Resource List

Because I was the first person in my family to be born outside the UK or Ireland, I registered with the British ancestry site rather than the Canadian. This saves extra international costs.
http://home.ancestry.co.uk

However, Ancestry is limited when it comes to Scotland, so I do a lot of research directly with ScotlandsPeople, who hold the official records.
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk

Even if your ancestors are not important people, if they are like some of mine they used the announcements extensively (cheaper than the post?) For example, the Smiths and Logans would post in the Liverpool Mercury, the Glasgow Herald, and the Dumfries and Galloway Standard just to make sure they reached everyone. You could also use it backwards: if you know of an event, search it nationwide and see if there is an unexpected paper included - it might indicate the location of a missing sibling or cousin.
http://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk

The digital newspaper archives project can also be accessed with a subscription to Find My Past http://www.findmypast.co.uk

Introduction

With some variations, the chronological order is expected to follow my research process and not my tree. When certain family "stories" seem to want to be told, they will have their own post. To be truthful, even the research process will not be terribly rigourous and scientific, but flippant and chatty.

My father, the Logan, in the middle, about a century after 1850.

For example, being a bit of a Celtic snob (WCPWCP= White Celtic Protestant Working Class Princess) I was quite confident that I would NOT find English ancestors, so imagine my shock of discovering that my Great-Grandfather Logan was in fact born in Birkenhead. Birkenhead is the south side of the Mersey across from Liverpool. This area is known as the Wirral and is ( or was) in Cheshire.  In the 1840s and 1850s it was one of the cities that was in a radically growth phase. My Dumfries G-G-Grandparents moved their family to Birkenhead around 1855 (the story of why and how that went will come later) but the point is their youngest son Robert was born there in 1857. He went to Glasgow to start work in the printing industry later, but technically, he was English. Shocking!

This is important methodologically speaking because until I started to widen my search for Robert's birth to include, like, Cheshire, I couldn't confirm the link to Dumfries.  He was missing from Scotland. Once I found him, and also in the 1861 census for Cheshire, I was able to track his parents back to Dumfries. So, backwards to Dumfries:


John Logan, Tallow Chandler, single, 25, is a boarder at Agnes McGuffog's boarding house on Irish Street in Dumfries, June 1841.  He's my G-G-Grandfather (but probably doesn't know it).  So: "what's a tallow chandler?" -  "It's a candlemaker."  That's (sort of) how it starts...

"The butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker..."(2)   I started with the rarest (in today's market).  

Footnotes

A Glossary of side-notes, footnotes and top-notes:

1. Alexander Pope (1688–1744) : "For fools rush in, where angels fear to tread."
2. Anon., Nursery Rhyme "Rub A Dub Dub": first recorded in Christmas Box published in London in 1798.