Port Ellen, Islay a place of historic interest in my family history
Was it serendipity when I opened up one of the Scottish Genes blog posts that have been piling up in my email inbox to find that there was a course starting the next day entitled Scotland 1750-1850 - Beyond the Old Parish Registers? I'd been eyeing the courses offered by Pharos for a while wondering if they would be helpful. Finding that Pharos course the date before it started was so on target that it seemed like a sign.
I've found out unexpected things by taking courses. Back in the day before much of what we do moved online I signed up for a course about writing family history. The small cadre of students laboured away on their family stories. The teacher made sure that we were productive by getting us to read our stories to the class at certain points. It was through another student's story that I found out about the Regina Cyclone, an event that, until that point, was unknown to me. As that weather event happened just after my grandfather moved to Regina, I needed to know more. Research showed that the path of the cyclone tore down the street he was living on. That was something that definitely made it into one of my family history stories!
Of course, not all forays into genealogical education have led to stories like the one I was able to write after piecing together the effect that weather event had on my grandfather's life. Still, going through course material can suggest new avenues to investigate. Although the first exercise in the Pharos course which called for us to find online local histories of places of interest to our own family histories ran into a bit of a snag for me. About exploring Islay places I wrote: "When searching for the history of places on Islay you're just as likely to find the history of a distillery a the history of a town of the same name." Guess I'll just have to look harder.
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