It was a dark and stormy night…

It was a dark and stormy night when I started researching some family history, Dundee was being battered by some of the worst gales in decades – little did I realise that I would uncover another dark and stormy night from Dundee’s history from 120 years ago, a picture of a relative from the 19th century, a story of tragedy and bravery, poverty and hardship and a rather awful poem by William McGonagall.

Although I am far from an expert in genealogy or family history research, I am lucky enough to work for brightsolid where we develop and host some of the world’s greatest family history digital archives (FindMyPast, Genes Reunited, Friends Reunited, Scotlands People, 1911 Census, The British Newspaper Archive etc). This puts me at an great position to spend the winter evening’s trawling the various digital archives and building up a family history story about the people and places relevant to me, Jeni and Sofia.

With my own family being a mixture or Irish and Italian immigrants I have never had too much success getting that far back into history – however when I started researching the family from Sofia’s perspective I was able to mine back through Jeni’s parent’s Scottish roots back to the Jacobite revolution of the 17th century.

However as is often the case, it isn’t the depth of research that proves the most rewarding, it is the uncovering of information that had been lost in the mists of time, that paints a picture of the people from whom you are directly descended.

I have, over the last couple of years, used ScotlandsPeople to build up a fairly extensive family tree based on the wonderful birth, marriage and death certificate information available from the site. The beauty of this archive is that you can see the original certificates and all the associated information.

For example; starting with say some grandparent’s names it is simple to find their marriage certificate. This in turn will give you their ages (on the date they married), both sets of parent’s names, witnesses and even their actual signatures (or ‘X’ marks if they weren’t able to write!). So starting from 2 people you know, you suddenly have information to find their birth certificates, which also provides details of their parents again and often the date of their marriage. This leads to an exponential increase as from 2 people you now have information on 4 more, and when you find their marriage certificates – another 4 names are revealed (their parents). etc.

It is very very easy to research back a couple of centuries of Scottish family history in one evening; however the discipline, in my opinion, comes from slowing down and recording all the data at each stage from each source before rushing on into the past.

I use a piece of software called Mac Family Tree which is perfect for my research, and as it now comes with companion iPad and iPhone apps I can carry my research with me at all time and update on the move for synchronisation later.

So…

My mother-in-law’s maiden name was Strachan and from my research I discovered the Strachan family line was made up of Fathers and Sons names Ralph and Rodon (alternately as was often the case). These unusual names would assist me later on when I started ‘colouring the picture’.

From Scotland’s people’s statutory records I was able to establish the following tree for the Strachan line to our daughter;

Additional information about siblings, addresses and occupations were easily added from the census data.

At this stage I was quite happy that I had a good pedigree chart which was backed up by good statutory sources and in my opinion this part of family history is interesting only in seeing how deep you can get your tree and can be a little bit dry – however this has all changed for the amateur family historian with the launch of the British Newspaper Archive, a 10 year project to digitise 40 million pages of British newspapers, fully indexing them at word level to allow instant access to the stories about the people and places in your family tree.

And this is where my real story begins…

The ‘Ralph Strachan’ born in 1794 turns up in many newspaper publications as it transpires he was a distiller from Leith who had the dubious honour of managing to go bankrupt running a brewery!

Moving on and searching for his son ‘Rodon Strachan’ proved fruitful as he had such a unique name.

I already knew he was a maltster from the census information and that he lived in Newburgh, Fife. The first article I found was from 1856 and related to him being in a shooting party in Newburgh where one of the party had his leg ‘fearfully shattered’ – not the most amazing story but interesting nonetheless, what was also interesting, as is often the case with the BNA material, reading the rest of the page uncovered a letter from Florence Nightingale format he Crimean war which helped set the timeline in my mind.

The I looked for his son, another Ralph Strachan and found a notice of his Birth in the Fife Herald – Feb 1861

As I already knew about his birth from the statutory records from Scotland’s People, this wasn’t of great interest until I noticed two things – firstly there was also a death notice in the same article for another Ralph Strachan (which turned out to be his Uncle as I was able to corroborate from the death records in Scotlands People) but I noticed that the date of Ralph’s birth was indicated as the ’15th inst.’ – which means the 15th of the previous month, ie. January. However the birth certificate shows he was born in December the previous year – Looking at the parent’s marriage certificate indicated the married the previous July, so maybe this was an attempt to legitimise the birth by adding some weeks to the public announcement! Or maybe the Fife Herald had a buy one get one free offer on announcements as long as they were in the previous month!

So Ralph was born to Rodon Strachan and Jessie Miller (more about her later!) and we don’t hear much more about him until 1871 census where at 11 years old he is working on a farm in Perth – not long after this he is caught poaching game and fined as found in this Dundee Courier article from 1877.

Five years later the 1881 census shows Ralph – now aged 21 living as a farm servant in the Port Allen Bothy in Errol – Google maps shows the farm is still there – and I plan to visit it soon to see if the bothy still exists;

By 1891, Ralph was now 31 and the Census shows him being ‘At Sea’ on board a small ship docked off Gray’s in Essex in the Thames – he was classified as an Able-Bodied Seaman.

Now we should go back to Jessie Strachan at this point, because the same 1891 census shows her now residing in the Markinch Poorhouse. Once can only assume that following the death of Ralph’s father 6 years earlier she found herself in financial difficulties – but again let’s look at her story later as she turns out to be an interesting character.

November 1893 – It was a dark and stormy night…

This is where my research using the British Newspaper Archive hit pay-dirt – imagine my surprise when I found an article about Ralph Strachan and a ‘hurricane’ that hit Dundee in 1893…

At this stage I was amazed to have found such a great story about a significant event in local history that directly involved Jeni’s Great Grandfather – however I wasn’t prepared for the next part as I scrolled further down the article;

An image of Ralph Strachan – finding an image of a 19th century ancestor is amazing!

The article then goes on to capture the events of that night as recounted by Ralph;

What an amazing article – the whole page goes on to describe the stormy events of the evening in equally enthralling detail. It wasn’t a hard decision to go ahead and buy a framed mounted print. This is a facility offered directly through the BNA site and serviced by Francis Frith.

This now has pride of place at home;

Some further research using Google and the facts in the newspaper article uncovered an image of Ralph’s ill-fated steamship;

Further searching on Google found this poem by Dundee Poet(?) William McGonagall;

The Terrific Cyclone of 1893

‘Twas in the year of 1893, and on the 17th and 18th of November,

Which the people of Dundee and elsewhere will long remember,

The terrific cyclone that blew down trees,

And wrecked many vessels on the high seas.

All along the coast the Storm Fiend did loudly roar,

Whereby many ships were wrecked along the shore,

And many seamen lost their lives,

Which caused their children to mourn and their wives.

Alas! they will never see their husbands again,

And to weep for them ’tis all in vain,

Because sorrow never could revive the dead,

Therefore they must weep, knowing all hope is fled.

The people’s hearts in Dundee were full of dread

For fear of chimney-cans falling on their heads,

And the roofs of several houses were hurled to the ground,

And the tenants were affrighted, and their sorrow was profound,

And scores of wooden sheds were levelled to the ground,

And chimney stalks fell with a crashing rebound :

The gale swept everything before it in its way;

No less than 250 trees and 37 tombstones were blown down at Balgay.

Oh! it was a pitiful and a terrible sight

To see the fallen trees lying left and right,

Scattered about in the beautiful Hill of Balgay,

Also the tombstones that were swept away.

At Broughty Ferry the gale made a noise like thunder,

Which made the inhabitants shake with fear and wonder

If their dwellings would be blown to the ground,

While the slates and chimney-cans were falling all around.

Early on the 18th a disaster occurred on the Tay :

The wreck of the steamer “Union,”- Oh! horror and dismay!

Whereby four lives have been taken away,

Which will make their friends mourn for many a day.

The steamer left Newburgh for Dundee with a cargo of sand,

And the crew expected they would safely land,

But by the time the steamer was opposite Dundee,

Alas! stronger blew the gale, and heavier grew the sea.

And in order to prevent stranding the anchor was let go,

And with the cold the hearts of the crew were full of woe,

While the merciless Storm .Fiend loudly did roar,

As the vessel was driven towards the Fife shore.

Then the crew took shelter in the stokehole,

From the cold wind they could no longer thole,

But the high seas broke over her, one finding its way

Right into the stokehole, which filled the crew’s hearts with dismay.

Then one of the crew, observing that the steamer had broached to,

Immediately went on deck to see what he could do,

And he tried hard to keep her head to the sea,

But the big waves dashed over her furiously.

Then Strachan shouted that the “Union” was sinking fast,

Which caused his companions to stand aghast,

And Strachan tried to lower the small boat,

But alas! the vessel sunk, and the boat wouldn’t float,

And before he could recover himself he was struggling in the sea,

And battling with the big waves right manfully,

But his companions sank with the “Union” in the Tay,

Which filled Strachan’s heart with sorrow and dismay,

And after a great struggle he reached the beach,

Fortunately so, which he never expected to reach,

For often he was drawn back by the back-wash,

As the big waves against his body did dash.

But, when nearly exhausted, and near to the land,

A piece of wreckage was near him, which he grasped with his hand,

Which providentially came within his reach,

And bruised, and battered, he was thrown on the beach.

He was so exhausted, he was unable to stand upright,

He felt so weakly, he was in such a plight,

Because the big waves had done him bodily harm,

Yet on hands and knees he crept to a house at Northfield farm.

He arrived there at ten minutes past four o’clock,

And when he awakened the inmates, their nerves got a shock,

But under their kind treatment he recovered speedily,

And was able to recount the disaster correctly.

Oh! it was a fearful, and a destructive storm!

I never mind the like since I was born,

Only the Tay Bridge storm of 1879,

And both these storms will be remembered for a very long time.

A dreadful piece of poetry as always by McGonagall, but obviously written from the account in the Courier and mentioning Ralph Strachan by name!

Ralph goes on to stay in Dundee and in 1901 he was staying in Castle Lane with his wife, 4 children and his mother (Jessie).

Now it is a good time to discuss Jessie Strachan – When I started this research all I knew was that she had spent time in a poorhouse and ultimately died in one in 1922.

Again the BNA shed some light on this part of the story, from an article in The Courier from 1896

It is clear from this that Jessie Strachan was prone to drink and that having ‘pawned the bedclothes’ for drinking money her two sons were not inclined to support her drinking habit!

Ralph died a few years later aged just 46 and this led to his 6 children being distributed around the family.

One of the sons was my mother-in-law’s father, and two of the other sons went to Canada as pointed out to me by a new found relative who I made contact with after reading her post for assistance on the same family line on Genes Reunited.

I was able to find records of these two Strachan boys leaving the UK in the ‘Passenger Lists Leaving the UK’ section of FindMyPast.co.uk which supported this.

So in summary thanks to Scotland’s people I was able to very quickly establish an accurate, well source family tree tracking births, deaths and marriages.

The online censuses coloured in the detail around addresses and professions.

But the BNA really provided the amazing stories that no-one in the family knew about.

I can now tell my daughter;

• Her Great-Great-Great-Great Grandfather ran a distillery and managed to go bankrupt
• Her Great-Great-Great Grandfather was in a shooting party that went wrong
• Her Great-Great-Great Grandmother pawned the bed linen for drinking money and ended up in the poorhouse
• Her Great-Great Grandfather after a dodgy start poaching, went to sea and became a sea captain and was the sole survivor of a terrible storm and is mentioned in a poem by William McGonagall

And we have all the words and pictures to support this from the British Newspaper Archive.

This is just one branch of one family and I’ve been able to find out so much interesting information – I now have started researching other parts of the family from the 19th century, and although I haven’t found anything quite as major as a storm at sea and heroic survival – I have found family stories about violent deaths, illicit stills, court cases and other amazing insights into life in Dundee in the 19th Century.

There is something quite wonderful about retelling stories long forgotten especially when they are part of your own family history.

A copy of my family tree can be found here if you are interested in the details or want to compare with your own research – I’d welcome any contact from other family historians.

I notice, and it is purely by accident, that as I post this blog entry on the 30th December it would have been Ralph Strachan’s birthday (albeit he would have been 152!).