Years ago I was presenting a family their story. I had discovered some significant information about a client’s mothers immediate family. This mother was from Scotland and had journeyed to America to marry a young man from Utah back in the early part of the 1900s. All my client knew about her mom’s youth in Scotland was what she had been told, or had seen in photos. So when I google mapped the house her mother grew up in showing her the backyard, she was adamant that I was completely mistaken. “My mother lived on a large piece of land with a sprawling green lawn”.

I had used many census and the address was consistent over the decades. Had I made a huge mistake? Out came her photos showing me her mom and uncle standing on their front lawn,  behind them acres upon acres of green grass. I dropped the yellow Google guy onto 31 Kay Park Terrace Kilmarnock Scotland. Facing a set or row houses I turned the view 180 degrees. Isabella Paton lived across the street from Kay Park, the 30 acre park containing the famous Robert Burns statue.

All of the photos she showed me were of her mom and brother facing their rowhouse, but the camera view was of Kay Park in the background. I could see how stunned she was so I said nothing more about it and moved on to the rest of the story. Her daughter later told me that the impression the photos gave was of wealth and substance, and the truth of the home on a tiny piece of land  shook it apart. I’ve always been a little sad moving forward, having been the one to burst the bubble, so to speak, for a lady who had carried that story of her mother forward for 83 years. Actually her mother’s family did have some wealth which her mother inherited, but it was not played out on some palatial estate in  Scotland.