My name is Craig Smith and I have been researching my family history seriously since early 2013 after having a casual interest for many years.
Most of my research builds on or refines the previous research of a number of relatives to whom I am extremely grateful. I have started this blog to record the discoveries I have made through traditional paper-trail genealogy and through DNA testing as well as documenting my first ancestors to arrive in here Australia where I was born.
My mother’s ancestors all came to Australia in the 1800s – some of them not by choice. My known heritage on that side is a mixture of English and Irish except for one great-great-grandfather who came Scotland.
My father and his parents came to Australia in the 1950s from Scotland. My grandfather was originally from Aberdeenshire and my grandmother and her family were from around Arbroath and Inverkeilor in Angus (Forfarshire) except for one pair of my great-great-great-grandparents who were originally from Ireland.
The name of the blog was inspired by my father’s heritage – and by a 1952 newspaper interview in which my grandfather revealed that in his younger days he had worked on ships taking Aberdeen-Angus cattle to Canada and South America.
The building on the left-hand side of the image at the top of the blog is Bogend Cottage on the Estate of Shiels, Midmar Parish, Aberdeenshire where my grandfather was born in 1899. Sadly, the building was demolished in the 1980s after the death of the last of my great-grandmother’s half-sisters and replaced with a modern house. The building on the right-hand side of the image is Seaton Smithy where my grandmother was born in 1907. Seaton Smithy is a Category C(S) Listed Building that still stands today on Seaton Road between Arbroath and St Vigeans in Angus.
You can contact me directly by email.
Aberdeen-Angus 