Chris Paton - Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet: A Guide for Family Historians

T RACING Y OUR S COTTISH F AMILY H ISTORY ON THE I NTERNET

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD BOOKS

Birth, Marriage & Death Records

The Family History Web Directory

Tracing British Battalions on the Somme

Tracing Great War Ancestors

Tracing History Through Title Deeds

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing the Rifle Volunteers

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records Second Edition

Tracing Your Ancestors through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings

Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors: Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors Third Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Boer War Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Church of England Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your Docker Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Family History on the Internet

Tracing Your Female Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Freemason, Friendly Society and Trade Union Ancestors

Tracing Your Georgian Ancestors, 17141837

Tracing Your Glasgow Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Insolvent Ancestors

Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors Second Edition

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors Second Edition

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors Second Edition

Tracing Your Oxfordshire Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Potteries Ancestors

Tracing Your Pre-Victorian Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Roman Catholic Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Twentieth-Century Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

Writing Your Family History

Your Irish Ancestors

A Guide for Family Historians

CHRIS PATON

First published in Great Britain in 2020 by

PEN AND SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Chris Paton 2020

ISBN 978 1 52676 838 4

eISBN 978 1 52676 839 1

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52676 840 7

The right of Chris Paton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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A lthough I was born in Northern Ireland, I spent the first four years of my life living in Scotland, with my father working as a submariner at the Faslane naval base near Helensburgh. After years of subsequent residence both within England and Northern Ireland, I returned to Scotland in 1997, and have lived here ever since.

As a small child I was always aware of a Scottish connection within my family. My grandmother Jean Paton, ne Currie, was born in Glasgow, but despite moving to Northern Ireland in the late 1930s, she never lost her native Bridgeton brogue. As is often the way with family history, I had assumed that the Scottish side of my ancestral research would be concerned with my Scottish granny and her family, but I soon discovered that Jeans parents were actually Protestant Irish immigrants from County Londonderry in the late nineteenth century. It transpired that my connections to Scotland were in fact much more deeply rooted through the Paton side of my family, with my surname line hailing from Perthshire, and with various other family lines from Perthshire, Invernessshire and Lanarkshire.

When I first started to look into my ancestry, I was based in Glasgow and worked full-time in television production, meaning that the only way that I could carry out research was to use online resources in my evenings off and at weekends. Fortunately for me, my interest coincided with the start of a digital revolution, meaning that I could make a substantial amount of progress from home. When the history of the Scottish family history industry is written someday, it will inevitably focus to some degree on the Scottish Governments ScotlandsPeople website, but it was in fact its predecessor, Scots Origins, which first paved the way, providing the initial access to censuses and indexes for records held at the General Register Office for Scotland.

Charles Paton, the authors grandfather, in Belgium, 1907. Although Charles was born in Brussels in 1904, his parents were both Scottish.

Things have moved on dramatically since then, and in this book I will explore the wealth of online resources available today to assist with Scottish family history research. For those living beyond Scotland it is important to note that while Scotland has been a part of the United Kingdom since 1801, and a part of Great Britain since 1707, its legal system, state church and education provision remained completely independent upon the formation of its union with England and Wales. In most areas things are similar but different!