New Census!

This is the stuff of a genealogist's dreams... Today, I was doing my periodic check of some of my favorite websites, and on the Scotland's People site, I saw that they had added an index to the 1861 Scotland Census!

The Census can be a wealth of information for genealogists. It's a great way to see households as they stood at a moment in time. They're helpful for eliminating possibilities, and creating new ones.

I was able to, in the span of about 1 hour, get 1861 Census information on families of John and Mary Nixon, my G3-grandparents, Matthew and Margaret Lindsay, my G4 grandparents, Elizabeth Houston, my G4-grandmother, and some other secondary relations. Lots of fun! There wasn't really anything terribly surprising in these records, but I did learn some birth/death information, and had more support created for some of my ideas about certain side branches of the family.

For instance, I have a G3-granduncle named Archibald Houston. I had managed to trace him in the records till about 1857, but he then disappeared into thin air... So, for the 1861 Census, I searched for one of his kids, John Forsyth Houston, who would have been about 4 in that year. I found him, and discovered that his mother was marked as a widow. Therefore, that's where the guy disappeared to! Another piece of the puzzle marked in. Now I just have to find Archibald's death record.

One interesting piece of cognitive dissonance for those of us who pursue genealogy is this divide between "Wow, I just got a piece of information," and the reality of these people who were going through a bad situation, with a mother left to raise 4 kids when her husband died an early death. Granted, the situation I'm thinking about happened about 140 years ago, but reprecussions of that event play out in the lives of the descendants of Archilbald Houston and Elizabeth Forsyth to this day.

That is assuming, of course, that they have living direct descendants. Maybe one day I'll find some...

In the meantime, I'll have fun entering this information into my computer database, and will have to see how this may inspire more research. One of the great things about genealogy is that there's always more to do!

NP: Random chatter in Brace Commons