My name is Joanne Cowie welcome to my family history.  The page links above will take you to the various branches of my family.  Information about family members still living has not been included but if you think you have links with my family please contact me for more information. I've been tracing the lines of my family history across Scotland and Ireland for the past ten years and this is my attempt to present the information about my ancestors and relatives that will be useful and informative to other family members

I was prompted to start tracing my family several years ago after finding some old birth certificates in my Grandfathers house (Matthew Shields).  From this followed many discussions with other members of the family but remained just a idea until my Grandfathers death in 1995 . When going through his house we found not just birth certificates but old newspapers, marriage certificates, historical documents and lair records.  Later on visiting the cemetery to see my Grandfather's headstone I thought about the last of these.  Using the information from these lair records I was able to find headstones for other members of the family and started to write down a rough version of my family tree. I tried to track down all the references to Shields in the cemetery and if they were people I didnt know, I took notes anyway as they may be related further up or  back down the family.

During these years I had also talked to my Buckie Grannie (Hannah Cowie nee Smith) and she had written down some basic information on the Cowie side of the family for me and while visiting Buckie for various weddings I was able to add a lot of information on my cousins families to the tree.

In January 2000 I went high tech and bought a PC and from one of the free discs companies keep sending I got a Family Tree package. This is when my research really took off. I was able to see at a glance where everyone fitted in to the tree and not have to redraw it by hand every time I found out something or someone new.  This really brought the subject alive to me.

I found features like adding separate events to individuals i.e. employment and where they lived helpful when it came to searching records as it helped to confirm if the people referred to at certain times in these records were the same people I already new or related to them.

I then got connected to email and the internet and started searching for genealogical  sites and information. I found originally http://www.origins.net and later http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk especially helpful in my research. See my Links page for more links. The main source of my information now comes from a mixture of personal stories, birth, marriage & death records, newspapers and gravestones.

I hope you enjoy reading about my family as much as I enjoyed finding out about them.

                                                       Visitor Number