I’ve been writing blogs in the past without knowing that’s what I’ve been doing! For 10 years or more, I’ve been working on my family’s history. Every so often, I’d do a little write-up and dispatch it to my brothers and my sister, or upload it to my website so that the cousins overseas could read it too.
It all started with a boxful of old letters, written in the period 1857 to 1888, which had been carefully hoarded and treasured over the years and which came into my hands in the mid 1990’s. I began by grouping them, sometimes by address and sometimes by hand-writing, and then sorting them in date order. Some of the old writing proved difficult, to say the least, and some letters were extremely fragile. It took about a year to organise them and do a typed transcription, which I duly uploaded to my web space. I think that was in the year 1998.
Having identified the writers of the letters, most of which were addressed to my great-grandparents by one or other of their offspring, or by a niece or nephew, I then began the task of identifying other people and other places mentioned in those letters. For example, cousin Ellen’s letter written in April 1871 says, “He called at Liverpool and saw my brother and Agnes Mitchelson.” Now, I know who wrote the letter, who called at Liverpool and who the brother was, but do you think I can identify this Agnes Mitchelson? No way!
And then there was the mysterious letter from Liverpool, the front page of which was missing which would have given the date it was sent. 
As you can see, the sender’s name (William Thorrat) and mailing address are included on the final page. He relates to his sister how he returned home after being at sea 17 days, to find his wife close to death (she died 2 days later), leaving him with an infant daughter at dry nurse and not a penny in the house. The letter doesn’t mention the other children, but there were 1 or 2 boys in the household, one of whom was subsequently raised by my great-grandparents. And to crown it all, the Thorrat boy ultimately married ‘cousin Ellen’ who wrote the letter referred to in the preceding paragraph, and they settled in South Shields. UPDATE. Within the last few weeks, I’ve been contacted by a great-granddaughter of these 2 individuals, and “joy, oh joy”, she has lots of old family photographs which she is willing to share.
I ought not to complain, as I’ve found many cousins and solved a good number of mysteries. But the biggest mystery of all remains unsolved, and will be the subject of a future blog.
Mitch, researching Mitchelson, Mitchel, Mitchell - mainly in Kirkcudbright and Dumfries, but some may have escaped across the Border!