debit card, and spend them making searches and viewing digital images of the records themselves. Searching the index to wills and testaments is free but you pay to view an image of the document. At the time of writing, the site contains the following material:
• Statutory (General Register Office) Registers: Births 1855-2006; Marriages 1855-2006; Deaths 1855-2006.
• Old Parochial Registers: Births and Baptisms 1553-1854; Banns and Marriages 1553-1854.
• Censuses: 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891, 1901.
• Wills and testaments: 1513-1901.
If, by the time you use the site, more material has been added, all well and good!
Births, marriages and deaths are indexed up to nearly the present day, but for privacy reasons, digital images are only available up to 100 years ago for births, 75 years ago for marriages and 50 years ago for deaths, though you can order ‘extracts’ of these from GROS, or examine the originals at the ScotlandsPeople Centre.
The website works out more expensive than visiting the archives in Edinburgh, but if you don’t live nearby then www.Scotlands People.gov.uk is a godsend. Besides bringing indexes to your computer, it has indexed the indexes, making the searching process vastly easier than ever before. And, because it’s now possible to view images of the original documents online, people across the globe can now trace their Scottish ancestors properly. This has encouraged many new people to start exploring their Scottish roots.
Take a few minutes to explore the site’s extra features. There are fairly detailed explanations of the records, and ‘Research Tools’ contains many helpful features, such as tips on reading old handwriting and understanding old money.
The calendar
Up to 1582 Britain and Europe used Julius Caesar’s calendar, with years starting on Lady Day, 25 March, but that year many Continental countries started using the calendar of Pope Gregory the Great, with years starting on 1 January. King James VI and I ordered the adoption of the Gregorian calendar starting on 1 January 1599/1600, and now that the year started in January, not March, New Year quickly absorbed many surviving pagan Winter Solstice traditions, creating the great Scots New Year festival of Hogmanay. Although James became king of England and Ireland in 1603, the calendar there did not change until 1752.
Dealing with written records
Reading old handwriting is called palaeography. Old ways of writing, or simply bad handwriting, present a real problem for genealogists. You can learn to read the former, but ghastly scrawls can defeat the most seasoned professional. For old hands, see G.G. Simpson’s Scottish Handwriting 1150-1650 (Tuckwell Press, 1973) and A. Rosie’s Scottish Handwriting 1500-1700: a self-help pack (SRO and SRA, 1994).
www.scottishhandwriting.com offers online tuition on old handwriting, and there are palaeography classes available elsewhere, especially at the ScotlandsPeople Centre.
Older records in Latin can be off-putting, but you can always pay a translator or experienced genealogist. Good guides to Latin include R.A. Latham’s Revised Medieval Latin Word-list from British and Irish Sources (OUP, 1965), and there is a useful list of Latin words used in genealogical documents at www.genuki.org.uk. Here are some basics that appear in legal documents:
| • | Annus | year |
| • | Dies | day |
| • | Eod. die. | same day |
| • | Est | is |
| • | Filia | daughter |
| • | Filius | son |
| • | Inter alia | amongst others |
| • | Mater | mother |
| • | Matrimonium | married |
| • | Mensis | month |
| • | Mortuus | died |
| • | Natus | born |
| • | Nuptium | married |
| • | Obit | died |
| • | Parochia | parish |
| • | Pater | father |
| • | Pro indiviso | undivided |
| • | Qua | as |
| • | Sepultat | buried |
| • |
Uxor
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