The Genealogy & Family History Social Network

Where they lived

Now that you’ve found some ancestors, you are hopefully wanting to put a little meat on the skeleton by finding out about how they lived their lives. One of the obvious things to find out about is their home area. You should have an idea of where they were living, at least at the time that record was made, but remember that people moved around a lot. The move might have been work-related - for example, unless they found a very good farm with a farmer they got on with, ag. labs.could move every year. Ministers went where they were sent, schoolmasters went where they could find work, and the servants from the Big House travelled with their employers. Do not underestimate the distances that people moved (after all, some of them ended up in the New World!).

I hope that the following messages will give you some pointers in finding out more about your people.

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Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 4:12am

One of the best places to go to find out what’s available about a given area is GENUKI http://www.genuki.org.uk/ . The information is divided among the countries of the UK&I, and then among the counties. Depending on whether or not someone is currently caring for a county, the amount of information available varies, but there’s always descriptions, lists of parishes, etc. Among the best is Berwickshire, where Viv Dunstan has created a gazetteer showing the locations of individual farms and settlements. There’s also more general information including contact information for the assorted archives and Family History Societies.
One of the things generally included on GENUKI is the contact informaton for local Family History Societies and local Archives.

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 4:13am

The National Library of Scotland has put a great deal of its map collection on line for free download, here http://www.nls.uk/maps/index.html Mapping techniques have changed over the years, and some maps are more accurate than others, but they’re all informative and because of the time-span covered, you can see how places developed.

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 4:14am

One of my favourite sources of information about places is the Statistical Account of Scotland (SA). In the late 18th century, Sir John Sinclair sent out lists of questions to every Parish Minister in Scotland. As the answers came back, he published them whenever he had enough to make up a volume. This was the first SA. The chapters are fascinating, although you do often have to wade through pages on the local geology, history or wildlife, depending on the interest of the Minister. They discuss everything from local employment and housing to the character of the people. In the middle of the 19th century, the exercise was repeated, and the results form the 2nd SA, known as the New Statistical Account. There are now three editions, two of which are available on a site belonging to Edinburgh University http://edina.ac.uk/stat-acc-scot/. Ignore the login areas for subscribers - at the end of the list is a hotlink for non-subscribers which will allow you to read the text as you would on a printed page. The third (20th century) edition is still in copyright, but fairly easily found in 2nd hand bookshops. If you have a fast internet connection, the 18th and 19th century SAs are also to be found as pdf files for download on the Internet Archive- go here http://www.archive.org/index.php and search on Statistical Account Scotland.

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 4:15am

Pictures. SCRAN http://www.scran.ac.uk/ belongs to the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historic Monuments in Scotland. It contains over 360,000 photographic images from all over Scotland. Searching and viewing of small images is free.
Other images can be found on individual sites such as Dundee Council's Photopolis http://www.dundeecity.gov.uk/photodb/main.htm.
Searching Google Images also produces surprising results.

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 4:17am

Gazetteers and directories provide a text snapshot of a given location.
Edinburgh University has a modern Gazetteer of Scotland here http://www.geo.ed.ac.uk/scotgaz/gaztitle.html
There are several commercial sites offering Francis Hindes Groom’s Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (2nd half of 19th century), but if you have a fast connection and want to download the whole thing, the Internet Archive http://www.archive.org/index.php has it for free (along with many other goodies).

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 4:17am

The Valuation Rolls are not on line yet (but they've begun the mammoth task of scanning them), but if you can find a library that has them, they're wonderful. Property in Scotland has been valued annually since the mid 1800s, and the results published in books. The early ones only list owners and tenants, and show the value of the property. Before long they started showing occupiers of property worth more than 4 pounds - just heads of household with occupation, and later they start showing all of them. Thus for a farm, you'll get the landowner, the tenant farmer and the people living in the ties cottages on the farm. If you can’t find a copy, it’s worth contacting the relevant archive and asking if you can buy a few photocopies.
As with the census, it’s often informative to see who else was living in the same street.

Permalink Reply by Kirsty F Wilkinson on July 17, 2009 at 6:54am

Digital images of some of the Valuation Rolls can now be viewed on 'Virtual Volumes' at the National Archives of Scotand (NAS). Unfortunately in some cases a microfilm copy has been digitised, not the original and the resulting image is of poor quality.

The Valuation Rolls created in the years half way between each census (if that makes sense!) are being indexed. The indexing is being done outside the UK however and there seem to be problems with the quality of this. However, I guess this keeps the cost down and otherwise the project might not go ahead at all so we should be grateful!

Permalink Reply by Kirsty F Wilkinson on July 17, 2009 at 7:06am

I've found GENUKI useful for English research but many of the pages for Scotland are rather disappointing - there is little detailed information, the pages haven't been updated for several years and many of the links no longer work. I considered 'adopting' one of the counties which aren't currently being maintained but it is suggested that a knowledge of HTML is needed. Is this really necessary in this day and age? Especially as the current pages are very simple in structure.

Definitely worth a look but I think this once useful site is in need of an overhaul.

Permalink Reply by Lesley Robertson on July 17, 2009 at 8:33am

I tend to only use the Berwickshire, Fife and Angus areas regularly, and Viv's work on BEW has been fabulous. I agree about some of the other areas - I can't see why html knowledge is needed, though. I write and maintain my own website from within Publisher and PageMaker without knowing it!
Maybe the requirements page needs updating as well....

GENUKI does have its uses, especially if you're new to an area, and even if all you get is the address of the relevant FHS or archive. I see it more as a starting place to point one in the right direction than as a central research tool.

Permalink Reply by Paul Maclauchlan on October 13, 2009 at 1:08pm

Kirsty, if a knowledge of HTML is the only thing holding you back from adopting a county, please go ahead and sign up. I will be happy to have you forward the technical instructions to me. After that, anytime you want to make an update or change, just email me the new information. I will convert it to HTML and upload it to GENUKI for you. I will send you my email in a private message.

Where they lived

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