Alan Stewart - Tracing Your Edinburgh Ancestors: A Guide for Family & Local Historians

FAMILY HISTORY FROM PEN & SWORD

Tracing Your Army Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Robert Burlison

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

Rachel Bellerby

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Keith Gregson

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Michael Pearson

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Vivien Teasdale

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Di Drummond

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Stephen Wade

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Richard Brooks and Matthew Little

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Rosemary Wenzerul

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Gill Blanchard

Tracing Your Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Mike Royden

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing British Battalions on the Somme

Ray Westlake

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Stephen Wade

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Mark Crail

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Jonathan Oates

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Anthony Burton

Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors

Ian Maxwell

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Mary Ingham

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Jane Cox

Tracing the Rifle Volunteers

Ray Westlake

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Stephen Wade

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Sue Wilkes

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Jonathan Brown

Tracing Your House History

Gill Blanchard

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Janice Tait and David Fletcher

Tracing Your Family History on the Internet

Chris Paton

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Michelle Higgs

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Phil Tomaselli

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Marie-Louise Backhurst

Tracing Great War Ancestors DVD

Pen & Sword Digital & Battlefield History TV Ltd

Tracing Your Prisoner of War

Ancestors: The First World War

Sarah Paterson

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Emma Jolly

Tracing Your Naval Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Kathy Chater

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Michelle Higgs

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Jonathan Oates

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Simon Wills

Tracing Your Lancashire Ancestors

Sue Wilkes

Tracing Your Ancestors through Death Records

Celia Heritage

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Kirsty Gray

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Army Ancestors 2nd Edition

Simon Fowler

Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet

Chris Paton

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Anthony Adolph

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Jonathan Oates

First published in Great Britain in 2015

PEN & SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

an imprint of
Pen & Sword Books Ltd
47 Church Street,
Barnsley
South Yorkshire,
S70 2AS

Copyright Alan Stewart, 2015

ISBN: 978 1 47382 857 5
PDF ISBN: 978 1 47387 935 5
EPUB ISBN: 978 1 47387 934 8
PRC ISBN: 978 1 47387 933 1

The right of Alan Stewart to be identified as Author of the 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.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission from the Publisher in writing.

Typeset in Palatino and Optima by CHIC GRAPHICS

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Pen & Sword Books Ltd incorporates the imprints of Pen & Sword Archaeology, Atlas, Aviation, Battleground, Discovery, Family History, History, Maritime, Military, Naval, Politics, Railways, Select, Social History, Transport, True Crime, Claymore Press, Frontline Books, Leo Cooper, Praetorian Press, Remember When, Seaforth Publishing and Wharncliffe.

For a complete list of Pen & Sword titles please contact
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CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I am grateful to Rupert Harding for giving me the opportunity to write a book about my home town, and to Jen Newby for helping me with stylistic improvements.

I also express my gratitude to the Registrar General for Scotland for his kind permission to use images of statutory birth, marriage and death records; parish register baptism, marriage and burial records; and a census return.

National Records of Scotland kindly allowed me to use images of crown copyright records, including a valuation roll, testament dative, inventory, female servant tax record and window tax record.

My thanks are also due to the Statistical Accounts Online Service of the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh for permission to use the Midlothian parish map.

For the use of photographs available through Wikimedia under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licences, I thank Kim Traynor and Martyn Gorman.

INTRODUCTION

A brief history of Edinburgh

Edinburgh has been the capital of Scotland for about 600 years. Following the murder of King James I of Scotland in Perth on 20 February 1437, the Scottish court moved to Edinburgh Castle, which was considered to be much safer than the royal palace in Dunfermline, the previous capital. It was not until 1532, however, that Edinburgh officially became the Scottish capital.

Known as the Athens of the North, the city is the centre of Scottish banking, medicine, architecture, law and publishing, and the home of Scotlands National Gallery, National Library and National Museum. Edinburgh is also the location of the Queens official residence in Scotland, meeting-place of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, home of the internationally-renowned Edinburgh Festival and Royal Military Tattoo and, since 1999, the seat of the devolved Scottish Government.

Edinburgh Castle is situated on a lava plug from a long-extinct volcano. The area now called the Old Town grew up on the highest point of the castle rocks long tail, which was created by earth being pushed round behind the rock during the last glacial period.

Edinburgh has grown in size considerably over the years, and the present City of Edinburgh unitary authority includes the formerly separate burghs of Canongate, Calton and Portsburgh (added to the city in 1856), Portobello (1896), Leith (1920) and Queensferry (1975).

The city also covers the former parish of St Cuthberts, where the building of the New Town began in 1767; the parishes of Cramond, Corstorphine, Colinton, Liberton and Duddingston, which became part of Edinburgh in 1920; as well as the parishes of Dalmeny, Kirkliston, Ratho and Currie (to the west and south-west of Edinburgh), which were added as a result of the local government reorganisation of 1975.

Musselburgh, immediately to the east of Edinburgh, has never been under the citys authority. Formerly a burgh within Midlothian, Musselburgh became part of the East Lothian district of the new Lothian region in 1975. Following the further local government reorganisation into unitary authorities in 1996, Musselburgh remains in East Lothian.