Links
Genealogy Link List
A word of caution - You simply cannot do Scottish genealogy and family history from Ancestry.com, FamilySearch, FindMyPast and all the other well know sites. The just don't have the necessary records, and what they do have is often "user-submitted" without sources or associated documents.
However, do not despair - Scotland has an unparalleled set of records, in terms of coverage and accessibility online and physically.
- At
ScotlandPeople
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk you can get (if the records
have survived, and the majority have):
- Baptisms, Marriage banns and Burials (Church of Scotland) from the mid-1500s to 1854
- Some Catholic records 1703-1908
- Statutory (Civil) Births, Marriages and Deaths 1855-2017 (images downloadable up to (Births) 100 years ago, (Marriages) 75 years and (Deaths) 50 years
- Wills and Testaments - over 611,000 from 1513 to 1925
- Censuses, every 10 years from 1841-1911
- Coats of Arms registered or granted 1672-1909
- Valuation Rolls (essentially, Heads of Households) in 10-year intervals from 1885 to 1935
- Historical Tax Rolls
- Ordnance Survey Name Books for each county in Scotland
- Ordnance Survey maps from the mid-1800s plus maps and plans of counties, parishes, cities, towns, villages, farms, roads, canals, harbours, churches, school, public building, private houses, mines and quarries, some back as far as the late 1500s
- Gazetteers and Atlases
- Official Reports, such as the Land Ownership Commission Reports, 1872-1873 and The Hay Shennan County and Parish Boundaries, 1892
- The National Monuments record including archaeological reports on historic and prehistoric sites
The National Library of Scotland (www.nls.uk) has an incredible array of digitised records and indexes for Family History, including: Historical clubs and societies, free Maps and Directories, Emigration and passenger information, Local history, Surname histories and biographies, Newspapers, Gravestone inscriptions, State Papers, Scottish traditional culture
Locally
Not every record is available online, and not all are held
centrally in Edinburgh. There are many excellent archives,
museums, local history and family history centres and other
resources all over the country – just waiting for you to
visit. Start at the
www.ancestralscotland.com
website and the
Scottish Association of
Family History Societies
www.safhs.org.uk/
Other links
National
Records of Scotland
www.nas.gov.uk/
Court of the Lord Lyon www.lyon-court.com/ – the statutory body for all things heraldic (Coats of Arms etc.). Actual records are at Scotland's People.
Scottish Archive Network
www.scan.org.uk/
Scottish Register of Tartans
www.tartanregister.gov.uk/
AncestralScotland
www.ancestralscotland.com/
The
National Archives
www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/
PublicProfiler
http://gbnames.publicprofiler.org/ – Where your surname
was clustered in 1881 and 1998.
Kiltwear and Clan/Family accessories
ScotClans
www.scotclans.com
- the largest Clan Resource Online, with a massive amount of
Clan and Scottish Family information to help you discover
your Scottish Heritage, including over 350 Clan & Family
areas with maps, galleries, stories, news and a huge variety
of links.
Check
out:
- Genealogy - www.scotclans.com/tracing-your-scottish-ancestry/scottish-genealogy/
- Heraldry - www.scotclans.com/tracing-your-scottish-ancestry/scottish-heraldry/
- Clans and Families - www.scotclans.com/scottish-clans/
- The Shop - http://www.scotclans.com/scottish-shop/