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Using Scotlands People

Scotlands People (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/) is the on-line site for records held by the General Register Office for Scotland. You must register to use most of the site, and use is not free (you buy credits in groups of 30, to see the results of a search costs 1 credit per page, an image of a certificate or census page is 5 credits, the money goes to support the whole system). The system takes a bit of getting used to, so to help those new to the system, I’m going to put sections of an article I wrote for publication elsewhere in a succession of messages on this thread.

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Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 15, 2009 at 12:01pm

There's a diagram showing the splits in the Chruch of Scotland in the 18th and 19th centuries here http://uk.geocities.com/edward.andrews@btinternet.com/chart.html

Permalink Reply by Rosemary Harris on July 23, 2009 at 5:06pm

The transcriptions of Old Parish Registers on Scotland's People are actually those on the IGI. I ordered in a film from an LDS library to find the marriage of Charles Crabb to Isobel Gilroy in Brechin/ Farnell transcribed as 1833 but found it in 1822.( I have a printout) On checking Scotland's People when it came online, found this marriage entered as 1833. This has now been "corrected' so you can find Charles Crabb marrying JANET Gilroy in Farnell in 1822 or Charles Crabb marrying Isobel Gilroy in 1823. When I contacted Scotland's People they told me that they did not hold original records to check. So be aware that there are errors and to look at the original document whenever possible.

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 26, 2009 at 1:43pm

Do you mean the index?
Whenever I've had an OPR entry from SP, it's been an image of the original entry.

Permalink Reply by Rosemary Harris on July 27, 2009 at 9:26am

Yes it was the index. Obviously there was no image available because the information was incorrect. There is still no image available for the Charles Crabb/Isobel Gilroy marriage on the 'corrected' entry.

Permalink Reply by Leslie Mehana on July 16, 2009 at 7:45pm

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.

Permalink Reply by William Douglas on October 7, 2009 at 11:32am

Scots Catholic birth records posted online for first time

Catholics around the world will be able to properly research their ancestral links to Scotland for the first time after hundreds of volumes of birth and baptisms records were added to a new online database.

More than two million names feature in the new additions to the ScotlandsPeople website, which already details some 65 million Scots. Around 143,000 pages from 1703 to 1908 have been digitally recorded under a two-year project by the Scottish Catholic Archives and National Archives of Scotland.

The documents record how Sherlock Holmes creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle was born in London to an Irish Catholic family and brought up in Edinburgh. They also reveal how the exiled French royal family were put up in Holyrood Palace in Edinburgh in the wake of the 18th-century revolution.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien, leader of Scotland's Catholics, said: "This is an extremely exciting project which will be of immense interest to genealogists for many years to come."

Permalink Reply by Iain Kennedy on October 8, 2009 at 1:31am

Presumably any Latin names are indexed as per the original? I see for example 106 James Kennedys but only 6 Jacobus Kennedy etc. I might have expected more of the latter.

Permalink Reply by Kirsty F Wilkinson on October 8, 2009 at 4:00pm

The search page for the Catholic Records states the following:

'Note: Some Catholic parish registers record forenames in Latin. The indexes available on this site include Latin to English translation and you need only enter the forename in English. Your search results will return the English name followed by the Latin equivalent in brackets ‘()’ where this occurs.'

However, I have found a record where the son's name is recorded as 'Jacobum' and translated as Jacob, whilst the father's name is recorded as 'Jacobo' and has not been translated. Other records for the family indicate that the father's name was James and so it seems likely both father's and son's names should have been translated as James. The mother's name, recorded as 'Maria' was translated as Mary.

It might be a good idea to search first names by first letter only as the translation does not seem consistent.

Using Scotlands People

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