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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
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Images of BMDs from 1855 (when they started) to 1907 (births), 1932 (marriages) and 1957 (deaths ). In addition, the indexes to births and deaths up to 2006 can be searched, marriages are coming soon. They don’t put images of certificates for possibly living people on line, to obtain (paper) copies of the more modern certificate, you need to contact GROS here http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/. Selecting "Family Records" on their website takes you to a page where you can download (free) pdf files with useful information including lists of Parishes and registration districts, the use of Parish Registers, Irregular Marriages, etc.
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Old Parish Registers. These are the registers of the Church of Scotland and show baptisms and banns/marriages from before 1855. There was no standard format for recording - you may find a lot of info, but you may also find that even the mother of a baby isn’t mentioned. Some Ministers also included non-conformist baptisms and marriages in their parishes, but many did not. When you consider that "non-conformist" includes the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and all the Churches that split off from the Church of Scotland (Church splitting was almost a national sport in the 19th century), this means that substantial numbers of people will not appear in the OPR. For example, one 19th century Minister in Berwickshire estimated that about a third of the people in his parish were non-conformists. For searches before 1875, you can keep costs down by doing your preliminary search in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) on the LDS site http://www.familysearch.org/ because the LDS were, at one time, given access to Scottish parish registers and BMDs before 1875. HOWEVER, treat the IGI with caution and make sure that the records you harvest were extracted from the originals. You can then use that information to target your search on SP. Note that techniques for reading old documents have improved since the LDS made their extraction, and there are records on SP that do not appear in the IGI.
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The census from 1841 to 1901. Note that the 1841 does not include relationships or birth parishes, just whether the person was born in the country, or was foreign. The image you download contains a whole page from the enumerator’s book, and you may find other family living nearby. However, you may find that your family runs onto the next page, so that you have to buy a second image. The subscription site Ancestry now has a transcription of the 1841-1901 Scottish census returns but there is no access to the actual image, so it is always worth checking on Scotlands People
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Wills and Testaments 1513-1901. Searching is free and the results can be informative, testaments can be downloaded but cost £5. Treat this section with caution as results can often be disappointing. Firstly, they’re handwritten. The older ones are written in "secretary hand" - a collection of stylized letters and abbreviations which can be learned here Secondly, the documents are rarely of the " I leave this to X and that to Y" type. Some relatives may be mentioned, but frequently all that’s there is an inventory of the moveable possessions (ie not buildings or land), which can be interesting in itself. Read their FAQ carefully before you spend any money.
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Scotlands People has a large area that is free to use, and is invaluable. It’s listed as "Research Tools" under "Help and Other Resources" on their front page. You don’t even have to log in to use it. There’s a "getting started" section, lists of occupations, units of money and measurement, a glossary, all sorts of goodies.
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The SP search engine. The search engine is VERY picky. Unless you use wild cards, it will only return surnames that exactly correspond to what you fed it. Thus, if you ask for MacMuppet, that's what you'll get. If you use a wild card, as in M*cMuppet, it'll also return McMuppet. (The computer reads the * as "any other letter(s) or none"). Bald* will return Baldy, Baldie, Baldwe etc.
You do have to be careful with wild cards or you'll get more than you expect - Rob* would deliver Robertson, Roberts, Robins, Robart, etc etc - so try and pin down as many letters as possible. -
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A last point - remember that certificates are only as good as the people giving the information - death certificates get less reliable for every generation that the informant differs from the deceased (husband, son, grandson, etc).For example, one of my multi-greats died in the Dundee Poorhouse, the information was given by the hospital porter who didn't even know the name of George's wife. I only found him because a nice man at Dundee Archives found him in the Poorhouse records. Another of my multi-greats put "was brought to Scotland from Ireland at a young age and has no knowledge of his father" in the space for "father's name" on his marriage cert!
I hope that these messages have been useful to someone. If there's a wish for it, I have another couple of articles that could be posted in the same way. -
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Permalink Reply by Kristy Graham on
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Lesley, thank you so much for posting this information. I have been able to use Scotland's People with much success and this info is very helpful! Thanks!
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Permalink Reply by Rosemary Harris on
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Lesley, I have a little trouble with Scotland's People this week. Was looking for an Adam Slater on the 1851 census in Stow and got a negative result even though the transcript is on Ancestry and Freecen. I contacted SP and got a reply that they do not do searches.
How can I get a print out of this page, any suggestions? -
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It took a bit of fiddling - I couldn't find the Slaters either, and you should report to SP that they seem to be missing from the index. I also used the Ancestry "show others on the page" button to confirm that the page was missing from SP under Selkirk. However, Stow sits across a county boundary, and by changing the search from Selkirk to Midlothian, I found their lodger John Logan in the index, and that gave me the census page, complete with Slaters.
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You are a gem Lesley. I tried all the counties but didn't think to look for the lodger so many thanks for that. I will inform SP with great satisfaction.
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I must admit that Ancestry's "others on page" thing has been very useful on occaision. Apart from turning up a set of parents in the same street once, it's helped me find a couple of other people with names posing "interesting" problems for indexers.
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