|
Researching your family history can be a rewarding
pastime. Based on our own experience, these are
the main options we feel are available to you:
Buy a book
There are many published guides to researching
Scottish ancestry in print. We recommend
Tracing
Your Scottish Ancestors
(Edinburgh, 1999),
details of which you can find on the
National Records of Scotland shop
.
Two books by experienced genealogical
researchers are: Kathleen B Cory,
Tracing Your
Scottish Ancestry
(Edinburgh, 1996) and Rosemary
Bigwood, Scottish Ancestry (Edinburgh,
1999).
Ask the family
You should exhaust your own family's 'knowledge
base' of relatives, family papers, family bibles
etc. In 10 years time Glasgow City Archives and
the National Records of Scotland will still be
here, but Aunt Jeannie might not be.
Join the club
Become a member of a family history society
in Scotland. You may be able to benefit from work
already done by fellow members via a society's
register of members' interests. If you live abroad
and become a member, a society may undertake limited
research on your behalf. If you live in Scotland,
family history societies offer advice and tuition,
group visits to record offices, and an opportunity
to talk about your family history with other enthusiasts
and publish the results of your research. The
two leading family history societies in Scotland
are the
Aberdeen
& North East of Scotland Family History Society
and the
Glasgow
& West of Scotland Family History Society
.
For information about other family history societies
see the
SCAN
Directory
.
|
Hire an expert
If you do not want to travel
to the relevant parts of Scotland where the information
about your ancestry may be held, you could hire
a record agent to carry out research on your behalf.
The
Association of Scottish Genealogists and Record
Agents (ASGRA)
has many experienced and competent
researchers. Some Scottish archives keep lists
of record agents and researchers in their areas.
Other Scottish archives offer a research service.
Cast your Net
It
is possible to search birth, marriage and death
records, census returns over the Internet, using
the National Records of Scotland ScotlandsPeople
site. This site also offers access to the wills
and testaments of Scots between 1500 and 1900,
digitised by the SCAN project and previously made
available via the Scottish Documents site. Further
indexes and sources are being prepared for internet
access by archives and private societies in Scotland,
so scope for online genealogy is increasing all
the time. However, experienced researchers in
Scotland have expressed doubts about the accuracy
of family trees constructed using internet sources
alone. For some other websites which offer advice
and report news of developments in family history
see our
useful links
page in the SCAN Directory.
Clerk recording details of family
in Glasgow in 1886.
Reproduced with permission of Glasgow City Archives.
|
