In a message dated 13/01/2005 01:39:47 GMT Standard Time, jazzthirty@aol.com writes: . Plus the only records before 1855 tha you can find are the death records which give birth dates before the year of 1855. The one bad thing is before 1855 all records were parish church records and many churchs caught fire. The other bad thing is the UK has the 100yr privacy law. Here in USA it is 75yrs. Good luck with your research. I am amazed at the statements made in this section of your message. While you are correct in stating that the only records available for easy research on the Internet for the period prior to 1855 are the Old Parish Records maintained by the Established Church it is incorrect to state that these only give deaths. The opposite is the case as many of these parish records contain no death records at all and where they do they simply record the date of death (or burial in the Churchyard) with no other information than the individuals name i.e. there is no mention of their age or parents. Births may be recorded as a birth or a christening or sometimes the entry gives the dates of both events. It is also quite common to find that where the child being baptised belonged to the family of the Minister, schoolmaster or some other person of high standing the record will give more information than is normally seen. However most will give the names of the witnesses who may or may not be related but very often have the same forename as the child. Entries relating to marriages may simply be the record of the banns being called and will seldom show more than the names of the parties intending to be married and the Parish of their residence. If the individuals lived in different Parishes then it is likely the Proclamation of the Banns would be recorded in both Parishes. However, you can find in some cases that words indicating a marriage actually followed the Proclamation were added. While a closed period of 100 years applies to some areas it is incorrect to imply that all records are closed for that period. All Census returns and details are closed and the next release will be the census for 1911 in 2012. Births, Marriages and Deaths up to more or less the present time can be examined at New Register House, Edinburgh but there are restrictions applicable to Internet Access although these only apply to Statutory Registers. Birth indexes from 1855 to 1903, Marriages from 1855 to 1928 and deaths from 1855 to 1953 may all be searched online and in most cases images of the entries can be downloaded. Therefore while a 100 year closure (on the Internet) operates for births this reduces to 75 years for marriages and 50 years for deaths but I believe that consideration is being given to making the index up to date available but probably not the images. I have not heard it suggested before that records were not available/lost as a result of churches being destroyed by fire but it is true to say that because of poor care many have been lost or are in very poor condition. That said it has to be remembered it is generally acknowledged that there were very many events which were not recorded, at all, for various reasons such as the individuals involved belonged to a different religious denomination, fees payable etc. You can find records for religious denominations other than the Church of Scotland in the National Archives of Scotland in General Register House and, in time, these might become available online as the proposed new Scottish Family History Service gets under way. It is planned to have this fully operational in 2006 and will bring together the services provided by The National Archives of Scotland, General Register Office for Scotland and the Court of the Lord Lyon. The information currently available on _www.scottishdocuments.com_ (http://www.scottishdocuments.com) will also be available from the new service. For the period from 1855 you will find the records easy to follow and the most satisfactory way is to start from yourself and work backwards in time. Your own parents marriage will give their ages, date and place of marriage, their parents names (including your mother's maiden name), The Clergyman and the names of the witnesses (and maybe their addresses). Deaths will give the names of the parents of the deceased, his/her age, the cause of death, place it occurred, the doctor in attendance (if there was one), the name of the person registering the death and for some years the place of burial. Births give much the same sort of information regarding parents but if you are lucky enough to find a birth in 1855 you will learn how many children there were to the marriage and how many were surviving at the time as well as their sex. The indexes to the Old Parish Records can also be searched online but, at present, there are no images available. The search facilities are available at _www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk_ (http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) and the cost is £6.00 Stg for 30 credits available for 168 hours. I hope this goes some way to clarifying the position. Ian A C Scott

Ian, Thanks for your excellent summary of the available Scottish records. I was very interested to hear of the planned Scottish Family History Service. Is there a link where I could read more about that? Is anyone aware of any possibility of an ancestry.com-type service for Scottish records, where people can pay for a one-year subscription, rather than the pay-by-screen time-restricted arrangement on Scotland's people? The amount of information that can be gleaned from the far more flexible access for US census records is so much more rewarding, research-wise. Holly East Bangor, PA