A Night Out: the Tannahill Weavers

The Tannahill Weavers back for an encore

Last night I emerged from my very busy schedule and attended the Tannahill Weavers concert organized by Baldwin-Wallace University, but held at the local Episcopal Church. I learned of this concert way back in January and have been looking forward to it ever since.

It was entirely worth the wait, the band was fantastic. I even bought one of their albums (Live and In Session) and am now a little sorry I didn't spring for the t-shirt. Go hear them if you get a chance!

Roy Gullane signing my CD

Scottish Emigration & Independence

A replica of the emigrant vessel The Hector

Last August there were a spate of articles regarding Tom Devine's new book, To the Ends of the Earth: Scotland's Global Diaspora, 1750-2010.  I posted several on this blog, but it seems I missed one. On 23 August 2011 The Scotsman published an article entitled "Home and away Scotland still makes a difference" by Joan McAlpine (SNP MSP for South of Scotland).

In my experience, when politicians mention migration it is to complain about immigration policy; not often one does on find articles by politicians complaining about emigration, at least not in America. While I was intrigued by the novelty of such an article and liked the introductory reference to Edwin Muir, I must admit to being slightly disquieted by this one. For starters it greatly oversimplifies emigration and the reasons for it and fails to understand the context for the statistics presented in Devine's work.  Fair enough, she's not a historian and like all of us, she has selected what suits her purpose. Reading a litany of what I didn't like would be tedious in the extreme, so I will mention just two.

McAlpine states that lots of people emigrated from Scotland, Norway and Ireland in the past and two of these countries are now independent, implying, it seems, that Scotland should also be independent. While this may be the case, I'm not sure that past emigration statistics really make a persuasive case for a break-up of the UK. She is correct that Scots left because they thought they could make a better life elsewhere, but neglects the point that other people came to Scotland for precisely the same reason. Economic advancement is completely relative to one's starting point.

After meandering around the emigration, the benefits of Union and back again, McAlpine turns her attention to the Diaspora. I have written on a bit on this blog about Scotland and it's Diaspora (see this post, and this one, and this one). Previously my thoughts on the subject were relatively positive. However, after reading McAlpine's references to "exploiting" the overseas Diaspora (and it seems she means the Ancestral one here since she is writing about historic emigrations) and this same Diaspora providing a harvest for Scotland, I'm not so sure. I am not something to be exploited (if I were, I'd still be a adjunct college instructor), nor am I something to harvest; and neither is my mother, my sister, nor any other of my fellow citizens with Scottish ancestry. We, none of us, exist for the sole benefit of Scotland.

Maybe it's all in the phraseology - being asked to help a Scottish enterprise in a mutually beneficial arrangement is one thing, being an object of exploitation is another.

I suppose it's all water under the bridge as this article is over a year old. I'm probably being hyper-sensitive anyway, particularly since this article was not written for an American audience. I'll leave it to others to deconstruct the article in terms of Scottish politics.

Upcoming Events in Ohio

Mark your calendars....

On 14 March 2013, the owner of Gaelic Imports will talk about his youth in 1950s Scotland at the Fairview Park Branch of the Cuyahoga County Library. More information here. Unfortunately, I can't attend because I'll be speaking at another branch of the library.

On 17 April 2013, the Tannahill Weavers will be performing at Baldwin Wallace University (formerly Baldwin-Wallace College).  More information here (PDF, see pg. 13).

I know these announcements are awfully early, but it's not often there are relevant events in my neck of the woods.

Behind The Scenes: Corrupted Files and the Importance of Backup Files

A Page from the Access Database

While I wan't enjoying holiday events with friends and family, I was working on my great database match-up project. With a couple of days of long hard work planned, I anticipated finishing it in time for New Year's Eve festivities.

Then at about ten o'clock in the evening New Year's Eve Eve disaster stuck. My family tree program totally freaked out, sent me a strange message, and then shut down. In most cases, a instance like this is not a cause for panic. Usually a deep breath, a wiping of the hands on the pants legs, and a click to reopen the program solves the problem. However, such was not the case on December 30th.

The family tree program opened, but gave me two messages. First that the program had not closed down correctly and that I might have to compact the file. (Compact file - what is that?!). Second that the file was already open or was an invalid file tip. (umm - I just opened it, so how can it be already open and INVALID?!!! - it wasn't invalid two seconds ago).  The file did open and all the data appeared to be present, but every time I tried to add something new the program shut down. Additionally all attempts to compact the file crashed the program as well. Something. Was. Wrong.

The next day I repaired the program with the original disc and then did some searching for the second error on the Internet. First I found this helpful post from Virginia Family Tree Genealogy. The post's author suggested exporting the file that wouldn't open. Seemed like a good idea. However, the program wanted to compact the file prior to export. When the compacting still wasn't finished 22 hours later, I decided it wasn't working. Why did I let it go so long? My file was huge, over 10 years old, contained information on nearly 4000 people, and had never been compacted before. I had no idea how long it might take. The software manufacturer on one of their pages said it might take "some time."

I found a page from the manufacturer here and followed their directions on working with corrupted files. I finally gave up and decided to use the back up from December 29th. I also discovered that while I couldn't export the entire file, I could export individual families. I did so for the families I had been working with on the 30th and merged them with the new file. I compacted the new file (following the helpful hints posted here) and it took about 20 seconds for a 25 MB file to become a 15 MB file. Apparently, somebody's definition of "some time" is different than mine. By the end of New Year's Day, I was back up and running.

I was surprisingly calm throughout this entire event. The most important part of my data is in Access and that wasn't bothered at all. I could use that information to recreate any changes I had made to the family tree file on the 30th. My data in the family tree program seemed to be there, I just had to get it out. Also, I had a backup that was less than 24 hours old. If I hadn't had a recent backup I probably would have cried for days. At the same time I was trying to solve this crisis, I visited the Microsoft Fixit Solution Center and used it to tweak Window and I repaired Microsoft Office. My computer is running much better now, so I suppose one could say the whole episode was a blessing.

While I was slowed by the corrupted files (and a post-New Year family visit), I did finish the project on Saturday, January 5th. Now on to the next projects ... I hope they don't end being as "easy" as this one.

Behind the Scenes: The Best Laid Databases...

Screenshot of the 1820 Census

In August, I started what I thought would be an easy project, one that would get my collected data on Scotch Settlement all ready for fresh analysis, one that I could complete in the evenings after the Board of Elections. This easy project was to match up the individuals I had in the Access database with those that I had in the genealogy program.

From the beginning of my research on Scotch Settlement, I have kept track of the data I've collected in an Access database and a genealogy software program. The former is designed to analyze data, the latter to keep track ancestors. To facilitate analysis in the Access database, I created a central table with the names of all the individuals I had identified with standardized spellings of surnames, unique identifying numbers, and vital statistics. I always knew that I had people in the central table that weren't in the genealogy program and that wasn't a big deal. But I have recently realized there were people in the genealogy program who weren't in  the Access database. This was a problem. Actually, many of these individuals were accounted for - as a tick mark in a pre-1850 census, but not in that census or any other document I had transcribed into Access.

Itis now the end December and I'm only a little over half done. Of course 12- and 13-hour days at the Board of Elections didn't help. But what I realized, after I started is that most of the families I had known about were the ones that had been well-documented in county histories or by other family historians. There are many other families in Scotch Settlement that didn't leave much of a paper trail. So the matching project has actually turned into a giant genealogy puzzle. Can I figure out to which McGillivray family the three single Daniel McGillivrays recorded in the 1840 census belonged? No, I can not. Are the Johnstons who married in 1839 part of Scotch Settlement? No, they are from Ireland and live in Franklin Township. And why oh why do I keep finding more John McDonalds every time I turn around. All I can say is "Thank God" for online databases like FamilySearch, Ancestry, and Find-a-Grave!

The ultimate aim of this matching/family history project is to shed further light on migration networks and on out-migration from the parishes near Inverness. Families and neighbors are key to all migration networks, especially during this time period. And focusing more on these individuals, utilizing various online sources, and taking a second look at documents I've had for ten years has shed light on family relationships and the Scottish origins of several of the families. While this project is deepening my knowledge of the residents of Scotch Settlement, the new findings haven't changed what I know about their origins: almost all of the immigrants came from the parishes near Inverness and Nairn and the parishes that sent the most immigrants are still Moy and Dalarossie and Daviot and Dunlichity.