Ian Maxwell - Tracing Your Glasgow Ancestors: A Guide for Family & Local Historians

TRACING YOUR GLASGOW ANCESTORS

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors Childhood

Tracing Your Ancestors Parish Records

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Coalmining Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Tracing Your Leeds Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Trade and Craftsmen Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

A Guide for Family and Local Historians

Ian Maxwell

First published in Great Britain in 2017

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

47 Church Street

Barnsley

South Yorkshire

S70 2AS

Copyright Ian Maxwell, 2017

ISBN 978 1 47386 721 5

eISBN 978 1 47386 723 9

Mobi ISBN 978 1 47386 722 2

The right of Ian Maxwell to be identified as Author of the Work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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This book is about how you can trace your ancestors in Scotlands largest city and the fourth largest in the United Kingdom. It is designed for a wide audience: for the beginner who will refer to it frequently as they become familiar with the historical terms and technical information, and for the experienced researcher who is keen to tap into underused sources. Extensive cross-referencing allows the reader to follow many paths and to see the relationships between historical events, people and themes. Above all, it is intended as a handbook that can be taken to archives and libraries as a quick means of reference which, I trust, will enhance what is a fascinating subject.

Of course, searching for your family history is not simply a matter of looking at old records or scrolling through the bewildering array of information available online. Once you have found out where your forebears lived and are buried visit the places if you can you may be lucky and some of the old houses and buildings mentioned in the records will have survived. Visiting such places can give you a better idea of the world your ancestor inhabited and, at the very least, offers the opportunity to visit one of Britains most fascinating and vibrant cities.

THE CITY

Many people have an image of Glasgow as a large industrial city dominated by grimy Victorian tenements. It is therefore a surprise to find the origins of the city date back to the late sixth century and the arrival of St Kentigern (also known as St Mungo), who founded a church made of wattle and clay at a spot where Glasgow cathedral now stands. But it was not until the eighteenth century that Glasgow grew from a modest university town to become Britains main hub of transatlantic trade with North America and the West Indies. This was reflected in its fine streets and public buildings. Daniel Defoe visited the city in 1724 and thought Glasgow a very fine city; the four principal streets are the fairest for breath, and the finest built that I have ever seen in one city together. It impressed him most as a city of business; here is the face of trade, as well foreign as home trade; and, I may say, tis the only city in Scotland, at this time, that apparently increases and improves in both. In a word, he concluded, tis one of the cleanest, most beautiful, and best-built cities in Great Britain.

Valentines postcard of Glasgow cathedral and Necropolis, 1893.

By the onset of the Industrial Revolution, the population and economy of Glasgow and the surrounding region expanded rapidly to become one of the worlds pre-eminent centres of chemicals, textiles and engineering, most notably in the shipbuilding and marine engineering industry. In doing so it absorbed migrants from the Scottish Lowlands, Highlands and Ireland in rapidly increasing numbers. By the end of the nineteenth century it could justifiably lay claim for itself the title of Second City of the British Empire.

The twentieth century saw the city enter a lengthy period of economic decline and rapid de-industrialisation, leading to high unemployment, urban decay and a reduced population by the 1960s. In the 1990s, however, it emerged again from its industrial past as European City of Culture in 1990, the UK City of Architecture and Design in 1999 and host of the Commonwealth Games in 2014. Today Glasgow has some of the best-financed and most imaginative museums and galleries in Britain among them the showcase Burrell Collection and the palatial Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum , and a the surprising variety of architecture, from long rows of sandstone terraces to the elegant Art Nouveau designs of Charles Rennie Mackintosh.