Hi Lesley I have searched the NAS but frankly find it very unhelpful as there do not appear to be limiters for use in the search of the site (if there is I cannot find them and the usual "" or ** do not work) So each time you add a search word it searches on that to the exclusion of any other word you enter, so instead of looking for just North Britain Militia it returns hits for anything with any of those words in, not all the search words as desired Perhaps someone knows how to "drive" it better than I do (in desperation I even read the instructions <vbg>) On the hits it does pull up it either suggests a visit or buying one of their books, not overly helpful as I am stuck in Cornwall I see there is a possibility of muster lists, ballot lists and perhaps dependents seeking support but all are at the NAS which is out of my reach at present (both geographically and financially) Thank you for mentioning it though much appreciated If you know of any search limiters I would be very grateful for the knowledge of them Best wishes Nivard Ovington, in Cornwall (UK) > > Where have you looked? In NAS, I found a load of the information forms the > Berwickshire > > Militia had to fill in to get support for dependants while they were > serving. Since it named > > spouses which the local Minister hadn't been doing, it was very useful. > > I was only looking for Berwickshire, so you'll have to check their > catalogue to see what > > they have. It was also not scanned - I went to NAS and was given the > originals and left > > to go through them > > > > Lesley Robertson

Nivard Ovington wrote: >Hi Lesley > >I have searched the NAS but frankly find it very unhelpful as there do not >appear to be limiters for use in the search of the site (if there is I >cannot find them and the usual "" or ** do not work) > >So each time you add a search word it searches on that to the exclusion of >any other word you enter, so instead of looking for just North Britain >Militia it returns hits for anything with any of those words in, not all the >search words as desired > >Perhaps someone knows how to "drive" it better than I do > > I don't know about wildcarding, but there is an obvious option on the "simple search" page to specify your search terms as "phrase", "all words (AND)" or "any word (OR)": This is clearly described just beneath the box where you enter your search terms: ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Use "phrase" to look for exact matches to a group of words, for example John Smith would find only records containing this name; Use "all words" to look for records which contain all of the specified words in any order, for example a search for John Smith would also find a record containing "the smith in the village was called John Brown"; use "any word" to find all records which contain any of the specified words - in this case all records containing "John" and all records containing "Smith". ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ >(in desperation I even read the instructions <vbg>) > > If you had read the above (and it is really fairly hard to miss) then you would have discovered that, if you enter "North British Militia" and click on "phrase", you get 15 hits, the precis of each including the phrase "North British Militia". >On the hits it does pull up it either suggests a visit or buying one of >their books, not overly helpful as I am stuck in Cornwall > > Other options are to request an estimate for having a copy made, and to employ an independent researcher. I am about as far from the (English) National Archives at Kew as you are from NAS in Edinburgh, and I have found that it is simple enough to brief a researcher with what you know, and what you hope to learn, and to agree a price in advance. >I see there is a possibility of muster lists, ballot lists and perhaps >dependents seeking support but all are at the NAS which is out of my reach >at present (both geographically and financially) > > The NAS catalogue is likely to bring up information on documents held by the NAS. But I suspect that there may well be documents referring to Militia matters in local archives. I have transcribed one list of men liable to being called up to the Militia in the town of Aberdeen, and I know that the same Archive holds such documents for Aberdeenshire, and I believe they have been indexed. So it might be worth your while contacting archives in your target area. And there are Lists devoted to military matters - you may get leads there. Gavin Bell