National Archives - Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

General Register House (Crown copyright).

ISBN: 978 1 78027 633 5

This seventh edition first published 2020 by The National Records of Scotland and Birlinn Ltd, West Newington House, 10 Newington Road, Edinburgh EH9 1QS

www.birlinn.co.uk

First published 1990, revised edition published 1997, third edition 2003, fourth edition 2007, fifth edition 2009 and sixth edition 2011

Images are credited as Crown copyright except where otherwise stated. Copyright in the typographical arrangement rests with the Crown.

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this is available from the British Library

Set in ITC Galliard and Bembo at Birlinn

Printed and bound in Great Britain by

Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow

Contents

Illustrations

Map
of General Register House and New Register House

* Ramped entrance from the Archivists Garden (Crown copyright)

Preface

Welcome to the seventh edition of National Records of Scotlands (NRS) handbook Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors.

This edition marks 30 years since it was first published in 1990. During this time many people have discovered the joys, the stimulating challenges and the occasional frustrations of navigating the world of genealogy and discovering where their family came from, who they were and what they did.

As the years have passed, we have changed how we work with archival material to make the records that we hold at NRS as accessible to as many people as possible.

When the first edition was published, visitors to our search rooms in Edinburgh consulted paper catalogues, ordered records via handwritten paper slips and viewed only original or microform copies of material.

Today, our online catalogue can be consulted on the NRS website www.nrscotland.gov.uk/catalogue from anywhere in the world; records can be preordered in advance of a visit and many record sets including valuation rolls, sasines and kirk session records can be viewed electronically in the Historical Search Room at General Register House through the Virtual Volumes system.

If you are unable to visit us in person, we can provide copies of many of our records for a small fee and send these to you wherever you live. One of the benefits of the advances in technology means we now also produce this guide as an e-book, so it can be downloaded easily from anywhere in the world.

Countless records can still be enjoyed in their original form and the excitement of opening and reading an original record for many is something that can never be fully replaced by its digital counterpart. With this book, we aim to help you navigate the various collections that we hold, understand what information they contain and how this may be useful for your research.

NRS expert staff can be contacted by email, or you can seek their advice in person if you can visit our search room in Edinburgh. Whilst there, why not take the opportunity to visit the Archivists Garden which houses 57 plant species all connected in some way to Scotlands collective memory?

Since the last edition of this book was published, the ScotlandsPeople website has been updated (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk), we continue to innovate and to make available more new records.

Examples include the Highland and Island Emigration Society records, which chart the emigration of over 5,000 Scots to Australia between the years 18521857. More than 2,400 maps and plans throw light on Scotlands changing landscape over time and provide an additional insight into where our ancestors lived. The addition of over 36,000 Presbyterian Church records dating 1744 to 1855 may be invaluable to your research if your family did not attend a Church of Scotland church and therefore cannot be found within the Old Parish Registers.

These are just some of the fascinating resources that you can access via ScotlandsPeople alongside birth, death, marriage and census records; valuation rolls, military service appeal tribunal records, wills and testaments, coats of arms and more. We will continue to add to these records. As part of this we are currently working to make the records of the 1921 census available for release in 2021.

A new edition has given us the opportunity to share some different images of records that we hold. If you would like to see more examples of what you can discover in our archives browse the ScotlandsPeople image library www.scotlandpeople.gov.uk/image-library.

To be kept up to date on future announcements, please follow our NRS and ScotlandsPeople twitter feeds (@NatRecordsScot and @ScotlandsPeople). Our website also contains details of our current programme of public talks and events, as well as providing information about registration, the latest statistics and data we produce, as well as details about the way in which we conserve our material, decide which records to take into our archive, and advice on how to look after your own records.

Interest in family history is stronger than ever, it is a pursuit that goes very much to the heart of our own personal sense of identity and belonging and it is a joy to share with others. We hope you enjoy this book and that it is a helpful guide in uncovering some of your family stories.

Good luck in your research!

PAUL LOWE

Registrar General for Scotland and Keeper of the Records of Scotland