Last day in Edinburgh area -- Tuesday June 25, 2013

Today is my genealogy research day in Edinburgh. For years I have been researching the Osborne side of Ed's family--his mothers paternal line.  For many of those years I was having no luck.  I was told the Osborne's were from England.  Well, they were.  But before that, they were from Scotland!

About 7 years ago, since I wasn't getting anywhere, I decided I would expand my search. I had found the marriage certificate of James Godolphin Osborne to Emma Elizabeth Cousens in England.  On that document the father of James was listed as William.  With that information I used the ScotlandsPeople web site.  I was looking for death and will information for a William Osborne after the date of that marriage.  This site is a per use site.  You can do a search but to get the copies of the information related to that search, you have to pay. 

I actually hit pay dirt.  While I had to 'kiss a few frogs' before I found the right William Osborne, I finally did.  I found a copy of William Osborne's Will.  In that will he mentions Emma Elizabeth Cousens as being married to his son James Godolphin!  So I was SURE this was our William.  This William was a teacher in Kilmarnock, Scotland and proprietor.  He either owned property or managed property for someone.  The will was 6 pages long, all hand written.  Wonderful gift!

During this past winter, I hired a researcher in Scotland to confirm that I had the right info and to find some additional information that I might use on our trip.  She found additional wives and children and there were still some church records that she unearthed but had not copied for me so I was headed to The General Register House.



General Register House

The building is a spectacularly beautiful old building! General Register House was the first purpose built public records repository in the British Isles and is one of the oldest custom built archive buildings still in continuous use in the world.


They actually had four rooms for researchers.  Disappointing, though, all you had was a computer to do research.  There were no actually dusty ledgers to look thru.  It was like researching from home!



I did spend the day there, but did not really learn anything new.  I saw copies of the church ledgers of some of the baptisms of his siblings but learned no new info.



Edinburgh Castle

When the building closed at 4:30 pm, I met back up with Ed.  He had spent the day using the bus pass again, only this time going into the Edinburgh Castle which we had not done yesterday.  It certainly is an impressive building!