Genealogy Chat

Hi All

I joined GR as a gold member which was great for researching English information but now would like to find out more about Scottish relatives and obviously that information isn't really accessible on here. Can anyone advise me as to which site I would be best to subscribe to so that I can access the BMD and Census information for Scotland? I'm a bit new to all this and don't want to waste my hard earned cash by subscribing to the wrong one, but given my experience of howmany things I have looked at on this site which are not the right relatives I feel that to pay as I go would be a silly thing to do.

Kind regards
Becs

Can't you access the Scottish census through GR? We can using Ancestry.

BMD's are only available on Scotlands People which is a pay per view site unless you're lucky & the info is on the IGI (see stickie at top of this board)

Scotlands people is the best one

BUT.........all the censuses are on Ancestry. NOT the images, as the Scottish authorities won't allow it, but the transcribed versions are accessible to anyone with an Ancestry sub.........

So, if you want lookups on censuses between 1841 and 1901.........just post a request on GR

I've just read the small print & it appears that the Scotland census is NOT covered by GR Gold membership which I think is a bit naughty

I have no subscription to Scotlands people but I sometimes use this site which is free

http://freecen.rootsweb.com/cgi/search.pl

Dear Becs Like you am new to on line research and joined GR as a gold member my ancestors also are scottish and all the sites I visited are to say the least difficult to gain access to I'm sitting here with a credit card eager to subscribe to a site that will let me investigate my roots but am worried like you that I will waste my money I also agrre with Claire that Scotland not being covered is a bit naughty as after all its a part of the UK not a foreign territory . Heres hoping that someone out there knows of a way in Yours in the search Thomas Essex

The only thing I can suggest is that you gather all the information that you can & take a 14 day free trial on Ancestry which covers Scottish census

Make sure you take your trial when you have plenty of time & don't forget to cancel before the 14 days are up.

After that just ask for lookups but say that you have GR Gold which doesn't cover Scotland & one of us will do them for you.

When you come up for renewal I'd suggest that you get standard membership of GR & join Ancestry

As Ericthered says, ScotlandsPeople is the best one for BMDs.
http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/

£6.00 buys 30 credits. Searches are free. Results of searches cost 1 credit per page and images of BMDs cost 5 credits each. Images of Parish Records pre 1855 are also available.

The IGI has very good Scottish coverage up to the early 1870s.

Census searches work out costly on SP and Ancestry indexes are probably the cheapest place to start for those for narrowing-down purposes.

Gillian

Hi All

Thanks for your helpful advice. I have been reluctant to request too many look-ups as I don't want to get on people's nerves keep asking, I have been trawling the GR records available for the English people I'm serarching for and know how time consuming it is.

Its a real shame Scotlands People don't offer a membership scheme with unlimited access as I feel for a novice like me I would waste too many credits on looking up the wrong people "just to be sure" as I would have done on my English look-ups had I not been an gold member (oohh I now sound like something from an Austin Power's movie!! lol).

Anyway thank you all for your replies and I'm sure once my next batch of certificates have arrived they will bring with them some new leads which I may just have to take you all up on your kind offers of look-ups for.

Kind regards
Becs

I managed to do the whole of one side of my family on ScotlandsPeople and thought it was an excellent site

You can't rely on the census to build a tree on anyway regardless of whether it is England, Scotland or Wales.

The ceunsus only tells you who was where on a particular night and the images have to be viewed to verify what the index says. There are thousands of indexed entries which are mistranscribed when you view the images.

To build a tree with any accuracy you need to match, census, bmd, baptism and parish records together.

GR don't own any records, anyone searching via Genes is just re-directed and in most cases pay extra for the redirection rather than going directly to the site concerned.

For work on Scottish links then Scotlandspeople is the first site to visit, great value and has the most coplete set of records available on one site.

Glen

Currently I have been searching BMD and checking against Census records and then going back to BMD to verify and after that sending for certificates so I can build from the information. Long, drawn out process but I consider it to be better to have a small tree full of well researched information than a tree with loads of people who you are never really sure whether they are the right ones or not.

Something I did learn from my ancestors is: "Anything worth doing is worth doing properly" I would like to think I am applying that philosophy.

Becs

Good for you Becs_s, you are certainly going the right way about your research.

One thing about Scotland'sPeople that doesn't seem to have been mentioned is that you don't have to send off for certs - you can download them from the site.

Ooohh thanks for that Potty I never realised that. Think I will have to buy some credits and see how I get on. Maybe do a 14 day trial at Ancestry and look up all the info first and hopefully only actually use credits on relevant info.

Many thanks to everyone for their advice.

Becs
:-)

Bec_s - one of the great things about the Scottish certs post 1855 is that they contain much more information than the English/Welsh equivalents. On birth certs, you will get the names of both parents plus the date of their marriage, on marriage certs the names of both parents of bride and groom including mother's maiden name, on death certs the names of both parents including mother's maiden name and father's occupation.

Of course, the reliability of the information depends on the knowledge and honesty of the informants.

Gillian

Thanks Gillian

I have requested some certs and I'm eagerly awaiting their arrival. I was born in Scotland myself and have way more info on that than any English one I have seen. You are right about the information being unreliable my mother said on mine that she was married to my father..gave details and everything...just to cover up the fact they were not married... in fact she was still married to her 1st husband who had ran off years before to Australia!! So if I hadn't know that as a fact I would of been searching forever looking for that non existent marriage record!!

Becs

Oops Bec_s - sorry, I didn't realise I might be teaching you to suck eggs!

I was just talking about the dishonesty factor in Scottish certs on a thread on FamilyTreeForum today. I always think it's such a shame when the poor bride/groom has to have the label "illegitimate" applied to them in writing, and, somehow, it seems even worse when it is even put on someone's death cert.

Gillian

That's ok Gillian, I never took it that way at all.

Becs
:-)