Welcome to 2017 – the Year of History, Heritage and Archaeology

At Borders FHS, we are looking forward to 2017 - to help with your family history, to build up your family tree and add to the Births, Marriages, Deaths & Census information you already have.

The Monumental Inscriptions team are busy photographing and recording throughout the Borders.  Final checks of the transcriptions are being done at Chirnside while several other burial places have been photographed and transcribed and the MI’s available for use in our Research Room will be increasing throughout the year.

Indexing of both the Poor Law and the Police & Criminal records continue using the digitised images of the records held by the Scottish Borders Archive.

We have over 15,000 individual arrest records already and have completed the indexing of the recruitment records for Policemen in the Borders Counties.  Our home-based volunteers are working away on Roxburghshire, Hawick and Berwickshire arrest records and these are providing fascinating insights into local and social history such as the building of the Borders railway in the 1860’s, the movement of seasonal workers from Ireland and the regiments stationed at Stobs Camp before WWI.

Research for the Stobs Project, looking at the camp during the years of WWI, is both interesting and challenging.  Our Stobs research team are researching both the POW’s and the soldiers stationed there.  Find more news about the project at http://www.stobscamp.org/

Over the last year, our library has been improved by many donations of books - biographies, family histories, local & social histories.

And we are looking forward to a bigger, brighter research room.  We will be opening on Tues 10^th Jan after our New Year break and will be open on Tuesdays and Thursdays until the end of February.  In March, we will be open on Fridays again.  Please come along and meet our research team

And we have some fascinating talks lined up – all of the talks are in the Corn Exchange in Melrose and start at 2.30pm

Feb 26 – From Abbey St Bathans to Otago – the story of a forgotten Borderer

Mar 26 - Transcribing ScotlandsPlaces

Apr 30 - Farm Servants of South-East Scotland, 1750-1914

May 28 - The Deid’s Letterwills and Legacies - Lifting the Veil on Past Lives

Look out for news about the 2017 Borders Heritage Festival (They’re on facebook and Twitter @BHeritageFest and are planning their own website as well).  Over the last few years, the festival has spread over the whole of the Borders and this year will have much more to see and do.   And you can follow us on facebook and twitter too.

New Publication - Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland

Oxford University Press have published the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names in Britain and Ireland, the culmination of a recent research project (Family Names of the United Kingdom) into 45,600 surnames in Britain and Ireland.

The team researched records from sources dating from the 11th to the 19th century to identify new and sometimes detailed explanations for surnames, even those held by as few as 100 people.

The 4 volume set is published at £400 but some public libraries may get it as part of their online Oxford University Press Reference subscription.

Until the end of November, you can use it online for free, using

Username: fanbi

Password: onlineaccess

Search the Oxford Dictionary of Family Names.


The Arts and Humanities Research Council have awarded the team a grant to continue the project so that another 15,000 surnames with as few as 20 current bearers can be researched.

Time-Travel in Peebles, Tomorrow (3 September)

This Saturday, Tweeddale University of the Third Age are organising a history event ‘Travel in Time in Tweeddale’ which will be held at the Leckie Memorial Bakehouse (behind the Leckie Memorial Church - see map at foot of page), Eastgate, Peebles from 10.30 am to 4 pm.

Their day starts off with a walk round Peebles with Gerard Bakker, looking at some of the interesting houses built as a result of the coming of the railway. At the event there will be displays on travel themes, three talks about the railway, drovers and the impact of transport changes in Victorian Peebles, two film shows, and a walk along the drove road out of Peebles. They’ll have a colouring corner for children, too.

The event is free and I’m looking forward eagerly to the day.

Borders Family History Society will be there with a range of mainly Peeblesshire publications including Innerleithen Shops, Innerleithen Monumental (Gravestone) Inscriptions, Snippets & Photos About Old Innerleithen. Come and meet Davina, John and Peter and ask us for help with your family history.

Programme:
9.30am-11am    Walk:     A stroll round Peebles with Gerard Bakker, looking at some of the interesting houses built as a result of the coming of the railway  

10.30am    Exhibition opens with displays and objects on the theme of:

• Horse and carriage
• Highways and byways
• Impact of the Railway
• Borders Family History Society
• Children’s colouring corner and “memory lane”    

11am – noon  Talk    Ron Glendinning shares his memories – and great photographs of being bought up on Peebles railway, in conversation with Ronald Ireland.

Noon – 1pm   Walk    Discover with Stuart Akers where visitors to Peebles by rail and road recovered from their journeys.

Noon – 1pm   Films    A series of short films about transport in Tweeddale, by Brian Whitnell, featuring local people, and exploring working horses and the people who look after them - then and now.

1.15pm – 2pm   Talk    Mud, mayhem and merriment: Three Victorian Peebles’ residents talk about the changes brought about by  the momentous developments in transport  in 1864– not all of them desirable!
   
2.15pm – 3.15pm   Talk    Who were Scotland’s own “cowboys”?  Drovers passed through Peebles on the long journey south across the hills. Was it the ‘wild west’ out there? Where can you find their paths? Ronnie Watt tells their amazing story.

3.15pm – 5pm   Walk    Take to the hills with Francis Mordaunt and Ronnie Watt - in the footsteps of the Drovers.

3.15pm – 4pm    Films   A series of short films about transport in Tweeddale, by Brian Whitnell, featuring local people, and exploring working horses and the people who look after them - then and now.        

4pm    Exhibition closes

Outside the hall

• See horseshoes made and Ross Philips, a farrier, at work
• Get up close to a Vintage Tractor
• Go back in time with the Tweeddale Travel Timeline