Scotlandspeople and the like

Phil Wood - 21st  November 2007 - speaking at the BerksFHS Computer Branch, Woodley
Summary provided by Peter Beaven

Phil described online Scottish family history under these topics

BMD - Civil registration started in Scotland 1855. Data can be obtained from the official source (only) at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. Birth data at the time in 2007 was available up to 1906; marriages to 1931 and deaths to 1956. (All dates now extended by one year in 2008)

The data base can be searched free of charge and the search can be limited by date, County or District with the use of wild card characters. The number of results is displayed together with the number of pages required to view them all. Such a page is charged one credit ie 20p. Minimum charge is £6 for 30 units, which expire after 90 days. Unused units are added to the next purchase of credits. To download an image typically costs 5 credits. Any image that has been obtained can be viewed at a later date at no extra charge and the system shows you what you have paid for. The marriage image is of the original Register and contains information such as mother’s name and place of ceremony, which may have been at home. The Death register gives name of wife; where and when death occurred; age; parents including mother’s maiden name.

Before 1855 the site provides access to the Old Parish Registers back to 1553, either Births & Baptisms or Banns & Marriages. However these records only cover the Church of Scotland so many people were not recorded here. The LDS IGI can provide an alternative source here. Very few burial registers exist on either source but there are Monumental Inscriptions.

Census - Scotlandspeople has indexed all censuses from 1841-1901 and they are the only source of original images. Ancestry has indexed these as well but can not provide images (even 1881 is charged). FreeCen is beginning to provide a high level of transcription for some Scottish Counties between 1841 and 1871, with some from 1891. http://www.freecen.org.uk/

Wills & Probate - The wills & testaments index contains over 611,000 index entries to Scottish wills and testaments dating from 1513 to 1901. Each index entry lists the surname, forename, title, occupation and place of residence (where these are given) of the deceased person, the court in which the testament was recorded, with the date. The index is free and copies of the document cost £5.

Archives - The SCAN (Scottish Archive Network) online catalogue is a means to access the holdings of 52 archives in Scotland - over 20,000 collections of historical records. The National Archives of Scotland (NAS) holds many records of interest to family historians and these are being made available through www.scottishdocuments.com, set up as part of SCAN. In addition to the wills scans the present focus is on kirk sessions which are equivalent to English parish records. www.scan.org.uk/

The NAS also runs the Scottish Handwriting.com website, offering online tuition in palaeography for historians, genealogists and other researchers who have problems reading manuscript historical records written in Scotland in the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries.

Maps - There are many online sources of mapping and these may be linked to aerial imagery. Put streetmap or multimap into a search engine for mapping sites, the latter having links to aerial photography. Google Earth and now Microsoft’s Virtual Earth at http://maps.live.com are providing free detailed maps and imagery all over the world.

Maps from earlier times are available from the Ordnance Survey at www.old-maps.co.uk where the search for place names leads to a map, with alternative examples at different dates. Maps may be purchased as prints or as pdf downloads. These maps may also be viewed on the National Libray of Scotland site www.nls.uk; use the digital library link and maps. On line viewing is of good quality and prints can be ordered and also discs of digital imagery.

The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Scotland at www.rcahms.gov.uk provides access to several databases including HLAMAP which is the Historic Land-use Assessment of almost 60% of Scotland.

Property - Scotland’s sasine register still remains one of the oldest continuing records of land transactions in Europe. It runs from 1617 to the present day but only records transactions of property and as the majority of people were tenants, they do not appear. They are indexed and these volumes are in several libraries. The sasines are available online at the NAS

Discussion lists and Societies - Rootsweb provides many such lists. Put lists.rootsweb into Google to find the 30,000+ Scottish lists! Near the top is Scotland-Roots. An alternative way of searching for such a list is to put into Google and follow the links to Scotland where there is a short description of each list. Google searches of or lead to different discussion groups and if you select the Groups menu (at the top of a google search page) and enter genealogy there is a different set.

The many Scottish family history societies can be reached through the Scottish Association of Family History Societies site www.safhs.org.uk and another major link is the Scottish Genealogy Society at www.scotsgenealogy.com.

Finally a very useful portal to information is www.scotlandsfamily.com which has the aim to point you to free on-line data and information in diverse Scotland family history records

updated 22 Jan 2008