vivdunstan

Just blogged about physical descriptions of my Dublin great granny and her close family, including both her parents. Fortunately for me all recorded in Irish prison registers. The family was extremely poor, and in and out of prison a lot for petty crimes.

Off for my annual haircut shortly. And, as usual, thinking of my gggg-granddad's relevant product 😜

After battling to hear and understand the whispered Sea Devil dialogue in a Big Finish audio yesterday a friend kindly suggested that I try an auto transcription service. I've just been trying MacWhisper, which I can run locally on my Mac, no uploading the audio, which I wouldn't be happy with for copyright reasons. And it's done surprisingly well. The large AI audio model (available with a one-off pro purchase) copes best of all. But even the free small model was pretty impressive. Couldn't catch all the Sea Devil dialogue, but still did way better than me. I've now tried it with me blethering at it, and then also transcribing the audio for my 11 minutes talk about my gggg-granddad, Dandie Dinmont Terrier breeder Francis Somner. I'm really impressed with how it managed that last test, the large audio model especially. It even coped with many of the Scottish place names and counties, albeit not all. Definitely a higher level of accuracy than Apple's own internal dictation facility. So yup, I think I will find it useful. Though it was essential that it run locally on my Mac. And for once I am really grateful that I have an extremely whizzy Mac processor wise. Because I really needed it here!

P.S. I never had a script for this talk. I just burbled my way through it, using the PowerPoint slides as my prompts. It is remarkably free of ums and ahs!

Continuing my reread, and going to discuss this with some ( big spoilers )

So a rather predictable plot, but nevertheless a good read with some interesting details.

Back to more work on the Scottish black servants academic journal paper. Now typing up the story of John Ogilvie Glasgow, a servant just outside Dundee. Whose baptism was - like so many others - missing from the ScotlandsPeople indexes. Though in this case it was not so much a case of systemic racism among those compiling the original indexes, but rather the GRO for Scotland and ScotlandsPeople had missed out an entire register of Strathmartine parish baptisms from their computer indexes! Luckily they had the original paper records, and I had traced this one through a separate baptisms index on FindMyPast. ScotlandsPeople were able to email me a digital image.

My blog post about 19th century Scottish passport records held by Edinburgh City Archives and digitised by Ancestry. Musings on their use for genealogists and academic historians. And marvelling at my ggg-granddad's Paris trip.

Slept for nearly 12 hours, albeit with a fever like dream - that even kept going after brief awake bursts. A cross of doing historical research in an archive - a totally fictional archive that I made up, seemingly in Kelso though, which had loads of records re some of my ancestors there. And then morphed into a mix - still in the archive mainly! - of Robin of Sherwood and Doctor Who. The archive had a display of upcoming Doctor Who DVD and Blu-ray releases 😜 And then I was flying through Leela’s brain, trying to fix something, involving lily pads and miniature aliens. Bonkers!

Just had another look for granddad's baptism in the Leeds Catholic registers on FindMyPast. He is there! Right names for him, dad and mum, also correct birthdate. Recorded under Moor not Moore, which is why I missed him initially. So chuffed with this! I will tell my auntie (his daughter), and also cousins in Ireland (descendants of his Dublin aunts). So that's him in there, as well as all his full siblings.

Happy to be sitting up doing some more old document reading. And thank goodness again for easy colour/balance graphics processing software to make it more readable! Here a testament testamentar (Scottish will and inventory) from 1648. The vast bulk of this 3-page document is a very detailed will. By my 11xg-uncle. Which mentions so many relatives, only some of whom I've figured out. This is related to the academic journal paper I've mentioned recently about the royal secretary (his granddad).

The very rare book that I ordered showing lost Dublin streets in pictures and text arrived safely. Huge thanks to Ulysses Rare Books in Dublin. The book is in great condition and was extremely well packed. I am really looking forward to learning more about the streets where my great granny and her family lived. Some of the very poorest parts of the city then, largely demolished and rebuilt over now.

It took me many decades to trace my Irish great granny. For a long time we thought she was from Northern Ireland. Even when I did finally trace her the documentary record was extremely incomplete, combined with zero family knowledge. We needed DNA testing to prove I’d traced her right. Her family was extremely poor, and constantly in and out of the workhouses and prisons. The latter means I have physical descriptions for great granny and both her parents, as well as other relatives! And while many Irish genealogical records were lost, it’s remarkable just how much detail I’ve traced about her family.