Most professionals are trustworthy, and many offer excellent services, though ability varies enormously. Generally, the more prompt and professional the response, and neater the results, the more likely they are to be any good. Hiring help is not ‘cheating’: if you only want one record examined but are not sure it will contain your ancestor, it makes no sense to undertake a long journey when you can pay someone a small fee for checking for you, and a local searcher’s expertise may then point you in the right direction anyway.
4. By using the ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh and its website. In the ‘Old Days’, the only way to trace Scottish family history was to go to New Register House, Edinburgh, and search the indexes to births, marriages and deaths (from 1855), and the censuses (currently from 1841 to 1901), and then walk round to the National Archives of Scotland to examine the Old Parochial Registers (that can go back to the 1500s) and testaments (also from the 1500s).
Storing information
A family tree of the Campbell Clan, drawn as a real tree, complete with trunk and branches, from The House of Argyll and the Collateral Branches of Clan Campbell (1871) – courtesy of SoG.
Some people enjoy using family tree computer programs. A comparative table of those available is at www.My-history.co.uk. Many are based on the transferable ‘Gedcom’ format, so once you have typed in your data you can move it between programs, including the one used in Genes Reunited.
Others (like me) aren’t so keen: most have limitations, or pester you for ‘vital data’ that you don’t have, almost forcing you into making misleading assumptions. Many demand dates of birth, marriage and death. From 1855 onwards in Scotland this is all very well, as these are very well recorded. Before then, however, Old Parochial Registers (and most non-Established church registers) can record baptisms, not births, and proclamations, not marriages, and few programs make allowances for such subtleties, resulting in people entering the former as the latter. Just recently I saw a Family Group Sheet giving a death date of 5 July 1617. The evidence was a burial dated 6 July 1617, and my poor client, browbeaten by the computer’s demand for a date of death, had simply guessed that the burial was the day after the death – which is in fact rather unlikely.
I prefer hand-writing family trees and keeping more detailed notes in computer ‘word’ documents. The following ‘narrative’ method allows much flexibility:
Alexander Matheson
Write everything you know about Alexander. Then write ‘his children were’ and list them:
1 Donald Matheson, the next member of the direct line, so after his name type ‘see below’
2 Alexander Matheson. Put anything you know about Alexander and his descendants here. If he had children, then write ‘his children were:
1 Hamish Matheson.
2 James Matheson: if he had offspring, then…
1 Jean Matheson
3 Margaret Matheson. If you have absolutely loads on Margaret and her descendants, you might want to open a separate ‘chapter’ for her and put her at the top of her own narrative document.
Donald Matheson, son of Alexander.
Write what you know about Donald, and so on.
Since 2002, however, these records have become available on www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk. This is run by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS), the National
Archives of Scotland (NAS), the Court of the Lord Lyon and an internet company, Brightsolid. You purchase a block of credits using a credit or
Pedigree conventions
• = indicates a marriage, accompanied by ‘m-’ and the date and place.
• solid lines indicate definite connections: dotted lines indicate probable but unproven ones.
• wiggly lines are for illegitimacy (though straight lines are now acceptable) and ‘x’ for a union out of wedlock.
• loops are used if two unconnected lines need to cross over, just like electricians’ wiring diagrams.
• wives usually go on the right of husbands, though only if that doesn’t interfere with the chart’s overall layout.
• Common abbreviations are:
| b. | born |
| bach. | bachelor |
| bpt. or c. | baptized or christened (same thing) |
| bur. | buried |
| d. | died |
| d.s.p. or o.s.p. | died without children |
| d.v.p. or o.v.p. | died before father |
| inft | infant |
| m. | married |
| MI | monumental inscription |
| m.i.w. | ‘mentioned in the will of…’ followed by f. for father, gf. for grandfather and so on. |
| m. proc. | marriage proclamation |
| spin. | spinster |
| test. | testament |
| unm. | unmarried |
| wid. | widow or widower (as appropriate) |
| w.wr./pr. | will written/proved |
debit card, and spend them making searches and viewing digital images of the records themselves. Searching the index to wills and testaments is free but you pay to view an image of the document. At the time of writing, the site contains the following material:
• Statutory (General Register Office) Registers: Births 1855-2006; Marriages 1855-2006; Deaths 1855-2006.
• Old Parochial Registers: Births and Baptisms 1553-1854; Banns and Marriages 1553-1854.
• Censuses: 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901.
• Wills and testaments: 1513-1901.
If, by the time you use the site, more material has been added, all well and good!
Births, marriages and deaths are indexed up to nearly the present day, but for privacy reasons, digital images are only available up to 100 years ago for births, 75 years ago for marriages and 50 years ago for deaths, though you can order ‘extracts’ of these from GROS, or examine the originals at the ScotlandsPeople Centre.
The website works out more expensive than visiting the archives in Edinburgh, but if you don’t live