Scottish Family History: Where to Start
Scottish research is the easiest in the British Isles once you know two things: nearly everything official sits on one website, and the records after 1855 tell you more than their English equivalents. The hard part comes earlier. This is the short version, drawn from the 55 Scottish entries in the Genealogy Resources Directory.
1855, and the records on either side of it
Civil registration began in Scotland on 1 January 1855, eighteen years after England. The delay was worth it. A Scottish death record names the parents of the deceased, including the mother's maiden name. A marriage record names both sets of parents. A birth record gives the date and place of the parents' marriage. One record can take you up a generation, and 1855 itself, when the registrars asked for even more, is the best year of all.
Before 1855 the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland are the main source. They begin in the 1550s in a few parishes and much later in most, they often record a proclamation of banns rather than the marriage itself, and burials are patchy. For a death before 1855 the gravestone transcriptions published by the family history societies are often the only record there is.
The ten to open first
- ScotlandsPeople. The official site: the statutory registers from 1855, the Old Parish Registers, every census from 1841 to 1921, wills and testaments, and the Kirk Session records. Searching is free. Images are bought with credits, a few pounds at a time, and there is no subscription, so you pay only for what you look at.
- National Records of Scotland. The archive behind ScotlandsPeople: catalogues and research guides for everything that is not online.
- FreeCEN. Free transcriptions of the Scottish censuses, strongest for 1841 to 1871. Find the household here before paying to see the image.
- Scottish Indexes. Graham and Emma Maxwell's free indexes to prison, asylum, paternity and sheriff court records. Old Scottish, their other site, adds poor law and criminal indexes.
- ScotlandsPlaces. Tax rolls from the 1690s to the 1800s and the Ordnance Survey name books, searchable by place. The pre-1855 source for where a family lived.
- Statistical Accounts of Scotland. A minister's description of every parish in the 1790s and again in the 1830s and 40s: the trades, the population, the state of the kirk.
- National Library of Scotland Maps. The historic Ordnance Survey maps, so a farm name in a register can be found on the ground.
- Scottish Handwriting. Free tutorials for reading documents written between 1500 and 1750, which is when the Old Parish Registers stop making sense to the untrained eye.
- Scottish GENES. Chris Paton's daily blog, the first place new Scottish records are announced.
- Talking Scot. The forum where a Scottish research question gets answered.
Then go local
The regional archives hold the poor relief, school and burgh records that never reached ScotlandsPeople. Glasgow City Archives has the poor law applications, which can name every relative of an applicant. The Highland Archive Centre, the Heritage Hub in Hawick and the island archives in Kirkwall, Lerwick and Stornoway each cover ground nobody else does. The societies matter for their gravestone transcriptions: Aberdeen & North East Scotland, Glasgow & West of Scotland, Tay Valley, Highland, Fife, Borders, Dumfries & Galloway and the rest, with the Scottish Genealogy Society library in Edinburgh behind them. SAFHS lists them all.
Three things that trip people up
Women keep their names. A married woman appears under her maiden name in death records, on gravestones and in many other documents. Search for Margaret Reid, not Margaret Gordon.
The naming pattern. Many families named the first son after the father's father, the second after the mother's father, the first daughter after the mother's mother and the second after the father's mother. It is a hint, not a rule, but it can predict a grandparent's name before you find the record.
Spelling in the north and west. Gaelic-speaking areas used variable surnames into the nineteenth century, and the registrar wrote what he heard. Use wildcards.
Frequently asked questions
Is ScotlandsPeople free?
Searching the indexes is free. Viewing an image of a record costs credits, bought in small batches, and there is no subscription. The Kirk Session records are free to view.
When did Scottish civil registration start?
On 1 January 1855. Before that the Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland are the main source, and they vary a great deal from parish to parish.
Why are Scottish death records so useful?
From 1855 they name both parents of the deceased, including the mother's maiden name, which English and Welsh death certificates do not.
The other quick reads
All 55 Scotland entries, with filters
Open the Scotland view of the directory →Research done? See the 72 chart designs.