Ancestry Magazine

So you have Scottish roots!
Welcome to an ancestry shared with over 30 million people around the world.

You’ll find that tracing your Scottish family tree will be straightforward once you have a link back to Scotland. And if you’re lucky, the search can often be carried out on your own computer. But knowing where to access the records is critical to your search. For online vital, census, and church records, you will want to visit the official website for the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). (Note: There is a fee to access the records at this website.)

The genealogical records held at the Family History Library and related Family History Centers will also greatly assist your Scottish family research, as will the records at the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), in Edinburgh. Many of the records held in these repositories are also available online.

Remember that vital records are held by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). Census records from 1841 to 1901, and the Old Parish Register records going back to the sixteenth century are also held by the GROS at the New Register House (NRH) in Edinburgh.

If you are not already experienced in Scottish research, you will need to invest some time reading books on general methodology as well as on Scottish research. One book you will find very helpful is Sherry Irvine’s revised, second edition of Scottish Ancestry (Ancestry, 2003). You will also need to invest time in getting to know specific Scottish websites such as ScotlandsPeople, ScotsOrigins, GENUKI, and FamilySearch (see page 44 for a list of URLs). Finally, have a look at the libraries in your area that could assist you with your research. These facilities may be of great help to you.

Scottish Vital Records
Scotland was independent until 1707. The Treaty of Union with England in that year guaranteed the continued independence for all time of certain Scottish institutions, such as the education system, the Established Church, the legal system, and the system of statutory registration, which was responsible for carrying out and maintaining census records. Scottish genealogists can be grateful for this as Scottish civil records are far more informative than their English and Welsh counterparts and are also more accessible.

Scotland introduced state-sponsored recording of births, marriages, and deaths later than England did, but this record keeping has been compulsory since 1 January 1855, a pivotal date for availability. You will need to keep t his date in mind when you are seeking the civil records of your ancestors. (Statutory recording commenced in England and Wales in 1837.)

Scottish civil birth records contain not only the names of the parents, but the place and date of the marriage of the parents as well. It also includes the exact time of birth.

A Scottish civil marriage record contains the names and ages (as declared) of the bride and groom, their address at the time of marriage, the names of both parents of the bride and groom, including their occupations and whether the parents were deceased at the date of the marriage, and the names of the two witnesses (in later years the witnesses’ addresses were included as well). In addition, it includes details such as the name of the church or the fact that it was an irregular marriage that required a sheriff’s warrant to allow the registration of the marriage.

A Scottish death certificate is worth considerable effort to locate as it contains the name, age, occupation, and cause of death of the deceased; marital status with the name of the spouse or spouses (if married more than once); the names of the parents and their occupations (again detailing whether or not they were deceased at the time of registration); and the name and relationship to the deceased of the informant. (Of course, the accuracy of all this information depends on the knowledge of the informant.)

In 1855, more information was included in statutory records. Birth certificates record the ages and places of birth of the parents and the number (not names) of any previous children of the marriage, living and deceased.

The information on records was reduced in 1856 and excluded the name of the spouse on a death record and the place and date of the marriage of the parents on a birth record. These details were restored a few years later.

Information on Scottish births and marriages from 1855 to 1874 is included in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) through the Family History Library or FamilySearch.org. The birth information is critical for research since the IGI includes information on the parents; the search options include a “parents search,” which connects all births of children to sets of parents.

Also, you’ll want to check the Vital Records Index-British Isles-Second Edition on CD, available to order from FamilySearch.org. It contains vital record information from selected parishes in Scotland (and the other countries in the British Isles). You will find birth, christening, and marriage records for the years 1538 to 1906 for approximately 12.3 million people on sixteen CDs. While there is a great deal of information on these CDs, it is not a complete index. The resource file does not contain all available records from this time period or from all these places. Furthermore, the time period, context, and availability of the records vary greatly from collection to collection within each county. For this reason, you may not find your Scottish ancestor in this index even though he or she lived in a time and place covered by the index. Some names found in this resource file may also be found on the IGI.

Due to GROS policies for online access to Scottish vital records at scotlandspeople.gov.uk, the closure period online for birth records is 100 years, seventy-five years for marriage records, and fifty years for death records. Therefore, birth indexes are currently available online to 1902, marriages to 1927, and deaths to 1952.

You will find no such access restrictions when you personally visit the New Register House in Edinburgh, the national repository in Scotland for vital records. For a fee of about $27 per day, you will gain access to all the records up to the present day.

If you can’t make a trip to the New Register House in Edinburgh, your local Family History Center can also obtain microfilms of the Scottish statutory indexes up to recent years, as well as microfilms of the actual statutory registers.

Scottish Census Records
National census enumerations began in 1801 and continued on a decennial basis. Up to 1831 the information recorded was restricted and most of the records were destroyed. All that remains of those census years, with a few exceptions, are the statistical summaries. A few fully detailed enumerations have survived, so it is always worth checking in case your ancestors’ enumerations are among those that remain.

The first full census records that survive are those from 1841. But these are not always the most helpful. Ages of adults were rounded down to the nearest five years and there is no indication of the relationships within a household, although most often the likely family groupings are clear. The only information on the place of birth is the answer Y or N (yes or no) to the question “Born in the county?” Births outside Scotland, including England and Ireland, are most often recorded as E, I, or F (England, Ireland, or Foreign).

The 1851 and later censuses recorded exact ages, the relationship to the head the household, and the parish of birth if born in Scotland. Those born outside Scotland were only supposed to be recorded in terms of the country, but it is not uncommon to find the county, even town (or Irish township), recorded for those born in the rest of the UK and Ireland, and even abroad.

The 1881 Scottish census is included on two of the LDS “1881 British Census” CDs, which are available through the LDS Church. The index and transcriptions of the 1881 census are also available on the ScotlandsPeople website.

The 1891 and 1901 Scottish censuses have been indexed by GROS, and both the indexes and the digitized images are available on the ScotlandsPeople website. These censuses list the same type of information as the 1851 census. Images of the 1841, 1851, 1861, and 1871 censuses, but not indexes, will be available on the site by early 2004.

Scottish family history societies have indexed many of the earlier censuses, particularly the 1851 census as it is the first to show the parish of birth in Scotland. Now, societies have moved on to the 1841 and 1861 censuses. To check the progress of indexes for your areas of interest, you will need to contact the relevant Scottish family history society. A comprehensive listing is available online.

Scottish Parish Records
Prior to the introduction of compulsory statutory recording in 1855, the responsibility of recording births (baptisms), marriages (calling of the banns), and deaths (hiring of the mortcloth) rested with the parish minister and session clerk of the Established Church of Scotland. These records are known as the Old Parochial Registers (OPR).

It was always the intention that these records would include details of the vital records of all denominations of people living in the parish, but this only happened occasionally. Such registers start as early as the mid-1500s, but it is not until the late-1600s and early-1700s that the practice of keeping such records became widespread. Of course, there are exceptions. In more remote areas, such as the Outer Hebrides, many OPRs do not start until the early-1800s. And particularly in the early-1800s in the large cities and major towns, many of these records were not kept at all, e.g., as many as fifty percent of the births in Glasgow were not recorded. Of the records that were kept, though, many have survived to the present day.

A comprehensive index of the extant Scottish OPRs up to 1854 has been prepared by the Family History Library in the IGI, which is available through Family History Centers. A later and more accurate filming of the OPRs is available to researchers at the Family History Library and through Family History Centers worldwide. The Library Catalog at FamilySearch.org can be used to find the correct film to order.

Infor mation in the Scottish OPRs is rarely of genealogical value in terms of linking generations, although they do provide birth/christening records that show the names of the parents with possible information on the occupation of the father and the place of residence. When names of witnesses are given, they may have been relatives, but they may also have simply been someone from the congregation with the same first name; it was common practice to have witnesses with the same first name.

In Scottish OPR records for marriages/banns, you will find the names of the bride and groom, and perhaps the parish of residence information and the occupation of the groom. It is unusual to find information on the names of the parents of the bride and groom. If the bride and groom came from different parishes, it is always worth checking for records in both parishes as there may be better information recorded in one parish than in the other.

Research in the period 1843 to 1854 can be problematic because of the effect of the major church schism in 1843. In a sense, records access for this time period may seem like a black hole, but it can be overcome with some help.

Prior to the start of civil recording of births, marriages, and deaths in Scotland in 1855, the recording of births (christenings) and marriages (calling of the banns) was the responsibility of the Established Church of Scotland to which a great majority of the population belonged. Up to 1843 that system worked reasonably well.

Then in 1843, nearly forty percent of the ministers of the Established Church of Scotland left the General Assembly in Edinburgh and formed the Free Church of Scotland, taking with them some sixty percent of the communicants of the Established Church of Scotland.

The effect this change had on recordkeeping in Scotland was tremendous. The great majority of the Free Church congregations began to keep and maintain their own records, but a substantial number of these records between 1843 and 18 54 did not survive. Some records came back into the Established Church when approximately two-thirds of the Free Church congregations rejoined the Established Church in 1929. Other Free Church records, some of which contain records of christenings and marriages, are in the National Archives of Scotland, as they didn’t fall within the jurisdiction of GROS which was given the task in 1855 and 1875 of collecting the OPRs. Unfortunately, there is no common index to these Free Church records.

When looking at post-1855 civil marriage records, be sure to take note of the church in which the marriage took place. For example, the fact that a marriage took place according to the forms of the Free Church indicates that there may be no record for births of the bride and groom or marriages of the parents in the period 1843 to 1854, as many such Free Church records didn’t survive. Census and other records, however, can often provide a workaround to any problems introduced by missing records from this period.

Building a Scottish Family Tree
To say 1855 is the pivotal year for Scottish civil records is an understatement. When you begin to build your Scottish family tree, if you can locate a post-1855 birth record, your research will be much easier.

Let’s say that the birth year of your ancestor is 1910. That birth record will give you the place and date of the marriage of the parents. The subsequent marriage record will give you the names of the grandparents, and from that information, it is possible to find the statutory records of the marriages of these grandparents. Beyond that, the location of various associated statutory death records should reliably take you back to information on not only the great-grandparents, but also the great-great-grandparents, and occasionally some of the great-great-great-grandparents.

Of course, that’s assuming that the events in question took place in Scotland. Depending on locations and the surnames involved, it may be nec essary to look at the readily accessible 1881, 1891, and 1901 census indexes and images.

Remember that your task will be infinitely more difficult and complicated if your Scottish ancestors emigrated before 1840 (they won’t turn up in the 1841 census); if they emigrated before 1855 (there won’t be any vital records relating to the family in Scotland); or if you have no information on possible siblings who may have remained in Scotland after the rest of the family emigrated.

Tips to Research
The great majority of Scottish emigrants went to North America, so you’ll find that if you already have a proven link back to a Scottish ancestor, you are fortunate. But it can often be the case that the situation is less clear. Consider the following two research obstacles.

1. If your ancestors were Scottish and you have some information on names, dates, and places, your research can range from very easy to very difficult, depending on the names and place names involved. For instance, to trace a John Brown in Glasgow is extremely difficult, but to find an Ouchter MacIsaac in the Outer Hebrides may be easy.

Even in small rural parishes a frequently occurring surname may not be too much of a problem, depending on other information you find. In towns, the problem posed by a frequently occurring given name and surname can be overcome if there is reasonable certainty about the date, or better still, the exact date of birth. With this level of information, the 1881 census can be a very useful search tool.

2. If your ancestors were Scottish and you have high quality information on names, dates, and places, most often you’ll very quickly be tracing the Scottish connection, but there can still be a problem if information has become corrupted over the years, especially the spelling of surnames and place names.

Investing time in studying alternative spellings or possible name changes will likely to be required, together with the investment of time in understanding the detailed geography.

Going Further
Once you have fully explored the records described here, where do you go next? One major data set beyond the statutory records is monumental inscriptions (MIs), but perhaps only ten percent or fewer MIs exist for deaths before the nineteenth century, and only as high as thirty percent at the end of the nineteenth century, and the start of the twentieth century.

Property inheritance and transfer records (sasines and retours or services of heirs) can be most valuable in terms of genealogical information, as can records relating to wills. These exist for some five percent of the population.

Similarly, the National Archives of Scotland has other records that relate to various taxes imposed over the centuries, but these will only relate to only a small percentage of the population. Other estate records at NAS may also mention your ancestors.

Depending upon what stage you are at in your research, it can be economic and efficient to make a trip to Scotland. But remember that it is possible to accomplish an amazing amount of research while sitting in front of your computer and accessing the FamilySearch and ScotlandsPeople websites.

Scottish research is among the most straightforward in the world. The availability and rapid growth of online records is making it even easier and even more enjoyable. There’s never been a better time to be a Scot!

David W. Webster is based near Edinburgh and has twenty years of experience in Scottish research. He regularly lectures on Scottish genealogical research across North America and is the author of many articles published in genealogy magazines and periodicals.