Can I ask what info you need to search? An address or is a general area enough? Or do you need to search by name AND address? Just wondering what scope there is for browsing..
It depends when you are looking. The Great Dividing Date is 1780. There are indexes to the sasines between 1617 and 1780 in book form in General Register House. These are arranged by surname, with variant spellings grouped together. They give you the name of the person concerned, their designation ('in' or 'of' somewhere), any relationships mentioned in the original document ('son of', 'daughter of', 'spouse of', 'relict of' etc) and the series, volume number(s) and page number(s) of the document. There are cross entries to spouses which may give you additional information about who the spouse was. The indexes are usually in two books oper county, one book covering 1617 to 1700 or 1720, and a second one covering 1700 or 1720 to 1780. Some of these books were actually published, but not all. For instance Angus 1617-1700 was published, but Angus 1700-1780 was not.
After 1780 the indexing system is different. An annual list of abridgments of sasines, in numerical (chronological) order, was printed for each county, each abridgment containing information similar to that in the older indexes, but also including a very brief description of the property involved, and a reference to any earlier sasine dealing with the same property. These books have now been scanned and the scans can be viewed in the Historical Search Room in General Register House. The quality of the scans is not always good, and though the search will pick up some spelling variations of names, I would not want to guarantee that it will always find every relevant listing all of the time.
As an example, this is my transcription of one such abridgment, from Lanarkshire:
No 5139 1806-09-12 GR 764/200 Jean Waddell, sister of William Waddell of Easter Moffat, and William Waddell, son of George Waddell, of Ballochnie, their nephew, seised in liferent and fee respectively Sept 9 1806 in the 40s land of Easter Moffat, par Bartramshotts, 1 merk land of Easter Calderhead and 20s land of Paperthills, par Shotts, and teinds, under burden of a liferent annuity of £20 to Christian Waddell, spouse of James Muir of Gilgarth, £2000 to Margaret Waddell, daughter of Patrick Waddell of Bogo and £100 to Agnes Gairdner daughter of John Gairdner of Broompark, on disp and settlement by the said William Waddell, May 6 1803.It is possible to search the post-1780 abridgments by place name.
