Welcome to Wilmer Lankford, Dean NEWMAN, C R Bruce and Ken MacKay who have joined this week. If you haven't already contributed, we hope to hear from you soon. ****** ****** ****** The following posted on the Ayrshire list may be of interest - apologies to those who have already seen it - it certainly covers most bases in the area of Scottish research ... From: "#Enquiries" <[email protected]> To: Sent: Monday, October 02, 2000 9:30 AM Subject: Reply from NAS Thank you for contacting the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), formerly the Scottish Record Office (SRO). This response is sent to all enquirers the first time that they contact us by e-mail. We read all e-mails sent to us. If you have not received a further reply within 8 weeks it is because we feel that either the contents of this e-mail, or the information presented on our website, answer your enquiry. Due to pressures on staff time and resources, we cannot undertake the extended research that questions sent to us often need. We can only provide general advice on the records we hold and on the contents of our catalogues and indexes. If you cannot visit our search rooms a list of record agents based in Scotland who can undertake research for you can be found on the site http://www.origins.net maintained by the General Register Office for Scotland. Hiring a record agent or other researcher is a private matter, however, and the NAS accepts no responsibility for the quality or quantity of their work. More detailed information You may wish to consult our website at http://www.nas.gov.uk. At present this website is a prototype but it is under development and will gradually expand. It has further information about our opening hours and facilities > and also shows the locations of our three buildings. Two of these, HM General Register House and West Register House, are in Edinburgh city centre and are open to the public. Our third building, Thomas Thomson House, on the outskirts of Edinburgh, is our off-site storage facility. If you are planning a visit to the NAS you should remember that many of our records are stored at Thomas Thomson House and that these records take two working days to be brought in to our public search rooms. You should allow for this delay when planning your visit. Scottish Genealogy: Useful Reading If you are just beginning to trace your Scottish ancestors, it would be worth getting hold of one of the many books which explain how to go about doing this. As well as discussing the sources and pitfalls, they will give you an idea of the background planning necessary to go about ancestry hunting effectively. Cecil Sinclair, Tracing your Scottish Ancestors: A Guide to Ancestry Research in the Scottish Record Office (Edinburgh, 2nd ed., 1997) ISBN 0 11 495865 3 is specifically about records in the NAS. Other books in regular use are: Rosemary Bigwood, Tracing Scottish Ancestors: A practical guide to Scottish genealogy (Glasgow, 1999) ISBN 0 00 472328 7 Kathleen B Cory, Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry (Edinburgh, 1990) ISBN 0 7486 6054 2 Gerald Hamilton-Edwards, In Search of Scottish Ancestry (Chichester, 2nd ed., 1983) ISBN 0 85033 513 2 Sherry Irvine, Your Scottish Ancestry: A Guide for North Americans (Salt Lake City, 1997) ISBN 0 916489 65 5 Alwyn James, Scottish Roots: A step-by-step guide for ancestor-hunters in Scotland and Overseas (Loanhead, 1981 and later editions). Scottish Genealogy: First Steps To trace information about your ancestors using our sources you will need to know in advance where they lived in Scotland (ie, the town or parish), and their dates of birth, marriage and death. It would also be very helpful if you knew their religious denomination. Because of these considerations, the best place to begin Scottish genealogical research is normally not with us but at the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). That organisation holds the Church of Scotland's > Old Parish Registers of baptisms, marriages and burials from 1553-1854, together with the Statutory Registers of births, marriages and deaths from 1855 to the present, and census returns from 1841. Hopefully, these will provide the essential skeleton of a Scottish family tree, which you may then be able to flesh out with information from the records held by us. GROS has a website at http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk and another site at http://www.origins.net through which you can consult many of their indexes and order copies of some of their records. You may also wish to consult the International Genealogical Index (IGI), which has been compiled by the Genealogical Society of Utah (GSU). A copy may be available at your local library and further copies are also held at the family history centres run by the Church of Jesus Christ of the Latter Day Saints. The website maintained by the GSU <http://www.familysearch.org/> allows access to the resources for family history built up by them. Similarly, you may care to visit<http://www.genuki.org.uk/>, a site that acts as a virtual resource for family history in Great Britain and Ireland. Births, Deaths and Marriages We do not hold either the Old Parish Registers of baptisms, marriages and burials from 1553-1854 or the Statutory Registers of births, marriages and deaths from 1855 to date. These records, as well as those of the Census in Scotland, are held at the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) in Edinburgh. They also have a website at <http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/> and can be contacted on their e-mail address [email protected] <mailto:[email protected]> Wills and testaments We do hold Scottish wills and testaments from 1549 to 1984 but before we can search for particular entries, we need clear details of the name, date and place of death of the deceased. Testaments after 1984 are held by the Edinburgh Commissary Office, 27 Chambers Street, Edinburgh, EH2 1LB. Scottish Surnames The best-known work on Scottish family names is George F Black, The Surnames of Scotland (New York, 1946 and still in print). You should use this book to find if your surname has Scottish connections. Clans and tartans The National Archives of Scotland cannot provide information about the association of surnames with particular clans. For further information about clans and tartans you might wish to contact the Scottish Tartans Museum, The Scotch House, 39-41 Princes Street, Edinburgh, EH2 2BY. Emigrants The NAS holds very few original records listing emigrants. Over the years, researchers have tried to fill this gap by using a variety of sources to compile and publish lists of Scots known to have emigrated. Inevitably, however, these catch only a tiny percentage of the people who left these shores. Some of these compilations are listed in the emigrants FAQ on our website at http://www.nas.gov.uk. Unfortunately, even for Britain as a whole, very few lists of emigrants survive before 1890. Those which do (together with complete lists after 1890) are held at the Public Record Office, Ruskin Avenue, Kew, Richmond, Surrey, TW9 4DU, England. Their website at <http://www.pro.gov.uk> will give details. Often more information survives at the point of arrival than at the point of departure, so it might be worth your while contacting the appropriate national (or local) archive for further advice. Military service Most British military records (from 1707) are held at the Public Record Office <http://www.pro.gov.uk/> although the NAS does hold some militia records for the period after 1797. See the FAQ section of our website for further information <http://www.nas.gov.uk/. Sudden deaths There is no complete series of reports or enquiries following sudden deaths. The findings of investigations by the procurator fiscal are recorded in the Register of Corrected Entries maintained by the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) <http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/> In Scotland Fatal Accident Inquiries (FAI) have been held since 1895 into fatal accidents in the workplace and cases of sudden death where public interest was involved, but not deaths by suicide (unlike the system of coroner's inquests into all sudden deaths in England and Wales). We hold FAI records from 1895 to c.1970 from all sheriff courts except Orkney and Shetland (held by the respective local archives), but in many courts the records are incomplete. To check these records we require the full date of the FAI, which can sometimes be got from newspaper reports, otherwise you will need to search the records in person or employ a record agent. Criminal records We hold records of trials in the High Court and Circuit Courts of Justiciary and Sheriff Courts from 1550 until the late 20th century (depending on the court). To identify relevant documents we need to know the name of the accused and the place and date of the trial. We cannot locate a trial by the victim's name. We also hold the precognitions prepared by the Crown before it prosecuted cases in the High Court from 1797. We need to know the name of the suspected person and the year of the crime in order to be able to identify relevant papers, but precognitions under 75 years old are closed. We cannot supply information on the criminal record of an individual; this may be obtained from the Data Protection Officer of your local police force. Railway ancestors We hold staff records of some of the pre-1947 Scottish railway companies. As they are mostly unindexed we cannot search for individuals, but will advise you on the existence of relevant material for your research. Shipbuilding records We hold the records of some shipbuilding companies, but there are also important holdings at Glasgow University Archives <http://www.arts.gla.ac.uk/archives>. Locations of records are summarised in L.A. Ritchie, ed, The Shipbuilding Industry. A guide to historical records (Manchester, 1992). Trying to trace living persons While some of the public records held by the National Archives of Scotland do record details about living people, they are not organised in a way that makes them either easy or suitable for use in searching for particular individuals. Nor are we able to undertake such searches. Consequently, you will have to do this yourself. One method which can be surprisingly effective for finding a missing person, is to pay to place an advertisement either in the local newspaper for the area where the person was last known to be, or in a mass circulation newspaper. For example, both The Sunday Post, 144 Port Dundas Road, Glasgow and The Sunday Mail, Anderston Quay, Glasgow, have national circulations and will carry classified advertisements of this sort. Some professional record agents will do this type of investigation and to this end you will find a list of record agents based in Scotland who can undertake research for you on the site http://www.origins.net maintained by the General Register Office for Scotland. Hiring a record agent or other researcher is a private matter, however, and the NAS accepts no responsibility for the quality or quantity of their work. Document copying services We have facilities for providing photocopies, microfilms or photographs. The cost and process used will depend on the size and condition of the documents concerned, so please do not send us any money in advance. Some documents are unsuitable for copying. We shall let you know if this is the case with any documents of which you have requested copies. If you are going to contact us about obtaining copies of documents please include your full postal address in your message. How to stop being sent multiple copies of this message If you intend to send us further e-mails, to avoid receiving this auto-response again, please make sure you include the letters TARS (with a space on either side of it) along with the subject of your message in the subject line. e.g. 'Anderson family records TARS ' Yours faithfully National Archives of Scotland HM General Register House Princes Street Edinburgh EH1 3YY ****** ****** ****** Feel free to join in and present your own items. Peter Cook [email protected] List maintainer and Co-host with Barbara < [email protected] > of the ButeshireGenWeb mailing list.