Collins Tracing Your Scottish Family History

4. By using the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh and its website. In the ‘Old Days’, the only way to trace Scottish family history was to go to New Register House, Edinburgh, and search the indexes to births, marriages and deaths (from 1855), and the censuses (currently from 1841 to 1901), and then walk round to the National Archives of Scotland to examine the Old Parochial Registers (that can go back to the 1500s) and testaments (also from the 1500s).

Storing information

A family tree of the Campbell Clan, drawn as a real tree, complete with trunk and branches, from The House of Argyll and the Collateral Branches of Clan Campbell (1871) – courtesy of SoG.

Some people enjoy using family tree computer programs. A comparative table of those available is at www.My-history.co.uk. Many are based on the transferable ‘Gedcom’ format, so once you have typed in your data you can move it between programs, including the one used in Genes Reunited.

Others (like me) aren’t so keen: most have limitations, or pester you for ‘vital data’ that you don’t have, almost forcing you into making misleading assumptions. Many demand dates of birth, marriage and death. From 1855 onwards in Scotland this is all very well, as these are very well recorded. Before then, however, Old Parochial Registers (and most non-Established church registers) can record baptisms, not births, and proclamations, not marriages, and few programs make allowances for such subtleties, resulting in people entering the former as the latter. Just recently I saw a Family Group Sheet giving a death date of 5 July 1617. The evidence was a burial dated 6 July 1617, and my poor client, browbeaten by the computer’s demand for a date of death, had simply guessed that the burial was the day after the death – which is in fact rather unlikely.

I prefer hand-writing family trees and keeping more detailed notes in computer ‘word’ documents. The following ‘narrative’ method allows much flexibility:

Alexander Matheson

Write everything you know about Alexander. Then write ‘his children were’ and list them:

1 Donald Matheson, the next member of the direct line, so after his name type ‘see below’

2 Alexander Matheson. Put anything you know about Alexander and his descendants here. If he had children, then write ‘his children were:

1 Hamish Matheson.

2 James Matheson: if he had offspring, then…

1 Jean Matheson

3 Margaret Matheson. If you have absolutely loads on Margaret and her descendants, you might want to open a separate ‘chapter’ for her and put her at the top of her own narrative document.

Donald Matheson, son of Alexander.

Write what you know about Donald, and so on.

Since 2002, however, these records have become available on www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk. This is run by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), the National

Archives of Scotland (NAS), the Court of the Lord Lyon and an internet company, Brightsolid. You purchase a block of credits using a credit or

Pedigree conventions

• = indicates a marriage, accompanied by ‘m-’ and the date and place.

• solid lines indicate definite connections: dotted lines indicate probable but unproven ones.

• wiggly lines are for illegitimacy (though straight lines are now acceptable) and ‘x’ for a union out of wedlock.

• loops are used if two unconnected lines need to cross over, just like electricians’ wiring diagrams.

• wives usually go on the right of husbands, though only if that doesn’t interfere with the chart’s overall layout.

• Common abbreviations are:

debit card, and spend them making searches and viewing digital images of the records themselves. Searching the index to wills and testaments is free but you pay to view an image of the document. At the time of writing, the site contains the following material:

• Statutory (General Register Office) Registers: Births 1855-2006; Marriages 1855-2006; Deaths 1855-2006.

• Old Parochial Registers: Births and Baptisms 1553-1854; Banns and Marriages 1553-1854.

• Censuses: 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901.

• Wills and testaments: 1513-1901.

If, by the time you use the site, more material has been added, all well and good!

Births, marriages and deaths are indexed up to nearly the present day, but for privacy reasons, digital images are only available up to 100 years ago for births, 75 years ago for marriages and 50 years ago for deaths, though you can order ‘extracts’ of these from GROS, or examine the originals at the ScotlandsPeople Centre.

The website works out more expensive than visiting the archives in Edinburgh, but if you don’t live nearby then www.Scotlands People.gov.uk is a godsend. Besides bringing indexes to your computer, it has indexed the indexes, making the searching process vastly easier than ever before. And, because it’s now possible to view images of the original documents online, people across the globe can now trace their Scottish ancestors properly. This has encouraged many new people to start exploring their Scottish roots.

Take a few minutes to explore the site’s extra features. There are fairly detailed explanations of the records, and ‘Research Tools’ contains many helpful features, such as tips on reading old handwriting and understanding old money.

The calendar

Up to 1582 Britain and Europe used Julius Caesar’s calendar, with years starting on Lady Day, 25 March, but that year many Continental countries started using the calendar of Pope Gregory the Great, with years starting on 1 January. King James VI and I ordered the adoption of the Gregorian calendar starting on 1 January 1599/1600, and now that the year started in January, not March, New Year quickly absorbed many surviving pagan Winter Solstice traditions, creating the great Scots New Year festival of Hogmanay. Although James became king of England and Ireland in 1603, the calendar there did not change until 1752.

Dealing with written records

Reading old handwriting is called palaeography. Old ways of writing, or simply bad handwriting, present a real problem for genealogists. You can learn to read the former, but ghastly scrawls can defeat the most seasoned professional. For old hands, see G.G. Simpson’s Scottish Handwriting 1150-1650 (Tuckwell Press, 1973) and A. Rosie’s Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700: a self-help pack (SRO and SRA, 1994).

www.scottishhandwriting.com offers online tuition on old handwriting, and there are palaeography classes available elsewhere, especially at the ScotlandsPeople Centre.

Older records in Latin can be off-putting, but you can always pay a translator or experienced genealogist. Good guides to Latin include R.A. Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-list from British and Irish Sources (OUP, 1965), and there is a useful list of Latin words used in genealogical documents at www.genuki.org.uk. Here are some basics that appear in legal documents:

This extract from a nineteenth-century sasine or land grant is relatively easy to read: earlier documents can be harder to follow.

Knowing what a document is likely to say can help enormously. Examples of old documents, highlighting where to find the genealogically relevant parts, are in P. Gouldesborough’s Formulary of Old Scots Legal Documents (Edinburgh, 1985).

If you’re stuck over a word you cannot read, look for others in the document that you can. By doing so you can work out how the writer formed each letter, and you can use this technique to decipher otherwise illegible words.

CHAPTER 2 Archives and organizations (#ulink_f9ecf7ea-480a-5bfc-bf8d-b621d47f386f)

Before you start research amongst records, it’s sensible to have a good idea of where to find the records you will need, online or on the ground. Here is an overview.

Edinburgh

Many of Scotland’s records are found in Edinburgh. The main port of call there is the new ScotlandsPeople Centre, opened in 2008, and housed in two adjoining, venerable institutions at the end of Princes Street, New Register House (home of the General Register Office or GROS), and General Register House. The Centre has several searchrooms, including disabled access, and offers a free two-hour ‘taster session’ each day for newcomers.

Visitors are allocated a computer terminal for a fixed daily fee (currently £10), or you can pay an hourly rate for expert help. Via the terminals you can search broadly the same material that is available on www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk – General Registration records, censuses, Old Parochial Registers (OPRs), testaments and wills to 1901, and the Public Register of All Arms and Bearings (not yet on the website). The terminals can save up to 200 images, that can be downloaded to a memory stick for a fee, or returned to on a later visit. Check the website for the Centre’s opening times and details of how to book.

The old Sasine Office of the National Archives of Scotland, now the entrance to the Historical Search Room.

The original heraldic records are in the Court of the Lord Lyon, on the first floor of New Register House www.lyon-court.com.