John Alston, Carpenter - 52 Ancestors #36

For this week's 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks writing challenge from blogger Amy Crow Johnson of No Story Too Small, the theme is Working for a Living, in honor of Labor Day in the U.S.

Third great-grandfather John Alston was a carpenter. He was born in Symington, Lanarkshire, Scotland on September 2, 1806, to John Alston and Jean Jamieson. I found Scottish birth and marriage records at FamilySearch.org and wrote about them here.

John married Lillias Johnston on June 28, 1833.

Church of Scotland (Glasgow, Lanarkshire, Scotland). Old parochial registers for Glasgow, 1612-1854. Family History Library, Salt Lake City, Utah. Family History Library microfilm. number 1042942.
Record for John Alston and Lillias Johnston. Page 412: Glasgow, 28 June 1833

Alston, John Alston, Wright, in Glasgow, Lillias Johnston, residing in the parish of Douglas. Married 28th June by Mr. John Jamieson, Burgher and Minister in the parish of Douglas.

John's marriage record lists his occupation as "Wright," which is a Scottish term for Carpenter. (A great list of Scottish occupations can be found at ScotsFamily.com.)

Tuesday's Tip ~ Scotland, Births, Baptisms, and Marriages

I have been working on my maternal Scottish ancestry recently (Freeland and Alston) and I wanted to know where in Scotland David Freeland and John Alston came from. I visited the website for the National Library of Scotland and on its home page, there was a suggestion that records could be found at FamilySearch.org. On the search page, I clicked on United Kingdom and Ireland and found that when I filtered for Scotland, the following indexes were available to search:
Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950 and Scotland, Marriages, 1561-1910.

In searching for James and David Freeland, I was able to find that James Freeland was born on May 6, 1814, in Govan, Lanark, Scotland, to David Freeland and Barbara Fullarton Arroll. With that information, I adjusted my search to capture the births for ALL the children of David Freeland and Barbara Fullerton Arroll.

I then found David Freeland and Barbara Fullerton Arrol were married on July 30, 1809, in Govan, Lanark, Scotland.