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juli 17, 2020 by Maggie - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 2 Comments

scottish embroidery sampler

A Family in Stitches: Genealogical Information From a Scottish Embroidery Sampler

Genealogical information is often found in unlikely places. Check out the familial details included in this Scottish embroidery sampler!

an example of a Scottish embroidery sampler, stitched by Isabella Fairbairn.

Isabella Fairbairn’s sampler

In 1885 my great-grandmother, Isabella Fairbairn, was 10 years old. She lived in a rural area of the Scottish borders, and like most Scottish children between the ages of 5 and 13, schooling was compulsory for her. Isabella attended school at Crailing, about 5 miles outside the market town of Jedburgh.

We might never have known this, had she not created an embroidery sampler while she was a pupil there. Victorian education concentrated on “the three Rs” – reading, writing and arithmetic. There was little variation in lessons, but needlework may have come as a light relief from the rigid drills of multiplication tables or copying from the blackboard. Needlework was an essential skill for girls; boys likely received instruction in woodwork.  

Isabella’s embroidery sampler is an example of a “band” sampler. The characters and designs are in fixed rows rather than randomly place on the fabric. Her sampler shows a confident grasp of forming letters, both uppercase and lowercase. 

A detail from Isabella’s sampler, showing a row of numbers followed by a row of lowercase letters.

An Unlikely Source for Genealogical Information

Scottish embroidery samplers are considered unique in one respect. The creator often included information about her family somewhere in the stitching. Isabella was the oldest of five children. She included their initials, as well as the initials of her parents. 

Sampler detail, with first three sets of family initials in the top box. The initials continue along the second line. The second box highlights the family’s full surname, Fairbairn.

Some of the threads are very faded now – the lightest color may originally have been a pale pink but has faded so much over time that the stitching almost blends with the background fabric. However, the whole family is there. They were:

 “WF” – her father, Walter Fairbairn. 

“MF” – her mother, Mary

“IF” – Isabella, (10 in 1885)

“MF” – Margaret (8)

“AF” – Alexander, (6)

“WF” – William (3)

“CF” – Catherine (1)

The “F” in baby Catherine’s initials also forms the first letter of “Fairbairn”. At the very bottom of the sampler Isabella embroidered the name of the school and the year. 

Scottish embroidery sampler, stitched at the Crailing School in 1885

Detail from the sampler – Crailing School 1885.

These embroidery samplers may have been displayed in the home of young girls with great pride. This one was kept by Isabella (who did work as a dressmaker before she was married) and was passed to her daughter (my granny), then to my mom and finally to me. 

Scottish Embroidery Samplers and Scottish Culture

Scottish embroidery samplers were the subject of a major exhibition at the National Museums of Scotland in Edinburgh a few years ago. The collection was cleverly titled “Embroidered Stories” and focused on exploring the stories of these young needle workers within a social and historical context. Isabella’s sampler is quite a humble example. Some of the pieces displayed by the National Museum of Scotland were far more ornate, and included buildings, landmarks and religious verses as well as family information. You can read more about that exhibition and view some of the samplers here.

The building that was once Crailing School is still standing but is now a private home. The high windows seen at the gable end were typical of Victorian schoolhouses – deliberately set high up in the walls so that children could not look outside. The stout chimneys would have been regularly in use during cold Scottish winters, and hopefully gave some warmth to wee Isabella’s fingers as she tugged her colored yarns through the fabric to create her work.

Crailing Old School, as it looks today. Photo courtesy of Google maps.

If you have Scottish ancestry, our professionals and onsite agents are ready to help you learn more about your Scottish family history. Contact us today for a free quote and get in touch to discuss your research goals and determine which of our project options is best for you!

Genealogical information can often be found in unlikely places. Such as the case with this Scottish embroidery sampler. Check out the familial details we were able to uncover!

Filed Under: British Isles, Genealogy Records and Resources Tagged With: Crailing school, embroidery sampler, family history, genealogy, Historical Context, Scotland, Scottish, social context

marts 5, 2020 by Maggie - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 4 Comments

Booth poverty booths

Charles Booth’s London Poverty Maps: A Glimpse Into the Lives of Your Ancestors

If your ancestors lived in London at the end of the 1800s, the digitized Booth poverty maps provide fascinating insight into neighborhoods and standards of living in the city. The maps form part of Charles Booth’s, Inquiry into the Life and Labour of the People in London, a study conducted between 1886 and 1903. Booth was a Victorian philanthropist and a successful businessman.

I have several ancestors who lived in London during that time, so I decided to see what could be gleaned about their living situation from the collection. Much of the information collected is available online thanks to the library at the London School of Economics.

By cross-referencing a known address from both the 1891 and 1901 England censuses, I was able to read descriptions of the exact streets that some of my ancestors lived in, and uncover details about their lives and living conditions.

First I looked for the neighborhood of George Samuel Earley, a coachman, who was recorded living in Kensington in both 1891 and 1901; his address was 16 Phillimore Mews in Kensington on both census returns.

The Booth Poverty Maps Color-Coded System

What sort of street was Phillimore Mews? The color-coded maps of the Booth inquiry give an instant visual representation of the kind of district he was living in; the accompanying Police Notebooks offer additional, unique observations on the surroundings. Here is Phillimore Mews on the Booth map for the area:

Phillimore Mews in Kensignton on the Booth Poverty Maps

Phillimore Mews in Kensington on the Booth Poverty Maps

Under Booth’s color-coded system, Phillimore Mews is classified as “Purple” (although the map inks make it appear more reddish-brown). Purple dwellings meant a “mixed” standard of living – “some comfortable, others poor.” Nearby streets to Phillimore Mews showed rows of houses marked yellow on the map. The yellow classification signified the households were “upper middle and upper classes. Wealthy.” The proximity of the Mews dwellings to the more well-to-do residences makes sense; the designation of “Mews” in a street name typically refers to the location of stables.[1] As George Earley was a coachman, he likely lived above the stables, which were often round the corner from the owner’s more luxurious abode. The mews would have been a service street designed to keep any noise and smell of horses away from the fancier residences.

Using the Booth Poverty Maps to Add Biographical Details to Your Family History

As Booth walked the streets of London gathering information, he was accompanied by policemen who were familiar with each neighborhood. The notebooks Booth carried with him on those walks are also available to view on the site. The corresponding notebook for the route they took past Phillimore Mews is shown below; Booth noted that the street was made up of “Rooms over stables. Not many inhabited.”

A page from one of Booth’s notebooks showing his notes on Phillimore Mews

A page from one of Booth’s notebooks showing his notes on Phillimore Mews.
Neighboring Upper Phillimore Gardens was very different – “Large detached and s. det [semi-detached] houses. 3 floors & basement. Very good class.”

The small details Booth noted offer a wonderful insight into late Victorian life. My great-grandfather, Samuel Roper, lived in Northolme Road in Islington around this time. Booth’s notes for that area tell us that Northolme Road and the neighboring Sotheby Road were “new streets” and that there were “many greengrocers carts going round.” According to the policeman he was walking with, the carts were “cheaper than the shops in Highbury Park, and Upper Street is too far to go.” Great-grandfather’s house was designated “pink/barred” – so in Booth’s classification his living standards were “fairly comfortable” through his occupation as a gold-refiner, and he had “good ordinary earnings.” The size of the houses isn’t made clear, but according to the 1901 census there were five adults plus two children under two living under one roof in Samuel Roper’s home, although they did have a servant living with them.

Other Londoners were not living so comfortably.  Neighborhoods which were struggling were given blue or black classification on the maps, and described in these ways:

  • “Light blue – Poor. 18s to 21s a week for a moderate family”
  • “Dark blue – Very poor, casual. Chronic want”
  • “Black – Lowest class. Vicious, semi-criminal”

Browsing the notebooks for these areas shows a different side to the London of new houses and vegetable carts. One area of Holloway, designated black on the maps, was noted as having “windows broken, dirty curtains, doors open, women talking in loud voices to one another, litter of paper, old meat and sardine tins, vegetables but not bread, in the street.”

In most areas designated dark blue to black, Booth felt that the condition of the residents spoke for itself. He often omitted to describe the housing situation, and paid more attention to the evident poverty of people in the streets. On his walk through Holmbrook St in Hackney he wrote that it was “very rough and low: its inhabitants wood-choppers, bone gatherers and bottle merchants. The houses were two-storied. Many children were about in the street. Women talking with babies at the open doors.”

Tips for using the Booth Poverty Maps

  • They are searchable. Type in the name of a street to see how it was classified.
  • See which areas have notebooks associated with them. “Show notebooks” in the top right corner of any map page brings up green drop pins on the map. Each drop pin represents a notebook of observations from that area.
  • The slider at the bottom of the page compares Booth’s maps to a modern map of the city. This can be useful to see how street names may have changed.
  • In addition to the maps and police notebooks, explore the Stepney Union casebooks and the Jewish notebooks. The former may contain valuable genealogical information if your ancestors were inmates of the Stepney or Bromley workhouses at the time Booth was visiting.

The Booth poverty maps may be accessed online at https://booth.lse.ac.uk/. Want to learn even more about your English ancestors? Get started with our guide to the basics of tracing your English ancestry. Haven’t made it across the pond yet? Check out how to use apprenticeship records to trace your ancestor from the U.S. to England.

The team at Legacy Tree Genealogists would love to help you with your family history, whether you’re interested in building a broad family tree as far back as possible, or delving into the details and stories of your ancestors’ lives. Contact us today to request a free quote!

[1] “Mews”, Brittanica, https://www.britannica.com/topic/mews, accessed February 2020.

If your ancestors lived in London at the end of the 1800s, the digitized Booth poverty maps provide fascinating insight into neighborhoods and standards of living in the city.  #Englishancestry #genealogy #familyhistory #genealogy #london #England #boothpovertymaps #genealogy resources>

Filed Under: British Isles, Genealogy Records and Resources, Maps Tagged With: Booth poverty maps, England, family history, genealogy, genealogy records, genealogy resources, London, Victorian

september 3, 2019 by Maggie - Legacy Tree Genealogists Project Manager 2 Comments

What Language Did My Scottish Ancestors Really Speak?

Have you ever stopped to think about the language that your Scottish ancestors spoke? Gaelic? English? Something else? The answer is not as straightforward as you may think. 

English has been the “official” language of Scotland since the 18th century. Prior to this, Scots Gaelic had already been systematically suppressed by several acts of parliament, starting at the beginning of the 1600s.[1] One of the last Scottish kings to speak Gaelic was James IV who reigned from 1473 to 1513. It’s hard to estimate how many people spoke Gaelic between the beginning of the 1600s and the end of the 1800s. Donald McAulay, a native Gaelic speaker who wrote extensively about Celtic languages, estimated that by 1775 only about a quarter of Scots knew Gaelic.[2]

How do I determine what language my Scottish ancestors spoke?

The 1891 Scottish census included a question on language. Specifically, residents were asked if they spoke Gaelic only, or both Gaelic and English. An Edinburgh-based map company, John Bartholomew and Son, later produced a colored map showing the distribution of Gaelic speakers in Scotland using the data from the census returns.

Scottish ancestors language by region
Map produced by John Bartholomew and Son using census data from the 1891 Scottish census.

The deeper red colors show communities where fewer households spoke any Gaelic. In the darkest red areas, most households knew no Gaelic at all. If your ancestors at this time were living in the far north of Scotland near Cape Wrath in Sutherland, or perhaps on one of the islands to the west such as Jura or Oban, chances were higher that they used Gaelic. For some of my ancestors who were enumerated in the 1891 census, the Gaelic/English column was simply left blank. My great-grandfather, living in the industrial city of Dundee on the east coast, was not a Gaelic speaker. Similarly my great-grandmother’s family from rural Jedburgh in the Borders region, were English speakers. Or were they?

What is the Scots language?

Whilst they were not amongst the 6% of Gaelic-speakers recorded in the 1891 census, these ancestors, like many Scots, spoke in the Scots language.  It’s easy to think that Scots was and is just English with an accent, but this is not the case. Scots is more than an accent or a vernacular. Much of it is unrecognisable to English speakers due to unique words influenced by, but not identical to Gaelic, French, and Norse. Thousands of these words are still used by Scots speakers today, and I grew up hearing many of them daily.

What are some common Scots language words?

Bairn – a baby or the youngest child in the family
Ken– to know a person or a piece of information
Kirk – a church
Dreich – grey, misty unpleasant weather
Breeks – trousers
Shin – shoes
Een – eyes
Flit – to move house
Lum – chimney
Besom – a mischievous girl

There are many, many more. The Scots language even has its own dictionary and thesaurus. If you’ve ever sung Auld Lang Syne at New Year’s (or Hogmanay as the wild night of 31st December is known), then you’ve been singing in Scots. 

Robert Burns, the famous Scottish poet, popularized Scots in written form. In the 21st century, the written form has been revived and it has become popular to translate famous books into Scots. You can find Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stane in Scots – hopefully that title doesn’t need too much translation! The opening pages include some fantastically descriptive words that your ancestors were probably familiar with, such as “crabbit” (bad-tempered), “screivit” (written) and “haver” (to talk nonsense).

If you’d like to learn more about your Scottish ancestors, (including what language they spoke!), the team at Legacy Tree Genealogists can help! Contact us today to request a free quote.


[1] Ewan J. Innes, “The Social, Economic and Political Reasons for the Decline of Gaelic in Scotland,” Scottish History, www.scottishhistory.com, accessed 19 July 2019.

[2] Donald McAuley, The Celtic Languages, Cambridge University Press, 1993, p. 141.

The Concise Scots Dictionary, published by Edinburgh University Press.

Filed Under: British Isles Tagged With: Gaelic, language, Scotland, Scots, Scottish, Scottish ancestry, Scottish genealogy

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