I have started to reorganise my photo pages they will load a bit quicker for older machines or slower connections. I will be reducing the size of the photos so they load quicker and separating them up into smaller pages but you will still get a good sized picture in a new window when you click on each of the individual pictures.
Just received three school photos this time from Beryl Duncan. I have added one from 1954 and one from 1955 to my photo album under school photographs. The third one is from a newspaper cutting and I have put it on the front page for now. Beryl has been able to name everyone in the pictures.
I recently got some more old photos from Alex Mackay and Jim McDowall and Bob Meikle. Bob and Alex have relatives who were in Charlie Parker's Catrine Orchestra. They have also been good at naming most of the people in these old photos that go back a hundred years.
My father and his father before him and his father before him were all miners and they were all christened James Steele. I only recently discovered a song by a Davy Steele (no relation) from Preston Pans titled the ballad of Jimmy Steele. It's a haunting tribute to his father who was also a coal miner. Have a listen to it in my music menu. Or click here for the youtube version. Ballad of Jimmy Steele. Sadly Davy died with cancer a few years back. The most of the miners I knew are all but gone now and I would have liked to have heard their reaction to this haunting ballad.
Any old photos of Catrine's past are always welcome so why not get some of your grannies old photos out and scan them and send me your images. It's a shame how we never seem to appreciate a thing until we no longer have it and unfortunately old photos tend to get neglected and with the new digital age it's so easy to preserve them for future generations. In recent years I was told of someone having a photo of my mother when she was a young girl still in school and by the time I asked about it, the person who had it was dead and I have given up hope of seeing it. It's really sad how we tend to take these things for granted and I am as guilty as everyone else as I have lost or destroyed literally thousands of photographs in my time because we simply never knew their true value. We never could have foresaw what digital technology was going to do for us. All photographs of any quality can be so easily saved now for future generations to enjoy. And even badly damaged pictures can be restored in most cases. I became interested in doing my family tree a few years ago and it's amazing how important a time we are living in now in the sense of recording things for future generations to enjoy. I can see the next generation being able not only to read the records of births marriages and deaths of their ancestors, but with very little effort now, from our generation, they could have visual and oral records of their direct ancestors from digital photo and video collections.
In 2008 I was contacted by an Australian lady, Gladys Cutajar, whose grandfather James Graham was the chauffeur to Lord Sorn from 1912 until 1921. He then moved to Seamill, where he is seen in the picture below driving an old Albion. It's a cracker. Gladys also sent me some interesting photos that were taken at Sorn Castle and I have started to published them to see if anyone knows anything about them. Click on Gladys above to see all the pictures she sent me.
I was recently given a great old photo of the staff from Catrine Junior Secondary by Inglis Thomson whose grandfather was headmaster of the school at the time the picture was taken. He recons it was about 1950 and we hope to be able to name the teachers. I was given another Catrine school photograph from 1955 and the pupils have all been named courtesy of Harry Rogers. If anyone has any enquiries about who's who I would be please to hear from them but I don't feel I should publish all the names without the permission of the people in the photo. Catrine folk know them all anyway and I hope they will agree that it's always interesting to take a look back in time. And it seems to be catching on because I've just been sent another one from 1957 with Mrs. Houston's class.
This is a new feature and I am still in the early stages of getting the content to put into this page. Eventually I expect to fill it with original material of local interest but to test the pages and learn how to get them working properly for different browsers I've just used a very basic first attempt at a windows movie maker production. It really will take a broadband connection to get the best from this although it should work on a dial up but will take ages to download. There could be conflicts for some users who don't have the standard plugins or Active X controls on their systems. All these things are available to all windows users and they will usually load automatically. So I've also stuck a wee music button at the top left for anyone who's interested. Music is my first love and I will probably concentrate on music files for my new website projects. I sang in a band for a few years and I've been muted for years now just through circumstances. It's hard to believe you can actually get fed up with music but it happened to me. I suppose what really happened was that I was too busy doing other things. One of the silly things that always sticks in my mind was what John Lennon said about life being the thing that happens to you, while you're busy making other plans. Well I'm back among the living. And watch out because Rab's now learning the fiddle. They tell me my Grannie played it but she broke it over wee Wullie Gordon's back in a fit of rage one day so I never got to hear her play. She would always get on the piano at new year and vamp out a tune or two so there was definitely a good ear for music there and I'm also told that my father's side of the family were off the McNultie's who originate from Ireland as did our great, great grandfather and they were all very musical. I can never forget Billy Bates telling me his tale about the fiddle he had acquired. He'd been practicing away for some time at the back door when his neighbour looked over the fence one day and offered him 5 bob to buy it from him. Never one to refuse a bargain Billy signed the deal with a shake of the hand and his neighbour proceeded to break it over his knee and told him how it had been the best five bob he'd ever spent just to know he'd never have to listen that bloody thing droning again.