Aberdeen City burials online?

[Archiver]

St Peter's are now available online! There's a notice on Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives website:

More Burial Records Available on Deceased Online!
We are pleased to announce that the records of the Spital Churchyard and St Peter's Cemetery in Aberdeen can now be viewed at Deceased Online. Over 105,000 additional records have been added, but there is still more to come - this represents about 70% of the total number of entries for St Peter's, so keep an eye out for more to come. The service is free to search, and there is then a small fee to view the record online. As always, if you have any queries regarding this please do not hesitate to Contact Us.

Great news!

Found at www.aberdeencity.gov.uk/archives

[speleobat2]

Finally found where my great grandmother was buried! Only for some reason she was buried under the name of Isabella Longmore instead of Isabella Longmuir Clerihew?

Don't know why, but I do know that when my great grandfather left Scotland for the USA in 1916 with his four surviving children he put a headstone on the graves of his sister and two infants but no mention of my great grandmother....hmmm...

Need to wait until Friday to get some more credits and see what lair the sister and infants are buried in. Hmmm...

Carol

[speleobat2]

Aha! The small print with the explanation says that women were usually list by their maiden names for these burials.

Carol

[LesleyB]

The small print with the explanation says that women were usually list by their maiden names for these burials.

That is most often the way it is done in Scotland.

[speleobat2]

Help, I'm confused!

I have located records for all of my Clerihew/Longmore relatives from the posts above and now I'm really confused. In 2007, Colin Milne sent me a photograph of a gravestone on a grave in St. Peter's/Spital cemetery which was erected by my great grandfather George Clerihew and listed two young children of his Ann d. 1873 and George d. 1877 as well as his sister Ann d. 1891, but did not mention his wife Isabella Longmore Clerihew d. 1907. The records show that all four of these people are in Lair T 10.

Today I was searching Stills as Isabella Still was George Clerihew's other sister. Surprise! I found one of her daughters in grave T 10 along with 15 other people only two of which were my relatives from above. I found two more relatives in a grave with 12 people and several more in a grave with 19 people. I know that the graves had multiple burials, but were there also large communal graves of some sort? Would family members of any of the families be able to place gravestones on these graves? The picture isn't very clear, but it appears that my family's stone is placed with others as any would ordinarily be and not on some extra large gravesite.

Carol

[speleobat2]

Good news, bad news.

It appears that my Clerihew relatives were buried here and there and where ever there was a place in St. Peter's cemetery. That's the bad news.

The good news is that I found my Milne/Gordon/Longmuir relatives all in one spot. Now I have the death extracts for my 3x great grandmother Mary Gordon Milne and her sister Martha Gordon. Then things get sticky again. Mary's death cert. says her parents were Robert Gordon, Turner, and Rachel Murray and that she was born in Paisley. Martha's death cert. says that her parents were John Gordon, Wood Turner and Rachel Murray. The IGI has a Mary, Rachel, and Martha born to James Gordon and Rachel Murray--Mary in West Parish, Greenock and Rachel and Martha in Paisley. The IGI listing for Mary is an extract, the other two are submissions.

And my budget for family history for this month is totally blown out of the water already and it's only Feb. 6th!

Carol

[Russell]

Hi Carol

Jf she was born in Greenock but spent most of her childhood in Paisley then she would most likely give Paisley as her birth place Her father's skills as a wood turner would be in demand in Paisley as thread mill production needed spools and pirns by the tens of thousands. Greenock was moving from sailing vessels to steam so demand for sheaves and pins for the rigging would be falling. If this was around 1840 onwards Paisley was in a right state of religious upheaval and many families joined secessionist churches and many of their records were never submitted for inclusion which might explain why her sisters records were not available. I never trust IGI submissions until I get corroborative evidence.

Russell

[speleobat2]

Hi Russell,

Thanks for the historical note. I was thinking that Mary's father was probably a lathe worker, but I thought maybe in the furniture business. Your knowledge of the area really opens a window for someone as far away as me!

I'm inclined to go with the birth extract naming Mary's parents as James Gordon and Rachel Murray. How Mary ended up married to a sailor and living up north in Peterhead for nearly 40 years before moving to Aberdeen is one mystery I'll never solve except in my imagination I guess. But because her children were born and lived mostly in Peterhead and Aberdeen, they may never have met Mary's father and so weren't to clear on what his name was when Mary died. Also, they were all battling an outbreak of Typhoid Fever in their family at the time. Mary died on Sep. 3, her eldest daughter on Sep. 27, and another daughter, my 2x great grandmother, on Oct. 5, 1855. They were probably nursing each other and caring for each other's families and ended up passing the illnesses on. The two daughters left 9 young children, 5 of them orphans as the husband of the eldest daughter had died in 1853.

I don't trust the submissions either, but they do give clues. Don't have a clue where the submitter found Mary's sisters Rachel and Martha yet. Except for Martha's death cert. I can't find them anywhere!

Back to the hunt!

Carol

[speleobat2]

Now I'm wondering if great granddad wasn't an entreprenur of sorts. The cemetery records also include the purchase record for some of the plots. My great grandfather purchased lair T10 in May of 1874, 5 months after his daughter was buried there. Wondering if he didn't sell places in the lair for all those strangers who are buried there with family members?

Carol

[Russell]

Back again Carol

In 1869 the cost of a 9 foot X 6 foot lair in our village church was £1 7/- (one pound seven shillings) Some skilled workers could be earning £1 weekly then so it was not such a major outlay.
Some graveyards ruled that if the right to burial in the family lair had not been exercised within a specific time span and they were unable to locate relatives holding the ownership papers then they were entitled to bury non-relatives in that lair.

Russell