A Visit to Salt Lake CityAuthor(s): Charles KellySource: North Irish Roots, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1992), pp. 46-47Published by: North of Ireland Family History Society (NIFHS)Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/27696885 .

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rather puzzling certificate, the chance discovery of a book about Clydesdale in a second-hand

bookshop here in London and an appeal to Coatbridge Libraries had taken me several stages further along the trail, revealing that Gartsherne ironworks was the largest in Scotland at the time and that as their firm grew, the Baird family who owned it had developed an entire new town complete with Works Church, where my great grandparents were married, and schoolhouse,

where my great grandmother's brother Walter Stewart was headteacher for 37 years Fellow

family historians will understand, I am sure, what a thrill it has given me to progress, so swiftly, from an unfamiliar name in a sloping Victorian hand, to a picture of a whole world - now buried under a railway container base and sanitised new housing estates I now have lots of descriptions of the area at the time but I'm sure there's still more to find out For instance, the staff of

Coatbridge Library have told me that the Mitchell Library in Glasgow holds the log book of Gartsherne Schoolhouse, so I can go there some day and find out exactly how the day to day management of the school was carried out in my great great uncle's time a hundred years ago

Family folklore had it that where John Diamond spent most of his life was at Clober House, Milngavie, just outside Glasgow From Bearsden & District Library I received the 1881 census detail for Clober House - also now demolished and replaced by a housing estate -

recording John and Janet Diamond and their two elder children, Harry and Walter, living in the gardener's cottage This gave me John's place of birth, Girvan, and his wife's, Bonhill, Dumbartonshire, tracking down their baptisms through church records is one of the tasks ahead of me The

library was able to supply details about the various families who owned Clober House over the years when my great grandfather worked there, and they sent me a photocopy of an article in which a surviving member of the last family to live there described the beautiful gardens

with their greenhouses, cold frames, beautifully mown lawns, and herbaceous borders full of "a glorious mixture of roses, stocks, and flowers of all kinds Daffodils and lily-of-the-valley grew outside under the trees, and also rhubarb Every inch of space was used

" Last month

on a flying visit to Scotland I was able to go to Milngavie and wander round the residential avenues of lovely chalet bungalows with exquisite gardens, very different from the council houses I'd expected, which now constitute Clober Estate At the farthest corner of the estate I came

across a tiny patch of Public Open Space, complete with park bye-laws - a channel perhaps

300 yards long between two rows of back gardens There were rhododendron bushes, beeches, holly trees, lilacs and a right-angled section of crumbling stone wall with doorway and one

window surviving in it Part of my great grandfather's potting shed? An outhouse to Clober House itself? My imagination ran not Had my grandfather planted the seedlings from which some

of these shrubs and bushes grew? Had his sons (or daughter) played under the Scots pines? Perhaps The speculation is for me part of the charm of putting leaves on the branches of my particular family tree

A VISIT TO SALT LAKE CITY

By Charles Kelly (Member No A 441)

Having just returned from a visit to the Genealogical Library in Salt Lake City (Feb '92), I would like to relate my experience in relation to the library holdings and the partial resolution

of the origins of one of my ancestors

The library is run by the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, (The Mormons) It is a veritable treasurehouse for the genealogist or family historian The Library has a microfilm collection of over 1 6 million rolls of records and 325,000 microfilm, these date from approximately 1550 to 1910

These records cover large and diverse areas of the world, le North America, Britain, Europe, Scandinavia, Latin America, as well as parts of the Far East, Australasia and Africa They also have a book collection of over 250,000 volumes, consisting of local family histories, indexes, periodicals and other research documents

I consider the jewel in the research aids of the library to be, however, the "Family Search" This a computerised system of genealogical information of indexes covering the IG I (International Genealogical Index), the Ancestral File, (this links individuals into families and pedigrees), the Family Registry Index of 300,000 individuals and organisations interested in sharing information, PAF (Personal Ancestral File), a genealogical software program and the Family History Library Catalogue, describing the library records

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Access to this computerised system is by means of compact discs, le CD's The system is user friendly and there is always someone close at hand to assist While on the point of

assistance I cannot commend the staff of the library too highly for their willing help and general friendliness

To move to a more personal level, my own research led me through such diverse photocopied records as Scots and English Parish Registers, Irish Census Returns and Irish Estate Records, 19th Century British Army Records, 19th Century Ships Muster Rolls and Scottish Legal

Documents, le The Service of Heirs, which were indexed

I also investigated the Family Search computerised system The facilities in the computer enable one to obtain either a 'hard-copy' printout on paper of data contained within the system, eg information from the IGI or to 'download', le copy from the computer hard disc onto a floppy disc to take home

I obtained a 31/2 disc from the sales counter and copied all the IGI entries pertaining to the name of LYON in Ayrshire and Renfrewshire from the computer onto it I should now be able to examine these records at my leisure on my home computer

I have been researching for sometime the surname FANCO belonging to my father's

grandmother Family traditions suggested a German origin to the name, but there was no conclusive evidence

The earliest known bearer of the name was George Frederick Fanco a sugar baker in

Greenock in the late 18th Century Several children were bom to George Frederick and his

spouse Sarah Hutcheson but in each case the surname differed Variations such as FANKUCH, PHANCO and PFANCO were to be found I had also been unable to find the marriage of George Frederick and Sarah

By running a check on the Family Search system, le the IGI, I came up with the marriage of George Frederick PFANKUCHE to Sarah Hutcheson in St Bride's Parish Church, Fleet Street, London in 1798 This was because the computer ran a check on all British entries in the IGI le Scots, English and Irish I felt that having identified what I presumed to be the correct surname I should do a check on the German Records in the IGI which I duly did

This resulted in my obtaining a hardcopy printout of 110 PFANKUCHES, mostly from what was formerly the Kingdom of Prussia Although I did not locate the birth of my German ancestor

I consider that I have made substantial progress in my research into this particular branch of

my family, this progress being greatly facilitated by the use of the family search system It is hoped that at some future date the Family Search facility may become available at a more local level, le in Branch Libraries of the LDS church

To do justice to the genealogical library would require a much greater dissertation than that contained here I hope, however, that I have given some idea of the depth of information available in the voluminous holdings of the LDS Library and of the immense benefits of such a collection to genealogists and family historians

DANIEL BONARIUS, SOLDIER

Captain (Retd) Erik A Gray

There is nothing more exciting and challenging in family history than a good mystery The immense thrill and satisfaction of being able to solve it has to be experienced to be believed It was my good fortune to be confronted with such a puzzle in the case of Daniel Bonanus

His name provoked the thought that he may have descended from some Roman warrior of one of Caesar's legions long since disappeared in the mists of ages past But I banished the

notion, as it was well outside my field - and every other family historian's too

There is an entry in the admissions registers of the Women's Lymg-ln Hospital at Holborn, London, which states that Rebecca Bonanus was the wife of Daniel Bonanus, Soldier When it was written she was 24 years old She was delivered of a male child on 13th January 1815

Her baby boy was christened a week later and named after his father, and mother and child were

discharged from the hospital on 2nd February According to the register, Rebecca's 'parish' of settlement was Germany But from another source her origins were known to have been English, as she had been baptised at St Mary, Whitechapel, in the county of Middlesex, the daughter of George and Mary Harding

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