How it's Done

The information given here is a summary of how to start your Scottish research. If you would like more information, there are many excellent books on the subject. One that we can recommend is :-

Tracing your Scottish Ancestry by Kathleen B Cory

The basic building blocks used for researching your Scottish ancestors are:-

• Statutory births, marriages and deaths (from 1855 onwards)
• Old Parochial Registers (before 1855)
• Census returns (1841-1901)

The Starting Point - Statutory Births Marriages and Deaths

Compulsory (or Statutory) registration of births, marriages and deaths began in Scotland in 1855. To begin any search of your ancestors, you ideally need to start with a known event after this date. The originals of all the records are held in New Register House in Edinburgh.

New Register House, Edinburgh

Uniquely for Scotland, these records were put onto microfiche and, more recently, have all been digitised. It is the digitised versions of the originals, which are available to researchers to view and transcribe. If you visit New Register House or the main Scotlandspeople Centre, in person you will be charged for a day’s research. The cost for this is currently £10. This allows you full access to all the records almost up to the present date. The records are indexed and you can search the index for names and dates to view the digitised image of the certificate. The only other cost is if you require copies or extracts of the originals. Note also that some local registrars - for example Glasgow and Aberdeen - have microfiche records for their own area.

You can also use the pay-per-view service at Scotlandspeople. This has the indexes up to 2009 but is restricted to images of birth certificates over 100 years ago, marriages over 75 years ago and deaths over 50 years ago.

One of the most valuable bits of information these Scottish records give are the names of both parents on marriage and death certificates. For more details on the contents of the different records please click here.

Old Parochial Registers (OPRs)

Prior to 1855, the main sources of information are the Old Parochial Registers or OPRs. These were registers kept by the session clerk or minister of the established Church of Scotland in each parish and cover births and/or baptisms, marriages and/or banns and deaths and/or burials. There are several differences between these and the statutory records, the main ones being:-

• It was not compulsory to register, and it cost money to do so, with the result that many events were unrecorded - in some cases as many as 70% of births were never recorded.
• Many of these registers have been lost, destroyed or are unreadable.
• In general, they only cover Church of Scotland events, not other denominations.
• There are very few death or burial records and these are not indexed.
• They provide a lot less information than the statutory records - in particular they seldom give parents' names on marriage entries.

The originals of the OPRs are also held at New Register House in Edinburgh. These have been indexed and microfilmed and these microfilms are also available in various libraries and Latter Day Saints (LDS) Family History Centres.

The full OPR index of births, marriages and deaths is on Scotlandspeople, along with all the images. The LDS have indexed many, but not all, of the OPR records and added these indexes to their International Genealogical Index (IGI). The IGI is available in many libraries on microfiche and is also available on their familysearch web site. This is an excellent and free resource, but it is not a complete index of all OPRs.

For an example of what you might see on an OPR entry, please click here.

Census Records

A detailed census has been taken in Scotland every 10 years since 1841 (with a single exception during the Second World War). The information is currently available for the years 1841 to 1901. The census is invaluable in tracing whole families; giving information on age, family structure, occupation and birthplace. The 1841 census provides slightly less detail - most importantly, it did not record an individual's birthplace.

Like the OPRs, census information is available in libraries and LDS Family History Centres as well as a complete set at New Register House. The censuses from 1871 to 1901 are all fully indexed and available at New Register House or on Scotlandspeople. Others will follow very soon. The 1881 census is also available on CD-ROM. There are a few indexes produced by the various Family History Societies for the other years, but a detailed knowledge of where someone lived is usually required in order to track them down.

For an example of a census entry, please click here.