Tracing the ancestors and some relaxation

---

---

Tuesday 7th July
Tracing the ancestors and some relaxation
Another overcast day and the forecast is variable so we have decided that this morning we will spend some time at the Registry Office in Princes Street to see what we can add to the Benvie Family Tree.
Scotland is renown worldwide to have very good records of its people from their birth to their grave and there is a 2 hour free ‘taster’session available for a limited number of places twice a day at the Registry Office.Our other option is to pay 10 quid for a full day to search the records to fill in the gaps on the family tree.
We thought that it would be best to take the free offer first and see how much progress we make and then we may continue another day if the process works for us.
But first with a need to park RR for the day we have to drive to a street about 10minutes walk away as this is the closet street we found to our home that allows parking for 9 hours a day.Elsewhere closer to home the maximum parking time is 4 or 6 hours meaning we would have to be around to move RR during the afternoon.
It had rained heavily during the night and the street we were to park RR was flooded in the early part so we had to drive further down to be clear of the water.While we were doing this a parking warden materialised out of nowhere and started taking down details of cars including taking photos presumably as proof for issuing tickets.All this seemed a bit over the top and reinforced our feelings that the wardens were very officious.
With RR safely parked and a ticket in her window we strode out heading for downtown to be at the Registry Office before 10am to ensure we got one of the free spots for the first session of the day.
It was a straightforward route down to the CBD and we made it with time to spare.As it turned out there were only about half a dozen people for 20 computers so we needn’t have stepped it out so fast to get there early.
We have a basic tree back to my grandparents but no detail of where they were born,married and died and without some of these details it has been impossible to trace back to GG parents or earlier.
Within 10 minutes of starting to search and after a few ‘blind alleys we went up’we found details of George,my grandfathers death which revealed information we had not been aware of.We had known the George had been married twice,the second marriage causing upheaval amongst his children(including my father)who did not approve of his second wife who was considered to be after whatever money he might have had.
Now the secret buried for all these years was revealed before our very eyes..........George had been married 3 times!!!And so Catherine Jane Mitchell(whom we had thought was known as just Jame Mitchell) was wife number 2.
George first married in 1877 to Helen and this was 26 years before he married who we thought was his first wife Catherine Jane.This certainly was a shock to the system and now the hunt was on to find out if there were any children from this first marriage and what happened to the marriage or Helen.
We carried on searching and turned up details of my GG parents and GGG parents through marriage records and by the end of our two hour session we were back to nearly the start of the 1800’s a gain of over a hundred years of family history in just 2 hours of research.
While it would have been good to have kept going to try and uncover children born to my ancestors and their marriages and deaths,two hours of intensive work in front of a computer screen meant we were ready for a rest.So we decided we would probably come back again on Thursday to continue the research.And it would also give Gretchen a chance to map out the details we had uncovered and plan what we should look for specifically next time.
So we headed home talking all the way about the information we had uncovered and speculating what else we might turn up next time.
On the walk home we discovered a pie shop that made its own products.One thing we often dream of when we are away from NZ is a good meat pie and places like the USA,where we have travelled most recently,just don’t do the sort of pies we like.
We looked over the range and Gretchen went for a cheese and bacon twist while I had a traditional Scottish meat pie with........fat.Now it wasn’t at all like you might imagine with fat sitting on the top or something but it was probably higher in fat content although you wouldn’t have known it as it tasted delicious and not at all fatty.
With lunch over it was time for some relaxation on the croquet lawns just down the road at the Meadows.Jamieson had told members that we would be there and when we arrived there were challenges already lined up for us.
We are not quite sure what they were expecting even though Gretchen has won two NZ championships in her grade but it seems our reputation had been raised a bit higher than what we deserved.
We had an enjoyable afternoon playing a doubles game and 3 or 4 singles games before we called it a day at just after 6pm,nearly 4 hours after we started playing!!!This is much longer than we would play on a club day at home but perhaps it was because we had not played for over 3 months that we were happy just to be out on the lawn and time didn’t matter.
Gretchen won the two singles she played while I won 2 and lost 2,both narrowly on the 13th hoop,the last of the games against our friend and Scottish representative Jamieson Walker.
We thought we hadn’t done too badly given that we were playing with borrowed mallets on a lawn we hadn’t played on before although we must add that it was a pleasure to play on such even and true grass.
It had been a day of family history revelations and after the relaxation of some golf croquet in the afternoon to reflect on what we had uncovered at the Registry Office we decided that we would go back for another session on Thursday to continue the research.

---

Comments

[Rin]

Piiiie
Lovely to think that a regular NZ pie has up to a golf-ball sized amount of fat in it...and there you go getting a pie with EXTRA fat! Keep an eye on those chest pains!! :-P