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John, you are back...with your really interesting family!

Ha ha yeah not had much time for researching family history lately, but my brother had a drink with one of our cousins at the weekend and his stories got us curious again! 

From what you have, have you narrowed down the date of your granddad's death (you mention his daughter getting ready to go to court 8 years later and then he died at that point). Guess you don't have the name of the farm, you haven't mentioned if you have.

I know the name of the farm, but the current owner according to the electoral register has been there since at least 1965 according to the Valuation Roll I found here: http://www.glenfarg.org/gdc/ValuationRoll.pdf

So I thought in terms of privacy it might be better not to mention the name of the farm in the public forums. 

Our cousin took a trip to the farm and the owner welcomed him in and showed him around, so may be worth dropping him a line, I'll just need to be extra tactfull

Online access to the Sasines seems to be aimed more at solicitors handling property transactions, but it would be a useful family history resource if it wasn't so expensive! 

Forgive me, can't remember now where you are location wise. The other option, if you have a date of death for your granddad would be to check for wills etc....but again this cannot be done online currently after 1925.

I'm down south, I'm occasionally in Edinburgh but never seem to have enough time!  He died in 1973, I think we've seen his will, by that time the farm was definately sold, but supposedly my Aunty was trying to get back the money he was supposedly cheated out of (nobody seems to know how!)

What were your grandparents' names for this line?

William McCullogh Innes and Jessie Innes nee Brown. 

Interesting, thanks for the tip.  I did a bit of googling and someone else mentions there were two sisters - Biddie Bell and Prudie West. 

My mum was called Prudence so sounds like it * could * be them under psuedonyms but they say the shops were beside St Andrew St (now Parliament St) and Speirs Place, whilst mum's shop was at 16 Henderson St where the Golden Bridge is now, and the other shop I believe was in the kirkgate. 

Anyone else have any recollections?

Hello
My Mother Elizabeth Henderson Ross was born 1923 at Station Cottage, Park Station to Parents John Yule Ross and Dora Whyte Geils.  My Granddad John was Railway Signalman at Park Station and the family lived at Station Cottage, I know by 1945 they had moved down the lane to live at Bridge Cottage where Dora had the job of Toll Keeper at Park Bridge.

John

Hi John,

Wow, it's a small world right enough! 

I wonder if my dad's wife knew your grandparent's and stayed with them to get away from the expected bombing in Edinburgh, or if your grandparents had already moved by 1940. 

Me and my brother are going to take a trip up that way at some point, possibly not much to see now but it's a day out anyway! 

We found the attached photograph amongst my dad's things, dated 1941. 

Just wondering what kind of uniform it is? 

I know he was in the merchant navy in the mid 30s, and he worked on the railways at one point too. 

Can anyone shed any light on it?  The hat has a crown and some kind of logo on it, the sleeve has star shaped buttons. 

Any suggestions appreciated! 

...and I think that is the crunch. People do research and follow it through to recent (living) people for all sorts of reasons really. Some do it because they can, as the information can be accessible to them and they take great pleasure in trying to make contact with living descendants (nothing wrong with that!). Others do it because they have personal reasons for "needing to know".

Others stop short really of researching to current/living descendants (that is me  ).

I think moving on to living descendants' research is a very personal thing and down to each of us researching how we want to do it really  The main thing though, and the major "health warning" is sometimes we can find information out about living people that we cannot ever discuss with them due to how sensitive the information can be... All fine and good researching events and activities when people are 'well dead', however, not so easy to be so casual about things when people are still living really...

Monica

Very true, we met our half-sisters last week - we'd always been vaguely aware of them but would have had no way of getting in touch with them without having access to birth/marriage certificates and the electoral register.  As it turned out they were as curious about us as we were about them, and possibly the only living people who remember my dad well - and were able to fill in some of each other's blanks. 

On the other hand, my mum is a very proud woman and tells a story of how her dad's mum died young and his father couldn't cope so had him adopted, and how his father was a wealthy man who lived in a huge mansion but my grandad was cheated out of his fortune by rogue lawyers! 

The truth rather more looks like his dad knocked up his servant and though he was a pit manager so probably had a nice house, it had something like 6 windows so hardly a mansion!  And his dad's dad also appeared to have a thing about servants and ended up in an asylum! 

I thought my dad's parents had a bit of a shotgun wedding as their first was born 3 months after they were married, but my mum's parents were married 9 days before their first child was born! 

There are times when she's slagging off my dad's side that we feel like enlightening her, but in reality we never would - I don't respect the man any less for having "illigitimate" on his birth certificate or having pre-marital sex (tsk tsk but my mum's generation take that kind of thing more seriously so could never tell her! 

Personally, there is lots of public information people can read about me - whether I pay my bills on time, where I live, etc etc, I've no concerns about anyone looking at my birth certificate whether it's in the comfort of their own home or at Scotland's people.