Garroch and Griffin families

I recently started to research my husband’s family.  His mother came from Birkenhead, Cheshire, England, but we recently found out that her Grandmother may have been born in Scotland.  This was fascinating, as we had always assumed that his mother’s family and ancestors were all from the Cheshire/North Wales area.  As soon as I started to search, I found that his Great Grandmother did, indeed come from Scotland.  She was born in a little village in Wigtownshire, called Garlieston.  It didn’t take me too long to find details about this branch of the family, but the most interesting part, still to be discovered, is what caused that family to move from a little village in the south-west coast of Scotland to Birkenhead – a ship-building town in the north-west of England?  I am at the moment looking into the history of Wigtownshire and in particular the area where the ancestors lived, to find out what sort of work people had there.  I do know that some of them were agricultural labourers, so it’s quite intriguing to think they moved to a ship-building area of the country.

Garlieston, Sorbie and Kirkinner in Wigtownshire are all very small communities where my husband’s ancestors lived and worked.  They are in a very beautiful part of the country, with lovely scenery and stunning sea views.   Having recently returned to caravanning, we decided that our first outing of the year would be to that area of the country to do some searching – mainly of churchyards and cemeteries.  We headed for a lovely caravan site at Garlieston and had a few days to explore the area.  We managed to find a gravestone, in Kirkinner, which had details of my husband’s Great, Great, Great Grandmother.  This was so interesting because according to her death certificate she died a ‘Pauper’!  How damning were birth and death certificates in days gone by!!  She was buried in the same grave as her sister’s family and actually named on the gravestone.  We also found the gravestone in Wigtown Cemetery of my husband’s Great, Great Uncle, who died in 1958.  We didn’t have much time to explore this time, but we fully intend to return to the area and base ourselves at the lovely campsite and do much more in the way of research.

It is always really interesting to find something new when doing family history research, and finding a different branch of the family is an unexpected treat.