Buchans of Borthwick

I'm a medical doctor so I find cause of death an interesting and powerful part of understanding the past. But an individual's information tells us about something that might have been bad luck or random or .... But what if we could combine the information about why people died over the centuries, across family lines, in different places and whether young or old? We would get an understanding of the forces acting on the lives of our ancestors and their families.  While in Scotland I spent a day at the National Records Office in Edinburgh, extracting the information from all death certificates of the descendants of Robert Buchan b1813. When I go back next year I will do the same for the other siblings; George b1802 will be the doosey. Up until 1855, information on causes of death was dependant on either the clergyman recording this on a burial register or cemetery records. Examples of each of these from our family are: 1. Excerpt from Old Parish Registers Deaths for Parish 695, N...

My trip to Borthwick was very successful. Firstly I survived, I only got Covid on the third day before coming home and really only two days were seriously disrupted - I didn't know it was Covid till I got back to Australia. I do wish I had not got Covid because it limited what Helen and I could do in Newtongrange and Lothian Bridge, and I did not get to wander around the Old Town of Edinburgh. But I did have a next best thing of doing 3 hours of hop-on hop-off tours of Edinburgh and Leith when I was mildly ill on my last day. It was sunny, and I sat on the open top level and I reckon not too many people would have caught my bug. Let me run through what emerged: National Records Centre (of ScotlandsPeople) I booked two days at the centre. The first day was spent recording all the people who lived in Newlandrig from 1841 to 1921. It was clear by 1911 that there were no more Buchan descendants living there. I was disappointed. Nevertheless I think there was a discovery at Newlandrig, ...