Family Origins Research

Family lore or fact? The final part of the story of my family in Maryhill. My grandfather Following on from A Maryhill Highlander , John Priestley's widow Jeannie remarried in 1920 and started a new family with her second husband.  This was a common occurance in the years after the First World War with so much loss of life. The close family unit of Jeannie and her children Isabella, James and Joseph was greatly impacted by the turmoil of the First World War and Jeannie's second husband did not want my grandfather as part of his family.  My grandfather's story now enters that familiar territory of family lore. Family lore states that my grandfather was banished from the home his mother shared with her new husband and was sent to Dublin to live with an aunt.  There is definitely an aunt of of my grandfather, John Priestley's younger sister Helen, living in Dubin in the 1930s, until her death in the 1980s, but whether my grandfather was looked after by her is uncertain.  W

 From Killearn to the Scottish Cup Final Robert Leckie, Queens Park FC, 1874. Source of photograph: Robertson, FHC (Ed.).   (1992).   The men with the educated feet: A statistical and pictorial history of Queen Park FC .  Queens Park Football Club. Talking to my father-in-law about his family history led to him mentioning a connection to a pioneer of Scottish and international footballing history, namely Robert Leckie of Queens Park FC and the Scotland national team. Robert was the brother of Grace Leckie who is my father-in-law's great grandmother, making Robert his great grand uncle.  Born in Killearn, Stirlingshire on October 19th, 1846, Robert was the son of farmer John Leckie and his wife Margaret McGregor.  Robert is listed in the 1861 Census in the Parish of Killearn aged 14 years and as a scholar living with his mother Margaret, brothers Alexander and John, and sisters Janet and Grace at Spittal Farm, Killearn, where Robert's mother Margaret farmed 80 acres.   Ten years

A Maryhill Highlander Following on from my A Walk on the Woodside blog, I’d like to focus on my great grandfather who lived his short life of 26 years in Maryhill before the turmoil of the First World War meant he would never return home.  John was born in 1888 in the District of Kelvin in Glasgow at New City Rd. As you’d expect from my comments in my A Walk on the Woodside blog, the tenement building is no longer standing and a flyover and car park takes their place. The 1891 census for the Civil Parish of Barony is the first census return we see John’s name, along with his father James, mother Isabella and younger brother Thomas all residing in Kirkland St. Kirkland St, 1975,  Record # C1855, Virtual Mitchell John’s father James was the son of immigrants John Priestly and Ellen Dickie, both from County Antrim in what is now Northern Ireland, who, like so many, travelled to Scotland in the mid-1850s and later to seek a new life in industrial Glasgow.  John and Ellen were married in

 A Walk on the Woodside Gairbraid  St, c.1910.   Record # C1847, Virtual Mitchell Cataloguing my family history research and specific locations for the maternal side of my family who lived in and around the Maryhill area of Glasgow from the early 1870s to the 1960s, I noticed with interest how they tended to remain within this specific area of Glasgow for generations. Places such as Cameron St, Abington St, Doncaster St, Scotia St, New City Rd, Garscube Rd, Windsor St and Maryhill Rd to name a few of the locations within the north of Glasgow were mentioned in the statutory registers, census returns and the valuation rolls of my maternal family through close to 100 years. Multiple generations were born, and some died, often of infant mortality, within the same tenement flat. My grandfather, great grandmother and two great grand aunts were all born and lived at various times in the same flat in Cameron St. The place of birth of multiple siblings can sometimes reveal a different locatio