How a simple search made strangers from the past come alive

HIS mother may have disapproved of their marriage, but judging by the family photo albums, my grandparents remained a happy couple until death separated them.

However, since they have both passed on, the story of their lives has remained a mystery to me.

Yesterday, armed with only a few dates, I ventured into the General Register Office determined to learn more about my ancestry.

The wedding picture of my grandmother, Feralinna Mathie, and grandfather, Allan MacLeod, became my starting point as I searched the archives, opened by the Queen yesterday.

The Scotland's People Centre in West Register Street, Edinburgh, offers access to digital images of 60 million birth, marriage and death records, wills, testaments and census records.

Users have access to the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland, and heraldic records in the Court of the Lord Lyon.

Inside the building, there are 168 search computers, ready for use at £10 a day; but 36, under the magnificently restored Adams dome, are set aside for two-hour "taster" sessions for the public from 25 August.

Personal help is available in the centre, with tips on tracking family history.

Sitting amid a bank of flat screens, I quickly found my father's birth certificate. It showed his father's occupation as bus driver.

My father had told me my grandfather had run a transport firm, MacLeod's Buses, with his brothers until driven off the road by a cut-throat rival.

Disillusioned, five of the brothers left Scotland for a new life in Canada but Allan stayed and followed his father, and elder brother Alex, into the shipyards.

Through Allan's birth certificate, I discovered their father, my great-grandfather, John MacLeod, married on Skye. The marriage register showed John, a fisherman, married Flora McAskill, a general servant.

By the time Allan was born, he gave his occupation as a platelayer – an engineering job related to the shipyards.

Clearly the family joined many Highlanders who left rural life lured by a promise of work in the shipyards of the Clyde.

Family rumour has it Flora disapproved of her youngest son's marriage to city girl and blacksmith's daughter, Feralinna, over a good Highland lass.

Turning to Feralinna, I searched for her birth certificate to track down the names of her parents and date of their marriage. Her father turned out to be a blacksmith called Alexander Mathie from Clydebank.

Searching for his birth certificate, I was able to track down details of his marriage and both his parents and parents-in-law.

Both his father, William, and his father-in-law, James Malcolm, were listed as a "blacksmith journeyman" which set me wondering if romance had been forged over the anvil between these families who shared a profession passed down the generations.

As records were only made a legal requirement from 1885, I struck a dead end going back, so decided to move forward.

Alex MacLeod married Marjorie and the pair ran a hardware shop in Byres Road, Glasgow, but had no children. Feralinna's elder sister, Jean Mathie, who was childless, was killed in a road accident in the city after nipping out to buy her husband cigarettes.

And within 45 minutes and a quick call home I discovered a family brought together by the end of a rural way of life.

They may not have been princes, but now when I look at that wedding picture, I don't see strangers, but lives.

Lives created by others and which created me.

BACKGROUND

THE £7.5 million project brings the personal touch to Scotland's national record-keeping. The centre has opened up magnificent buildings in Edinburgh and hopes to become a major tourist attraction.

In General Register House, where the public can use computers for two-hour "taster" searches, the stunning Robert Adams dome has been restored close to its original pale yellow colour scheme with brilliant gold plaster thistles.

A magnificent 18th-century statue of George III, that once lay in the middle of the dome but was later moved into an alcove, has been fully restored with glowing metal crown and sceptre.

Further back in the magnificent Mathieson dome, where there are more research screens, there are tens of thousands of volumes of sasines, a form of property registration, filling the circular shelves, four storeys high. They are part of an unbroken record dating back to 1617.