Anyone who is researching their Scottish roots will have heard of ScotlandsPeople. With 90 million records it’s a website that you’re likely to use somewhere along the line in your Scottish research.
ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk is the official government website for Scottish family history research which is used by millions of people all around the world. It is a pay-as-you-go site, and is enabled by a partnership between DC Thomson Family History and the National Records of Scotland (NRS). The millions of records cover Scottish census records,wills, as well as birth certificates and death certificates as well as land records, they offer researchers a comprehensive collection of Scottish records to bring your Scotland ancestry to life.
The past few months have seen some big additions to ScotlandsPeople, and it’s these that I wanted to highlight for you here.
BIRTH, DEATH AND MARRIAGE RECORDS
It was back in January when ScotlandsPeople added an extra 220,000 images to their statutory birth, death and marriage records. These are the latest years that are currently available to be added online, and take the images for births records up to 1913, the marriages up to 1938 and deaths up to 1963. While the images stop at those year, you can still view the index which cover the follwing years: births and deaths (1855-2009) and marriages (1855-2009).
PROPERTY RECORDS
The Valuation Rolls of 1885 was next online, and these records offer genealogists as well as other history researchers a fascinating picture of Victorian Scottish society. Called Valuation Rolls, they comprise over 77,000 digital images taken from 144 volumes, and cover every type of property which was assessed as having a rateable value in 1885, and contain the names and addresses of more than 1.4 million people living in Scotland in that year.
As the records include details of owners, tenants and occupiers of property, they are an amazing source for historians and genealogists ato use. Visitors to ScotlandsPeople can search the 1885 Valuation Rolls by name and address, with the records listing the names of owners, tenants and occupiers of each property – in many cases occupations are also included. Since the Rolls list every type of rateable property in Scotland, these new records include people from all the social classes.
SOLDIERS’ WILLS
The last wishes of Scottish soldiers at the Front are being made available online by the National Records of Scotland as part of commemorations of the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War. Viewable on ScotlandsPeople the poignant documents include the last wishes of 26,000 ordinary Scottish soldiers who died in the Great War, and almost 5,000 from Scots soldiers serving in Second World War, several hundred from the Boer War and Korean War, and wills from other conflicts between 1857 and 1964.
The records are drawn from all the Scottish infantry and cavalry regiments, as well as the Royal Artillery, Royal Army Medical Corps, Royal Army Service Corps, the Machine Gun Corps and other units, and a few who served in the Royal Flying Corps and the RAF. Almost all the wills were written by soldiers below officer rank, but some wills for commissioned officers are also included.
Scottish soldier, Andrew Cox
Andrew Cox’s will
