Whither the weather?
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
I have just finished an interesting book entitled So Foul and Fair a Day by Alastair Dawson (see under Raitt Readings at bottom) on the history of the weather and climate of Scotland – as always the purpose in buying it was to glean additional information of the lives and times of our ancestors.
Ten in a bed and the little one said...
Friday, 12 October 2012
In nineteenth century Scotland, a period for which there are fairly decent census records, it would appear that families were rather close-knit to all intents and purposes – at least so far as the Raitt families in Angus were concerned. We find various families living in the same streets in
Life expectancy back then
Friday, 31 August 2012
A while ago in another blog entry I discussed the causes of death of various ancestors. A couple of articles I have read recently mention some facts which might be worth adding to the pot. We have seen from our ancestors’ families that children are born every couple of years or so – and if there
A grandson of Eve
Friday, 13 July 2012
Elsewhere on this site I have discussed the Raitt DNA, particularly my own. In the news in the middle of June was an item about Ian Kinnaird, aged 72, from Caithness in the far North of Scotland, who took a DNA test to find out where his ancestors came from. Well, he has been found to be directly
The Castles of Rait
Sunday, 17 June 2012
Sir Gervaise de Rathe and his brother Andrew lived in the Nairn area of the province of Moray some 750 years ago. Their story is known only from the few snippets of extant contemporary documents that still survive and that have been embellished and interpreted by writers several hundred years
Populations in Forfar- and Kincardine-shire Parishes
Monday, 21 May 2012
Although most of this information is available in the various Statistical Accounts of Scotland, I thought it might be helpful to extract the population details for relevant parishes in Forfarshire (Angus) and Kincardineshire and put them into one comparative table. For good measure I have also
Our origins revisited
Monday, 16 April 2012
I have speculated here from time to time on our Raitt origins and the material I have put on the Raitt DNA pages discusses our origins and our to some extent. Something I read recently prompted me to revisit the famous Declaration of Arbroath, drawn up in 1320. And I was astonished, for here it
The Raitt name in history
Saturday, 21 January 2012
The Raitt name in history (by Ancestry.com and co.uk). Published by The Generations Network, 2008.
I finally succumbed and bought this book (which despite its modest size was not exactly cheap) out of curiosity but against my better judgement and I was right – it simply is not worth buying since
The Irish in Glasgow
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Most of my many first cousins have Irish blood in their veins, but it was only after the 1911 Scottish census recently became available, that I was able to discover the extent of their Irish ancestry.
In the case of my father’s eldest brother William, his wife, Sarah McKee, although born herself
Are we Normans?
Sunday, 23 January 2011
In a couple of these blogs I have alluded to our putative origins. The earliest possible date for our ancestors in Scotland would have been after the end of the last ice age, i.e. around 10.000 BC (actual settlements or artifacts of human civilization in Scotland date from 8500 BC) and I noted
Iniquities of the poll tax
Monday, 29 November 2010
In Scotland in 1989 Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher (re)introduced the Poll Tax or Community Charge as it was euphemistically known – the idea being to extend it later to England and Wales. Riots and mass demonstrations in London and other cities during 1990 led to the plan being abandoned and
Raitts here, there and everywhere
Sunday, 21 November 2010
We know there were several other Raitt families in Arbroath and St Vigeans at the same time as ours in the nineteenth century – and the chances are that they were indeed related – possibly descended from the Raitts (or Raits) of Halgreen and/or Anniston – as were the Raitts in Aberdeen and Dundee.
How unique are we?
Friday, 29 October 2010
When I was in my final year of school (proper (grammar) school – not university!) I, with a few other lads – one with the interesting name of Stretton Taborn (which sounds as though it could be the name of a lost English village) whose father was, if I recall, the minister of a local church –
What happened to the bairns?
Tuesday, 13 July 2010
I have noted before how children seem to be looked after by their grandparents – and indeed the censuses show also a good mix of nephews and nieces living in households other than their parents. This may be for expediency, it may be because of poverty or working hours – but it may also be down to
Far away places with the strange sounding names
Thursday, 25 February 2010
My father always maintained he had a relative in South Africa. Well, I presume to have found him! His uncle David (his father William’s elder brother) had a son called, after his grandfather, David Dorward Raitt born in Arbroath in 1897. David would have been a much older cousin to my father. He
History is the sum of countless individual decisions
Saturday, 20 February 2010
I was rather struck by a sentence in Dominic Sandbrook’s opinion column in BBC History Magazine, v11, n2, Feb 2010, p21. He said that history is nothing more than the sum of countless individual decisions, most of them lost forever. (OK, the reason it rang a chord was because it brought to mind a
My bonnie lies over the ocean
Sunday, 7 February 2010
Many of us Raitts and those related to the family are well-known in our own fields and areas of expertise, but we are probably not quite as well known as singer Bonnie Raitt, her Broadway actor father John Raitt, blues instrumentalist brother David Raitt, and singer/sound engineer brother Stephen
Origin of British surnames
Tuesday, 2 February 2010
In the January 2010 issue of the BBC History magazine (v11, n10, p12-13) there was an article by David Keys that caught my eye about the story of British surnames and how linguists are about to embark on a ground-breaking study of the evolution of some 40.000 British surnames which promises to
What might they have had for treats?
Thursday, 28 January 2010
I've not really been following too closely the take over by the American food giant Kraft of the iconic British brand Cadburys, but when I read that Cadburys was 168 years old, that got me thinking that our great grandparents could well have eaten their chocolate and other sweets (assuming they
Death by dying
Tuesday, 12 January 2010
On the Web sites page, I discussed the informative site on the Scottish way of birth and death. The insights gained there as well as others in a recent book purchase (which I haggled down to a quarter of its original price!) on European soldier deaths abroad between 1815 and 1914 and the
We’ve come a long way
Saturday, 2 January 2010
I was browsing an article in The World in 2010 published by The Economist about how manufacturing will overtake agriculture for the first time in India and I was struck by a couple of sentences about how, by and large, India's rural poor were protected from the [global financial] crisis by the
Love among the haystacks
Thursday, 31 December 2009
As I have said before doing genealogy is like being a detective - ferreting out links and pieces of evidence. analyzing it and then putting it all together with very satisfying results.
What you can glean from census records can not only be terribly useful, but also rather interesting for what
Why there’s nothing to be handed down!
Tuesday, 22 December 2009
In the family – on all sides – there are precious few mementos or possessions of my ancestors. The American side of the family does at least have the sextant of James Dorward Raitt which was recovered from the bottom of the sea – and therein lies a clue: the Raitt brothers, James Dorward and David
No fixed abode
Wednesday, 16 December 2009
The various BMD and census extracts can provide a fascinating insight into who lived where when and with whom. My father always said that his parents had moved at some stage from Arbroath to Glasgow – ostensibly because of a row in the family baker’s business. But it looks as though this might
Learning from records
Monday, 2 November 2009
You can really learn a lot from the entries on the various websites dealing with genealogy. For example, on one site dealing with burials (DeceasedOnline - which included burials in graveyards in Angus, Scotland) you can find out who was buried with whom - I came across several people who were
Excavations of Pictish sites
Sunday, 11 October 2009
It is not totally certain who exactly were the Picts (the painted ones) and from whence they came. Around the third century AD, however, the Picts - a group of Iron Age Caledonian tribes – apparently joined together to form just two tribal units. In the early sixth century they converted to
Do we have the wrong John Raitt?
Sunday, 4 October 2009
We know that our great great grandfather was John Raitt born in 1805 in Arbroath and that his wife was Elizabeth Dorward born 1808 in Arbroath. John’s father was Alexander Raitt (born 1768 in Arbroath) and his mother was Susan Millar (born 1775 in Monifeth). We also accept that Alexander’s father
Are we descended from Vikings?
Wednesday, 30 September 2009
Having a very strong affinity to Scandinavia, I always fancied myself having Viking blood coursing through my veins! Alas, it is probably just wishful thinking.
Although the Vikings had strongholds in Orkney and Shetland and constantly raided Ireland and the Scottish isles for plunder and slaves
Raitt roots - are we an incurious lot?
Monday, 28 September 2009
People these days are searching for their roots - but seemingly only if they lie outside their own countries. Americans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, South Africans are all searching for their Scottish roots - trying to find out about their forebears from the “auld” country. But with
Upon simply being here
Saturday, 26 September 2009
Have you ever stopped to wonder how lucky we are actually to be here? We have to date back tens of thousands of years - our ancestors survived the Ice Age by moving south and then a few thousand years ago found their way (back?) to Scotland. Our lot were probably Picts since they inhabited the
