My interest was first stirred when Uncle Jim showed me a letter he had just received. It was many years before I had the time and means to begin digging. When I did I found so much more than we knew from that first letter.
In the early 1980's when I asked my mother some family questions, her answer really shocked me - "That would have been about the time that Uncle George killed his wife". I soon had the full story from the Newspaper Library in Colindale, and it was all very sad.
However one can only wonder in the end for finding the right records to go all the way back to that James Draffan, Chartulary Witness at Kelso would be nigh on impossible. My gt.grandfather James Currie Draffan was born in 1846 in Lesmahagow, Lanarks, and one grandmother of William Wallace was Alicia Draffan from-- Lesmahagow.
