Tuesday, July 1st

          Dollar and lots of other lovely little Scottish towns

Robyn writes: We are quite popular with the locals as we seem to have brought Queensland-inspired weather with us; ie: it's warm, sunny and hardly raining at all! This morning dawned bright and sunny once more, and the sight of the Ochils in the morning sunshine outside our bedroom window is enough to raise the spirits instantly - they are amazing mountains. After yet another large, cooked Scottish breakfast, we headed out once more in pursuit of my Scottish ancestors. (Sorry if you're bored by family history, this is another one of those days!)

Our first destination was Tulliallan, where my great-great grandfather, John Thomson was born in 1829. We know from the 1841 census where the family were living at that stage but when we arrived in Silver Street, we sadly found that the end of the street nearest Chapel Street where they were is no more - on one side there's a parking lot, on the other a closed old people's home. After questioning locals, we thought we had the locality of Blackhall cottages (the family lived at Blackhall in 1839) but couldn't see any signs to confirm that. After asking around, we finally found the old cemetery at the top of town, only to be kicked out of it! Apparently it is now a "private cemetery". Will investigate this more fully tomorrow - how the hell can a cemetery be private?! To make matters worse, I had just found an old tombstone which looked like it may have had the word 'Thompson' on it! On the plus side, we found a lovely little pub/coffee shop "The Unicorn" where we fortified ourselves with scones (the Scottish do scones very well) and tea and coffee. We then found the new cemetery but after fruitlessly searching it and finding nothing earlier than 1870, gave up and headed for Leslie in Fife.

We'd never been kicked out of a graveyard before but we were kicked out of this one....

Leslie is the town where my many-greats grandfather Simon Dempster was the minister of an "anti-burgher" church (a chief Scottish hobby in the 1700s appears to have been splitting away from the established churches and forming new churches of your own). Anyway, Great-Grandad Simon was for many years the dissenting minister in Leslie. We found the old building which was his "church" (looks like a converted barn!). It is now the storage building behind a Joiner & Undertaker! We then took some time to find the cemetery - all late 1800s and after. I rang the Fife Council and discovered that there was an old cemetery behind the church. Leslie is full of churches, but we finally tracked it down, complete with old graves, and once again hit family history gold - almost overgrown with weeds and stinging nettles, I found the grave of Simon, his wife Nicholas Campbell and their son Simon! I was in a state of family history bliss!

 Dempster graves in Leslie

Once we'd established there were no more family graves, we adjourned to the nearby "Fettikill Fox" pub for an excellent lunch. The day was absolutely lovely - sunny and into the low twenties - amazing! Then we headed once more for Perth, to the north. We looked for the locality of Kinnoull here and found it, but as the parish church had no graves, gave up there and headed to look for Moneydie to the north. This isn't on the maps and with no internet access, we couldn't find it, so finally gave up and headed for home. (A quick check on the restored internet once we were here and I'd found it in 5 minutes!) Have also found interesting information on Blackhall to follow up, so we'll be back to Tulliallan tomorrow.

We've had a lovely meal once more in the bar - takeaway from the local curry house and are now relaxing and putting our feet up. It's great having internet access again, I must say. It's nearly 10 and will still be light for quite some time - even in the middle of the night here, it doesn't seem to be really dark! Thank heavens for really good curtains.... I have to say I really love Scotland - the countryside is beautiful and the people are so friendly and helpful - over the past few days we've met so many people while looking for various ancestors, and without exception they've all been just lovely and wanting to help. Our hotel is also a great place to stay - the owners are great and it's a wonderful home away from home.