Trends in 19Th Century UK Kinship Networks Evidenced from Rural Aberdeenshire
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i Kinship Collation: Trends in 19th Century UK kinship networks evidenced from rural Aberdeenshire Submitted for a PhD degree 2019 Iain E Riddell, MA School of Media, Communication and Sociology i Abstract Kinship Collation: Trends in 19th Century UK kinship networks evidenced from rural Aberdeenshire, Iain Eric Riddell, MA (OU, History) This thesis presents kinship collation a social history tool that can reveal the sense of community as experienced by past individuals from the mapping of their networks with related people across landscapes, social institutions and economic activity. The tool was developed from a doctoral project that worked from the interdisciplinary scholarly space created by modern, digitised genealogical endeavour and synergises methodological theories with processes that can repurpose the British-sphere record base of enumeration returns and population records. The thesis challenges the longstanding belief that British data does not carry information on the kinship behaviours of nineteenth-century actors; instead, it reveals that the data has been intentionally and unintentionally hidden. It has taken the development of improved accessibility, enhanced visualisation and data management technology combined with a specific theorisation of kinship to reveal the varied kinship connectivity that ran through society influenced in form by socioeconomic currents. The thesis, therefore, asserts that British orthodoxy on kinship has fallen behind the theoretical discussions on the nature of kinship as mutuality and reciprocity between actors as it manifests in European cultures. The discourse follows an anthropological argument that not all relatives, even close ones are automatically kin, aligned to a hypothesis that kinship is not limited to the private world of the domestic co-residency. The importance of kinship collation to map the lived community and identify kinship is amplified from a Scottish region; the sprawl of kinship is tracked as it was sustained across continents, over many decades and passed between generations. The networks are analysed for indicators of social forces that operated through the structures of the modern world, democracy, liberal values and capitalist structures and as individual social capital that stabilised women and men in their situations. ii Acknowledgements With gratitude to the forbearance and guidance from Prof Steve King as understanding grew and awareness deepened. The task of the research was eased through small grants from the University, Royal Historical Society and the Scottish History Review Trust which enabled the further extension of the networks with detail and breadth. The ongoing endeavour of the massed subscribers to ancestry.co.uk cannot be under emphasised as they collectively teach algorithms the most likely connections between records; and finally to husband, parents, friends and family for sharing the circular angst and doubts. iii Contents Abstract ................................................................................................................................ i Acknowledgements ............................................................................................................ ii Contents ................................................................................................................................ iii List of Figures ....................................................................................................................... vi List of Tables ........................................................................................................................ vii Glossary of Terms .............................................................................................................. viii Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1a. Kinship rediscovered ........................................................................................................ 1 1b. British writing on kinship ................................................................................................. 3 1c. European and anthropological writing on kinship.......................................................... 13 1d. Scottish writing on kinship ............................................................................................. 21 1e. Intent and purpose .......................................................................................................... 26 1f. Structure and Scope ........................................................................................................ 33 Chapter 2 Kinship-centric study .............................................................................................. 37 2a. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 37 2b. Historiographical orthopraxis of British kinship research ............................................. 38 2c. Genealogy as a kinship studies medium ......................................................................... 45 2d. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 59 Chapter 3 In plain sight ............................................................................................................ 62 3a. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 62 3b. Limitations of the Scottish-British records for kinship studies ...................................... 63 3c. Collation of the Cardno enterprise-household kinship ................................................... 69 3d. Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 78 iv Chapter 4 Introducing kinship collation .................................................................................. 82 4a. Introduction .................................................................................................................... 82 4b. Collation methodology ................................................................................................... 84 4c. Collation process ............................................................................................................ 95 4d. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 109 Chapter 5 Women, kinship and society ................................................................................. 112 5a. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 112 5b. Rural women, farms and feminist insights ................................................................... 115 5c. Female-focused kin networks analytical approaches ................................................... 125 5d. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 141 Chapter 6 Kinship and farming networks .............................................................................. 144 6a. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 144 6b. Power and longevity in Mid-Victorian Ebrieside ........................................................ 148 6c. Male Individualism vs Male Connectivity ................................................................... 167 6d. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 179 Chapter 7 Trans-Atlantic British-sphere kinship collation .................................................... 183 7a. Introduction .................................................................................................................. 183 7b. Reconstituted Kinship of elite Europeanisation ........................................................... 187 7c. Kinship functionality within capitalism ....................................................................... 201 7d. Conclusion .................................................................................................................... 213 Chapter 8 Conclusion ............................................................................................................. 216 Appendix i. Illustration of the stalled praxis in British kinship studies ................................ 222 Appendix ii. Selected sample actor records extracted from the ged.coms with annotation .. 227 Appendix iii. Nested matrifocal kin of Jessie Cruickshank ................................................... 234 Appendix iv. Jessie Cruickshank from ged.com to kinship collation assessment narrative .. 241 Appendix v. Estate and Tenancies on the Skilmafilly Hill, with sources .............................. 246 Appendix vi. Truncated transcript of ‘Testimonial to J. H. Irvine, ESQ., Schivas’ .............. 248 v Appendix vii. Grampian, Aberdeenshire, Buchan and places of interest .............................. 251 Bibliography .......................................................................................................................... 253 vi List of Figures Figure 2-1 Snapshot of typical family tree visualisation ........................................................