names that I could not identify. I felt a strong desire to keep going and even though I had just about run out of credits and thought I could be wasting these on nothing I clicked on the next page. I scrolled down.... nothing. I clicked on the third page, I scrolled down and nearly to the bottom I found a girl named Mary Rodger Murray!! She was born in 1962 in Bridgeton, Glasgow! I could not just ignore this name - it had to be connected to our family.
I quickly searched for a marriage for Mary Rodger Murray and found one in 1978 to Robert McTavish Wright in Glasgow. I was a bit surprised that she married at age 16 but with the full name of Mary Rodger Murray I was sure I was on the right track. So now I had found my mum's aunty and cousin but how were we going to contact them?
I hardly know how it happened. I just did a google search for relatives in scotland and came up with a website called 192.com which offered searches for phone numbers, addresses and electoral rolls. It was so strange because I had tried to search for these kind of details before during that week but had not found 192.com. It was the answer I needed to my question because I did a search for Mary Wright and on the first screen of free results I was able to scroll down and cross reference her name with other occupants of the same premises. It wasn't long until I found a Mary Wright within the right age bracket and listed as other occupants were Robert Wright, obviously her husband, and none other than Mary Murray - her mother!!! I was blown away, I was so excited! Then of course I had to go through the process of paying for credits to be able to see the full details of the household. For some reason my computer decided to play up on me and I had to call Tim at work and frantically ask me to help me sort it all out and also share this story of how I'd found his mother's family. He was also so excited of course. We got the computer sorted and I was presented with an address of 84 Wellhouse Crescent dated from 2009 for Robert and Mary Wright and hopefully Mary Murray as well. I tried white pages but no luck with any phone numbers.
I was planning to ring mum anyway to ask if she could babysit for me that night so it wasn't long before I was on the phone sharing this all with her. Of course she was so happy and brought to tears when I explained all the common names and places that had lead me to finding her family. Later that night when I picked up the kids she and dad were still soaking it all in and planning to write a letter to see if this family really was the connection we've been looking for. Out of the blue dad decides to do a google search on Wellhouse Crescent. Low and behold up comes the details for a local community centre located on Wellhouse Cresent with a phone number listed. So before we knew it mum was on the phone to Scotland and a lovely lady answered the call and when she realised what we were doing offered to "just pop round" in her scottish accent and deliver a message to the occupants of 84 Wellhouse Cres. Well we received an email from this lady which said that Mary Murray was there and they were completely shocked to hear from us but very happy and that they would email us shortly.
What a wonderful day it was for me to be involved in such an awesome experience. I've been telling everyone I meet about it and now I have finally recorded it here with permission from mum of course.
