Quarriers Children

Post by **emanday** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 3:42 pm

A boss of mine, long time ago, had been a Quarriers boy.

As far as he was concerned they were totally responsible for him being the man he was. All I can tell you is that he had to have been one of the nicest people I ever worked with.

AnnieMack · Post by **AnnieMack** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 4:13 pm

When I was young my dad used to take us a drive through the village, haven't been that way for a long time but have added the cafe to my list of places to stop when I am out and about in my wee car.

A

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 5:08 pm

Russell wrote:Hello Annie

I know you are not objecting to the fee requested by Quarriers but, in the past, others have and I just wanted to let folks know the reasons for it.

Quarriers is still very much a charity although their clientgroup now is different from the early orphan children and they must show transparency in all their financial dealings. To employ an archivist to research records of previous children would take away from the money they must spend on the current client group. So any fee paid offsets the cost of employing a skilled person to deal with their archives.Tha Archives staff care deeply about the sensitivity of their job and the needs of descendants of the children. They are superb.

Russell

Hi Russell

Any serious researcher would only ever realise, understand and appreciate the time and effort involved in setting up a database of such a charity's records, and, therefore, be fully appreciative of the fact that it is eminently reasonable for the organisation that is Quarriers today to make perfectly reasonable charges for accessing the Quarriers records, most especially given the time and effort involved in listing/indexing etc. such records.

Most unfortunately, a side-effect of the world wide explosion of interest in matters genealogical and family history has led to the situation where too many uninformed researchers consider that they should have a cost-free right to access whatever records are relevant

Oh that it were so simple

I'd be interested in hearing more from Russell in this instance in terms of what I am certain will have been the tremendous effort involved in indexing these records, and, I'd suspect, the fact that the access charges involved only go part of the way to covering the costs involved............

David

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:05 pm

You asked for it David

135 years of orphanage records.

I can only describe my experience with Quarriers but I have no reason to doubt that Barnardo’s and the Aberlour Trust were/are confronted with a similar problem trying to preserve the existing paper records, transferring them from a friable, disintegrating medium to a digital – or at least a more stable form of record so that they would be around for our descendants, yet simultaneously keeping them available so that they could be searched to meet current enquiries.
Imagine a room filled with filing cabinets, two aisles of them 15 cabinets long. Each 4 drawer cabinet fully secure and fireproof and each one stuffed to the gunnels with documents and leather bound books, registers, admission registers, emigration lists, school reports, custody transfer documents, photographs, and…..and…..and…..
Add shelves of films, videos, reel-to-reel recordings, boxes with Royal visit 1927 on the label, another box or two of’ holiday snaps Dunoon, or Girvan, boxes after box of glass slide negatives and positives from 1890’s.
That gives an overview of some of the impedimenta collected over the course of 135 years of existence.
Where do you start with a huge collection like that?
What is to be kept and what thrown out?
How can we keep the information relating to one child linked to their sibling(s)?
How do we link specific people to the cottage they were brought up in and the other children who formed part of their ‘family’?
Some of our I.T. folk out there will have some appreciation of the magnitude of the task.
First find a college or university who need a place to offer their students hands-on experience in archiving/filming/filing/digitising then negotiate placements preferably at no cost to the organisation – Well! Maybe a bus fare or free meal now and again!
Next spend a year or so with a committee which must include the college/uni. staff and the organisations Finance Officer trying to thrash out just what needs to be done and what is the best way, then start all over again because IT has been advancing while you have been finalising your plans !!
Next seek Lottery funding, endowment money, company sponsorship, any legitimate source will do until the cost of the acid free paper, storage pouches, CD Roms etc has been covered.
Once that has all been put in place there needs to be a secure storage/work area set aside for the team who will carry out the actual sorting of records and artefacts before they are archived. For that you need the assistance of a group of; let’s call them ‘volunteers’. Their job is to crawl into some of the dustiest corners to extricate the items which have fallen down the back of the shelving, or enlist the joiner to open up the cupboard which has not been opened for ??? years.
My volunteer job was to show 16mm, 35, 8mm Super8 films and decide on where it was, when it was and who it was about. Only then could a decision be taken about what happened to it next.
I still have reel-to-reel tapes to listen to but all my tape players have suffered elastic drive band failure due to advancing age. Maybe they should go in the archive too ?
Listening to a Junior Choir who won a Music Festival award in 1953 makes you realise that someone’s parent or Grannie sang in that choir. Could you throw it out ?
I don’t know what the actual cash costs were and I’m not sure I wish to know but hopefully this narrative will give some indication of the enormity of the task

Russell

DavidWW · Post by **DavidWW** » Mon Oct 30, 2006 6:42 pm

Hi Russell

Thanks for that.

Precisely and exactly what I wanted others to understand.

Orraverybest

David

AnnieMack · Post by **AnnieMack** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:09 pm

Just thought I'd update you all on my most recent acquisition from the archivist at Quarriers - a copy of a photograph taken in 1886 of my two wee girls with their housemates prior to going to Canada.

To say I was flabbergasted is an understatement and the lovely letter that accompanied the photograph just proves how much care and attention is paid to the records held by Quarriers.

I will scan this photograph for you all to see as there are names on the photo of all the children and they might belong to some of you good people.

Annie =D>

Post by **emanday** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:22 pm

What a wonderful surprise for you.

Doesn't it make a difference to have faces to put to names.

I'm so pleased for you.

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Fri Nov 17, 2006 10:22 pm

Hi Annie

All I can say is

I'd love to see the photo. You were so lucky because group photos were only taken of a few of the children before they made the great adventure.
The Quarriers Canadian Children organisation do have copies of all the photos that were taken.

Russell

AnnieMack · Post by **AnnieMack** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 12:24 am

I have uploaded the pic and it is awaiting approval.
http://talkingscot.com/gallery/displayi ... p?pos=-909

The names as written are as follows:

1 - Maggie Kirkwood, 2 - Ruth McCall, 3 - Maggie Graham, 4 - Nellie McIntyre, 5 - Andrew McIntyre, 6 - Agnes Stevens, 7 - Maggie Williamson, 8 - Lizzie Williamson, 9 - Jane Innes, 10 - Annie Edgar, 11 - Christina Innes, 12 – Peter Dingwall, 13 – Mary Harper, 14- Martha Kirkwood, 15 – Katie Graham and 16 – Robert Dingwall

On the left hand edge is written Cottage 7 Mrs Guild 1886.

Let me know if you want me to email the full size scan – it was just too big to upload.

Annie

Russell · Post by **Russell** » Sat Nov 18, 2006 2:05 am

Hi Annie

I have uploaded an early picture of Quarriers Village from just after the time your girls were there. Cottage 7 was second on the left (Although it is now 3rd on the left) It was called Aberdeen Cottage. The first on the left is Bethesda which was the 'Home for Incurable Girls'
The small trees which line the driveway are now fully mature trees.
The large building at the back is Summerville-Weir Hall which was the Central Administration building back then.

http://talkingscot.com/gallery/displayi ... p?pos=-910

Houses were numbered as they were built and the arrangement can confuse. Each house was also named after the principal benefactors so we have one with the unlikely name of 'Sabbath Schools of Scotland'
You can see why some folks stuck to the numbering system

The drawing was taken from one of William Quarriers Annual statement of Account books where he informed people of progress and showed where donations had been spent. All donations were

acknowledged every second Monday in the North British Daily Mail

His words.

I better stop now before this becomes a total history lesson

Russell[/img]