Sunday, April 08, 2007

Henry Hirons

This might be interesting for other family members. When I discovered my great grandfather had been born in Scotland, I tried to track down his details on ScottishPeople.gov.uk with little success. The only record of the Hirons family I could find were sadly the birth and death records of two younger siblings (George and Robert) - you'll find details of this here. They didn't even show up on the 1891 Scottish census.

Anyway, Ancestry.co.uk has recently put up old Scottish census records, and having learned in the past year of research that often names are mistranscribed or misspelt, I thought I'd chase up the family's Scottish "adventure" again. Thanks to Ancestry's more forgiving search engine, I discovered the little band in Dumbarton, mistranscribed as Heirns. Henry was present - named "Hary" - but a further clue to his birth record appeared as his birthplace was listed as the county of Fife.

Armed with this information I trotted back to ScottishPeople.gov.uk, paid up for more credits and downloaded the original census image, then embarked on a quest for Henry's birth record. At first glance it looked difficult - you can't search by county, only by multiple parishes, so after discovering just how many parishes Fife has (see here) I was little disheartened.

My first stroke of luck was discovering that Aberdour became the latest stop on a railway in 1890, which was being built east of the Forth Bridge. As Henry would have been born near this line, I could attempt to track him down in the parishes to the west of Aberdour, and duly discovered the birth record of Henry Hirons (or "Hirsons" as it was transcribed) to the parish of Inverkeithing, which is west of Aberdour. He was born on 23rd September 1888, and thanks to the more detailed records kept in Scotland his identity was never in doubt. In fact, his name is clearly spelled as Hirons on the image, so goodness knows how the extra 'S' crept in.

The other great thing about this discovery is that it confirms the family legend that his father - Daniel - helped build the Forth Bridge, as clearly once that was complete he moved onto extending the railway east into Fife.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I think we need a Harry in the family. (My gransdfather was always known as Harry now you mention it!!.) We have the Robert and Daniel and George. It makes it easier to track if you have a clue to the popular names within a family