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The Scottish Genealogist

 
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Caroline



Joined: 04 Aug 2008
Posts: 17

PostPosted: Thu Dec 04, 2008 11:04 pm    Post subject: The Scottish Genealogist Reply with quote

The December 2008 issue of "The Scottish Genealogist" has now been printed, complete with an article about both Projects by Adam Brown. Hopefully this will bring in some new members and lots more photographs and information.
For those who aren't members of the Scottish Genealogy Society (it's a publication for members, but is available in a number of libraries), or can't borrow a copy from someone else who is (and why not?!), if you wait 2 or 3 years, you'll be able to download it as a pdf for a small charge from the webiste www.scotsgenealogy.com
But why wait? By the end of the month, it should be available in major libraries. (Or you could join the SGS, I suppose!)

Caroline
(Oh, and I happen to be the Editor...)
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Adam Brown
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 7312
Location: Edinburgh (From Sutherland)

PostPosted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 2:15 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Caroline

Thanks for the update. I look forward to seeing it in print.

Cheers

Adam
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Adam Brown
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 7312
Location: Edinburgh (From Sutherland)

PostPosted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 4:19 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Here’s the text of the SGS article. The published one has been edited but the gist is the same

The article is accompanied by Paul’s photograph of Balmaclellan's Crimean WM and the back page has one of my photographs of Prestonpans WM on it.

The Scottish War Memorials Project and The Scottish War Graves Project

Since December 2006 a group of people with an interest in Scottish war memorials have been freely sharing their photographs, transcriptions and knowledge to anyone with access to the internet. Over the last few months many of those people have also been sharing their Scottish gravestone photographs via the same format - a free to join, and free to browse internet forum.

The members of these two projects have one aim. To share their research with people in Scotland and all over the world.

About three years ago the founder members of what was originally called the Scottish War Memorial Discussion Forum realised through other internet forums that we shared a common hobby of photographing and researching the names on local war memorials. We were all acting independently and quite often travelling to memorials already recorded by someone else with a similar interest. For several months we tried to work out how to set up a website to share our research but for various reasons this didn’t happen.

Finally we realised that an internet based forum rather than a website format would suit our purposes best. Anyone could sign up to the forum and using any of the photograph hosting websites out there such as ‘Photobucket’ or ‘MyPhotoAlbum’ could easily share their digital photographs and transcriptions of Scottish war memorials. (These online photo albums have improved enormously over the last few months and it is easy to download many photographs in one batch). At first we had only a few members but we grew steadily and the common purpose meant we not only shared our existing photographs but we also started going out looking for other memorials to record for the forum. It wasn’t just the community or civic memorials being photographed and researched, it was church memorials, school memorials, regimental memorials, air crash memorials, rolls of honour etc… In fact any war memorials big or small, to one individual, or the whole country were being recorded.

The sudden collapse in 2007 of the main project to photograph British war graves around the world (the confusingly named British War Memorial Project) was a shock to some of our members. They not only enjoyed recording war memorials, they photographed war graves as well. These members of the War Memorial Forum felt it was time for a Scottish war grave forum to be started which would mean their photos would not be left in a backlog sitting waiting to be uploaded onto a website or be at the mercy of just two people falling out and causing their hard work to be wasted. It would follow the same format as the War Memorial forum where everyone could contribute at a time and pace that suited them and unlike other war grave projects would cover all gravestones with a military inscription, not just those of the 20th Century wars.

At this time it was decided to rename the War Memorial Forum as the Scottish War Memorial Project since the response we had had in such a short space of time had been fantastic. So much so that what started out as a place to share information with like-minded hobbyists had turned into something greater.

We have now reached a position where we know we can record all of Scotland's war memorials and all the gravestones with a military transcription.

We already have photographs and information on approximately two thousand five hundred war memorials including over ninety percent of Scotland’s civic war memorials. This includes what we believe to be Scotland’s oldest civic war memorial, the Crimean War memorial at Balmaclellan in Dumfries and Galloway. This simple memorial lists the five men from that small parish who fought and died in that far-off war and can put to rest the archaic idea that civic war memorials only started being erected in Scotland after the First World War.

There are all sorts of war memorials available to browse over and add to on the forum ranging from memorials of the Wars of Independence up to those memorials commemorating the men and women lost in Iraq and Afghanistan this century. We also have many memorials erected in other parts of the UK and abroad which commemorate Scottish units including the one recently erected in Flanders.

In only a few short months we have had thousands of gravestones and church memorials from the 15th Century up to date posted on the war graves project and many more are added daily. We record the Commonwealth War Graves headstones and memorials but we also record headstones which commemorate a family member lost overseas. In many cases we can match names on headstones to war memorials recorded on our other forum. Sometimes these can be in completely different parts of the country and highlight a connection otherwise unknown.

It's worth pointing out that these projects have both been done informally and voluntarily and for no financial gain. We are not affiliated to any organisation and everything that has been done to date has been done by people joining our forums and contributing their own photographs, transcriptions and data in their own time. Not one penny has been sought in funding from public bodies and not one penny is charged to anyone to use the forums. It's all free, and it's all done by volunteers.

Many of the memorials we record are not listed on the UK National Inventory of War Memorials based at the Imperial War Museum and our members frequently pass on their data. The UKNIWM only has limited staff and funds however so it will be many years before the information we currently have available will also be available there.

To complete our undertaking so everyone with an interest in Scottish genealogy can benefit we now need more people to join us. The members who have contributed so far can only cover so much ground. What we want is others out there with similar interests to help add their local knowledge to these two national projects. We want to add as much information as we can about the memorials and those named on them. We want photographs of the men and women named on the memorials and graves; we want to know what their background was and why they are recorded on a memorial. The more information we can add to each memorial the more useful the forum becomes. Both forums also have a search engine so looking for a specific name can be narrowed down without having to look at every entry (although browsing through the forums without searching for a specific name shows how diverse a selection of memorials we have in this small country).

People from all over Scotland and the rest of the world can currently access data on war memorials and graves for many parts of our country but with a combined effort we can cover them all from the Borders to Shetland and Aberdeenshire to the Western Isles. As far as we know no other country in the world would have such a comprehensive and free resource available at the touch of a keyboard.

Apart from the genealogical benefit to having all the names of all of Scotland’s war memorials and war graves recorded there is one other reason for recording our nation’s war memorials and the names upon them. This is probably summed up best in these few sentences written sixty years ago in the Kilmarnock Academy’s Roll of Honour edition of the school magazine ‘The Gold Berry’ by the rector Robert MacIntyre

“The little book, a special edition of The Gold Berry, to which these words form an introduction, is in itself a war memorial, intended primarily as a souvenir for the relatives and friends of those whom it commemorates. It is a stark and tragic statement which there has been no attempt to gloss or to adorn. We have made it so because without breach of faith to the dead no other course was possible. The inescapable fact about a war memorial is that it must be a memorial of war, with all that that implies of heartbreak, suffering, and the premature and seemingly fortuitous extinction of hope and promise.

It is well that, if sacrifice is not again to prove vain, succeeding generations should not forget these bitter realities.”

Please take the time to visit the two Project forums Scottish War Memorials Project (www.scottishwarmemorials.co.uk) and Scottish War Graves Project (www.scottishwargraves.co.uk) and if you think you can help us complete these Scottish genealogical resources please join us.
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DelBoy



Joined: 12 Jul 2007
Posts: 4858
Location: The County of Angus

PostPosted: Fri Dec 05, 2008 6:42 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

A very good article, hopefully it'll hook some people in who are already doing this kind of stuff off their own back.
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Caroline



Joined: 04 Aug 2008
Posts: 17

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 2:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Actually, it's my own photograph of Prestonapns on the back cover! Never mind, it doesn't matter.

Caroline
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Adam Brown
Curator


Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 7312
Location: Edinburgh (From Sutherland)

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 9:45 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Sorry Caroline, didn't realise you didn't use them. As you say it doesn't matter, it's a cracking memorial whoever photographed it.

Can't wait for the copy to pop through the letterbox!

Cheers

Adam
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DerekR
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Joined: 19 Dec 2006
Posts: 3013
Location: Hawick, Scotland

PostPosted: Tue Dec 09, 2008 11:48 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Excellent.
_________________

Time but th' impression stronger makes, As streams their channels deeper wear.
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Keptie



Joined: 24 Feb 2009
Posts: 937
Location: near Arbroath Angus

PostPosted: Sat Mar 21, 2009 10:55 am    Post subject: Scottish Genealogy Society Reply with quote

Thank you for adding this write up on this site as I have not been a member of the society for a few years now and I am sure that will get readers of the journal interested in war memorials at least . A friend of mine who lives near Dunvegan did not know there was a War Memorial at Dunvegan until I told him this week .........he's only lived there for nearly 30 years !


Over the years from 1990's until 2003 I have had a number of articles published in their journals relating to the murder of Lt Roderick Mackenzie , a look alike to Bonnie Prince Charlie in July 1746 , also articles relating to the Great War and the sinking of the HMS Curacoa on 2 Oct 1942 and most of the war graves are around Oban, Mallaig areas and Rhum , Eigg etc . Also in their December 2003 journal and article on Colonel Sir A David Stirling , DSO,OBE and his Memorial near Doune
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David McNay
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Joined: 14 Dec 2006
Posts: 11425
Location: Lanarkshire, Scotland

PostPosted: Tue Apr 14, 2009 1:41 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

The article has now also been printed in the latest issue of the journal of Lanarkshire Family History Society.
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