to my family history website! In October 2005 I took the work compiled throughout his life by my father, Alexander Sandison (1914-1990), and set up this database. He had concentrated mainly on the Sandisons of Shetland his paternal grandfather having moved away from Unst to become a Congregational minister in London in 1880.
I have been adding branches to the tree to include the families of my other three grandparents: Gold, Roscoe and Struthers; my husbands' families: Mainland, MacIver, Horner and Mitchell; and those of my cousins: Mackay, Orton and Rickson; as well as many "cousins of cousins". This has taken me up and down many times and out to the tips of some very distant twigs. I've also worked on some trees for a few friends although, intriguingly, one of them now has a direct link to my own. So far, there are over 37,000 individuals listed on the database and it is growing all the time.
I have concentrated on building up the connections and extending the tree and although I obviously cannot guarantee 100% accuracy I have tried to stick to facts which can be substantiated elsewhere. If a date is approximate then I have often guessed at the date. If there is a definite year then it is accurate to within a couple of years. If a month is mentioned then the event was registered within a three-month period which could mean that it actually happened at the end of the year before, if it is March.
Places can be confusing because the registration districts cover wide areas and each census return for an individual does not always list the same "place of birth". Towns sometimes straddle more than one county or the county boundary changed over the years. And people born in Liverpool, Lancashire, for instance, were often registered in West Derby which is over 70 miles from Derby in Derbyshire.
I use various resources for my research and, to aid this, I have partial trees on Genes Reunited
as well as on Ancestry
where the annual subscription allows unlimited exploration. I also access the 1911 census through a dedicated subscription to Find My Past and I am a regular visitor to the comprehensive Shetland Family History site run by Tony Gott.
I have also recently set up a blog: The Gritquoy Blog and the latest news is that The Gritquoy Forum is now in place. The forum is a meeting point for my "cousins of cousins" and, as it builds up, should become very useful for us all.
