Going in search of my family history in Scotland.

Every single individual has a forest of family trees. Some we have details of and others remain unknown. There are some amazing genealogy websites that can help one dig into the history. I am a fourth generation South African with Scottish descent. I am also the eldest in my generation. My mother held much of the history and we managed to document some of it at the time of her death. We also discovered a Facebook Group called The family of William Gauldie, the miller at Lunan.

In September this year, I was invited to attend a global ageing conference in Glasgow. Justin, my son suggested that we use this opportunity to go and search for our roots. This turned out to be a wonderful opportunity to spend some quality time with Justin as we drove through the beautiful Scottish countryside. We planned to spend one night in Lunan Bay and then travel back to Edinburgh. We met up with Andrew Gauldie, who has lived in the area for many years. He showed us around the beautiful coastal area of Lunan Bay.

Becca Gauldie had created the Facebook Group and done much of the history of the area. We were sad not to connect with her, but she supplied us with the Google co-ordinates for the Church, graveyard and School in Kinnell This is where my great great grandfather was the school head. Here is the link  Church, graveyard and school  It is a beautiful area of farmland and the house is still inhabited. We spent some time walking through the graveyard. There must have been about 100-200 graves. They say that one can learn much from a graveyard. We think we learnt something amazing..... keep reading to discover what we found.

We walked around the graveyard looking for Gauldie headstones. Many were covered by overgrown bushes. We both remarked about the number of SMITH graves in the cemetery. Names we know like James and Robert Smith. Good old Scottish names.

We left and took a beautiful drive back via St Andrews to Edinburgh. That evening, Justin was looking at some correspondence he had been having with James Smith and Bobby Stanway. They have been involved with looking at the SMITH genealogy and asked Justin to be the person to take up the baton of Smith history. ( he is the last remaining Smith boy in a line that arrived in South Africa in 1850) As he read, we matched where we had been earlier in the day and discovered that the SMITH line that came to South Africa lived in the village next to Kinnell. What are the chances that those graves are part of his history from his dad. The Gauldie graves from his mom. A moment of possible synchronicity that he will now continue to be interested in. The history, golf courses and whiskey tasting will lure him back in the future.

We had a wonderful time. We discovered a forest of family trees and the possibility that this is the area where some roots continue to tell a story.