RootsChat.Com

@ Gali, yes that is indeed my grandmother. Her first husband died in 1966, and she was one of the most sort-after elderly ladies in the area! She then married Ted Clark, and it seems, kept Medder as a second name. I guess she considered Cecil her true love or soul mate or something. She died before Ted, but was still buried with Cecil.
I have searched eeverything on that bdmhistoricalrecords.
Thank you and Sharon01 for the scotlandspeople.gov.uk link. Hours of Google searching still had not pulled up that site for me, though surely it now looks like it should have been the first place I went to. In saying that though surely freebdm.org would be the first stop for English relatives but that was no help whatsoever (in searching English relatives).
@ Jenny11 I was more meaning under the context of dying, rather than knowing or calling elders by their given names. My dad remembers EVERYTHING as well, I am most put out when he can't remember something, I tell him it's time for the old folks' home!
@MonicaL, I don't have it, but I am currently writing (snail mail) to my uncles & aunties to ask for any information they can give me, as are they are considerably older than my father (and may have the certificates).
New Zealand death certificates contain all the usual info: date & place of birth and death, parents, number and age of children, and marriages and name changes. Unfortunately without buying the certificate, bdm will only give you the year of death, and either a dob or age at death.


Did passenger ships leave from Edinburgh, or Scotland in general? As opposed to having to travel down to England to leave the isles.

My father is the youngest child of an old couple. His father was the 14th of those 15 children mentioned above (and in the end the only child to pass on Medder, so every Medder in NZ is directly related to me!). My oldest aunty gave me this information, as she researched her and my uncle's (dad's eldest brother) family trees. It's entirely possible it was done from one of my grandfather's siblings' memories.