Notes on Our Genealogy

My 4th great-grandfather Joseph Greenock (1790-1853) was a shoemaker in Linlithgow, Scotland. The shoemaking trade operated under the auspices of the Linlithgow Incorporation of Shoemakers, the local guild. Today the Incorporation's surviving records are held in the National Library of Scotland , in downtown Edinburgh, where it just so happens I visited recently. Title page from one of one of about a dozen books in the collection I found references to the Linlithgow collections at the National Library some time ago, and was of course disappointed that they weren't available online. But then we decided to visit Ireland and Scotland this summer, so I thought I might be able to squeeze in an attempt to see the collections while I was there. My ancestor listed his occupation as "shoemaker" when he joined the British Army in 1808, and was a practicing shoemaker after he left the army in 1826. Two of his sons were also shoemakers. So I figured that if the surviving records