Stories in Family History

Bridgend Hotel, Islay, Scotland

Do stories grab you? Perhaps you are a reader of fiction but even if you rarely open a book, stories can still catch your attention. Stories can include the latest office gossip, riveting local, national or international news or statements of claim or intent. Stories and people have been linked since early history.

Stories can be a gateway to family history. They were in my case. My first forays into genealogical research flowed from the stories that I heard growing up. Well, that and the questions I asked my family. Early on, most of the questions were to my mother because I started with her line but, strangely enough, it was my father who told me that her Gilchrist line came from Islay.

How did he know that? I never asked while I had the chance. (Those missed opportunities seem to happen a lot with family historians.) Perhaps he learned that from my great aunt, Peg Gilchrist. Auntie Peg researched family history way back in the days before computers. I have no idea when she started but she had the advantage of being two generations closer to our Scottish roots than me. It was likely the saga of the trek from Scotland to Ontario was still in living memory even if the family had moved further west by the time that Auntie Peg must have started her research.

That was back when queries went out by snail mail. I can remember the days of sending out mail queries and hoping for replies. It must have been even harder back when Auntie Peg started, perhaps in the 1950's or '60s, when fewer information repositories were set up with the genealogist in mind. Still, she was able to progress from armchair research to the more exciting activity of visiting ancestral places. In fact, I have a photo of the Bridgend Hotel on Islay where she stayed.

Huh, that's probably the answer to how my Dad knew that my Mum's Gilchrists came from Islay. He would have remembered stories about Auntie Peg's visit to Islay even if he didn't remember details about her research. When I first visited Islay, I made sure to follow in her footsteps and made arrangements to stay at the Bridgend Hotel like she had. At least I knew that about her genealogy trip, that picture (the one at to the right) and a half page write up about the Gilchrist family are the only parts of her research that I have found. Too bad there weren't any stories about where the rest of her research papers went.