David Hackston of Rathillett
Every family tree has a 'character' and I suppose David Hackston is mine. It seems to be the thing that drives many family historians in their research is proving, or not, the link to that elusive famous ancestor! Whether they be a royal or a villain we all seem to have a particular 'character' in the cupboard.
Hackston (or Halkerstone, Haxton, Hackstoun or a variety or other spellings.....) was a 17th century covenanter and hanged, drawn and quartered at the cross of Edinburgh on 30th July 1680. His execution was a particularly brutal event and a very nasty end, to what seems to have been, a remarkable man. Famously, or infamously depending on your perspective , Hackston is connected to the killing of archbishop Sharpe near Cupar in Fife. Sir Walter Scott writes of a mysterious character sitting on his horse with his face covered by a cloak, the stuff of adventure book stories and it seems some inspiration to Robert Louis Stevenson. Whilst I have a general interest in history my interest in this case is genealogical in nature. Those who wish to read more of the actual historical events may do so by clicking here...
I was brought up on stories from my grandmother that we were descended from Hackston. Other that the common family name (my mother was a Hackston) there didn't seem to be much more to the story until.... around 2004 I published my first version of family-history-scotland.co.uk and to my surprise, very quickly began to get feedback from around the world. Long after the death of my grandmother I was getting email and comments from completely seperate branches of the family who, like me, had been raised on similar stories. Now I know that this isn't proof but it certainly helps re-inforce the old "there's no smoke withouth fire" adage.
A number of years ago I was discussing this with an elderly aunt (who was also a bit of a history enthusiast) who was confident that Hackston died 'without issue' . It seems that part of this confidence derives from documents such as "Old Families". Helenus Hackston lodged his genealogy with the Lord Lyons office and this has been accepted since that time. However, it should be noted that Helenus was establishing a line of inheritance as it stood at that time, i.e. legitimacy through a MALE blood line.
My interest however, as stated earlier, is of a genetic nature and there seems to be some circumstancial eveidence to support further investigation. For example a number of documents talk about "John Balfour of Kinloch, nicknamed Burley, who was David Hackston`s brother in law". This either places Hackston as being married to a sister of Kinloch, or, Kinloch being married to a sister of Hackston. Additionally, whilst awaiting execution Hackston is noted, amongst other things, to have written letters to a "lady of his accquaintance". Both lines of investigation leave enough room for the possibility of a direct blood line relationship, albeit not a line of inheritance or legitimate.
And I guess that leads me on to my first DIRECT Hackston connection but its late and I think I'll leave that until the next post....
P.S. I'm actually receiving around 500 new visitiors every month, apart from the spammers everyone else seems a bit shy in contributing. Please feel free to register and add your comments, please be assured I don't pass on your email details to anyone.
Thanks,
Bill
Another brick wall?
At some point all family history research leads to a 'dead end' where leads just seem to dry up and many of the posts on this site relate to finding 'missing links'. I've had some great success using the following technique and I hope it helps others.
Firstly, you need to understand how the internet works, or at least how the search engines work, e.g. Google, Yahoo, etc, etc. For the purposes of this example we’ll focus on Google. It uses a system of keywords to match your query (the visitor) with web pages delivering that content (the providers). These keywords are the search terms you (and millions of others), type on the search bar. The results passed back are those pages, or providers, that meet the search term. As you can imagine, competition by the large commercial organisations to be returned in a good ‘list position’ is fierce and so large amounts of marketing spends are focussed on ensuring ‘high ranking’ within the search engines.
OK? So what does that mean for us? Last month, July 2009, approximately 152,000 people typed in a search for ‘Genealogy’. I’ve just typed the same search into Google. 73.6 million web pages were returned in the results! Not surprisingly most of the top positions are taken by either the main database vendors or resellers (affiliates) of the major vendors.
Now the internet contains THOUSANDS of personal websites where researchers (just like you), publish their family tree hoping to make connections. The problem is they have almost no chance of reaching top positions on search results and so are difficult to find.
So how do we find them?
1. Be More (very) Specific
What were these people typing ‘genealogy’ actually looking for? Genealogy Scotland, Genealogy book, genealogy Smith? Who knows, but they were presented with was the main commercial vendors keen to get some subscriptions.
2. Combine keywords + phrases
Now let’s try: genealogy scotland + smith (try it)
We’re getting closer, about 872,000 results, quite a few but much more specific and beginning to return some interesting ‘personal’ websites.
3. Search rules (syntax)
Did you notice the ‘+’ sign in the example above? To the search engine this means ‘and’ so, the results returned will contain; genealogy OR scotland AND smith.
Now try this: “genealogy scotland” + smith
Note: The quotes around "genealogy scotland"means to match the EXACT PHRASE and this is particularly useful when looking for specific individuals e.g. "John William Smith".
So the search above returned about 19000 results, much better, and some very specific sites containing personal family history pages.
As you can see the best search results come from being very specific. Of course you can vary these searches to include placenames, dates, etc, etc. The same rules apply to most of the major search engines. One last thing, most of the search engines include an 'Advanced' search button, this will further allow inclusion / exclusion of certain terms, dates, etc.
For more fantastic search tips I'd certainly recommend The Genealogist's Internet
Rools about speling!!
Genealogy, geneology, family history, ancestry, whatever you call it and however you spell it ,like me, you’re probably trying to learn more about your Scottish family tree.
Notice the title? Genealogy, geneology, family history, famaily history. Now this is no mistake, why? Because every day thousands of people either search, or publish details, on the internet using these common misspellings and if I didn't include them on this site then people using these words wouldn't find the site!
I've read a number of articles on getting started guides within the main ancestry databases and the advice given is always to spell geenealogy properly so as to appear professional and informed and I can understand the reasoning but there are a few downsides;
For example, let's just say that I've got a distant cousin who has just published a full family history of Bob Smith. He's done a great job, all of Bob's siblings, children, places of residence, etc, etc. Unfortunately my distant cousin made a typo and entered a title of "The Geenealogy of Bob Smith". Now, some time later I come along and start searching for the elusive Bob. I go along to Google, Yahoo or whatever and carefully type "Bob Smith" + genealogy. Guess what? No results! Why? because Google looked at genealogy AND geenealogy and thought nope that doesn't match! Throughout this site you will find instances of misspellings and the correct spelling. What I'm trying to do here is capture the searches of those people who have simply mistyped a word.
The same rules obviously apply when looking for placenames, surnames, etc, etc. So remember, combine common misspellings with your surname searches and I'll guarantee that you will begin to discover some great sites that you would otherwise miss.
All change at Family History Scotland!
Welcome to the latest incarnation of Family-History-Scotland. co.uk! To those of you that I've 'met' over the past few years and new visitors alike I hope you enjoy some of the new features of the new site. As you may have noticed I've been making lots of changes over the last few weeks after having negleted things for quite a while I hope it hasn't been too frustrating. My 'sister' site with family tree info is still available by clicking here or the link on this page. I'm afraid you may need to re-join as I had a fairly big change made today... apologies. The new format allows a bit more interaction and hopefully provides a good meeting place if you're tracing your family history in Scotland. Please feel free to browse around the trees, pictures etc and let me know if we can make any connections.
My personal interest in genealogy started a long time ago with stories of connections to David Hackston (Halkerstone) of Rathillett, told with great enthusiasm by my grandmother Mary Hackston. Although I've not yet made a conclusive breakthrough I'm encouraged by the common stories I've been lucky enough to hear from long distant cousins.
I'll be updating the site as regularly as possible and I''d appreciate any input you can offer. So, watch this space!