Scotland: Linlithgow Genealogy Find

The trip from Edinburgh to Linlithgow takes about 30 minutes by train. Linlithgow Palace is one of the main attractions and is known for being the place where Mary Queen of Scots was born in 1542. I didn't have time to do the tour of the palace because I spent so much time walking the natural areas that lead to it. I posed with the statue of Mary Queen of Scots and had some great food in the city center.

Here's a video of my walk around the Loch (yes, I probably should have recorded my video with my phone horizontal but that didn't happen):

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/92818a_3f27489149e4463581123b16aef02bc3/1080p/mp4/file.mp4

So why was I here in this small town? Well, I was following my paternal grandfather's maternal line back to Scotland. If you ever spoke with my paternal Opa (grandpa) you would have learned of our Irish lineage, which I hold dear but I never knew much about my Scottish ancestry. Diving deeper into this lineage helped me find my 6th Great Grandmother, Elizabeth, born to Margaret and James born in the mid 1700's. With help from a distant cousin, I had learned about this line in my hometown but there was something about being in the place they would have known to feel them in my blood. I teared up when I found this record in the National Records of Scotland a day or so earlier. This is Elizabeth's birth record. Parish records are key historical archives which can help you trace your lineage:

I paid homage to my Master of Library and Information Science degree on this 2025 Scotland trip as well. It was reminiscent of my grad school class trip to Ireland for a class about how information is affected during cultural conflict. We visited libraries, archives, museums, and more to study key tumultuous times in Irish history. Before my class started, I visited Cork, Ireland and visited the library there to learn more about the Millstreet and Macroom areas, where the Kelleher family line lived up until the mid 1800's. I also interviewed Belfast librarians of different ages to hear their life and occupational stories. As you can probably tell, Genealogy is a love of mine and this can be a career path that some librarians take but I know I'm fine, at this point, for doing it for myself, but not sure if I am ready to do it for others. I do wonder though how it would be to add this to my future retreat? Of course, it would have to be super specific to people with ancestors from wherever the retreat would be, in this case Scotland. So more to come about how to work that part out.

Back home and a year later, I am finally able to settle into reflecting not only on my Scotland trip from last year but also revisit my ancestors who I researched there!