Suggestion please - I'm stuck in late 18th C

[daval57]

Annie, I've just noticed your comment and appreciate the details.  I'll have a closer look at it when I have a wee bit more time.  I've diaried it to remind me to come back to you.

Dave

[Forfarian]

All scottish records are avaiable on line for a small fee.

No, that is absolutely not the case.

Scotland's People is one of the great wonders of the genealogical world - a treasure trove of original information (unlike several web sites I could but will not name that contain nuggets of genuine information swamped in oceans of irrelevant, plain wrong and multiply duplicated misinformation).

However SP includes only certain parts of the information formerly held by the Registrar General for Scotland and National Archives of Scotland, and now held by the National Records of Scotland.

There are vast repositories of information out there in various archives that are not available online:

Kirk Session records
Parochial Board (Poor Law) records
School records
Estate records (there is one estate archive that I know of which is said to consist of 2½ tons of documents
Registers of deeds
Registers of Episcopalian churches
Registers of Free and dissenting churches
Court records (civil and criminal)
Hospital and asylum records
Registers of sasines
Services of heirs
Burial records

to name but a few that I have used over the years.

However they are not as easy to access as the Scotland's People ones. Generally you have to find out that they exist (sometimes but not always possible online), go to wherever they are, and then read through what can be many pages of difficult handwriting to pick out the item that interests you.

If you strike lucky you can find real gems - I found (in the 2½ tons) a letter written in his own hand by one of my umpteenth-great-grandfathers in 1771, and a sasine taking another branch of the family back to an even-further-back-great-grandfather who died in 1642. If you don't, you can spend a day reading fruitlessly through an unindexed book of deeds, knowing that you still have three dozen more books to check.

But as Dave says it isn't easy for him to get to Glasgow or Edinburgh, none of this is readily accessible to him, unfortunately, or to anyone else in the same predicament.

[garngad]

Elegantly put Forfarian and like you have stated not only do you manually trawl through some unreadable stuff but how many times are you side tracked and veer into a cul de sac and forget what you were looking for plus the many visits to the Mitchell when the PCs go down or when home you can not decipher your own hand writing ah the bliss of the family tree.

[jcjc123]

i'm a bit late to the party on this but if you've exhasted all the people info - try address info.

In my own search where relatives lived in what was once tiny villages, even when they've been gobbled up to form towns and cities now, i've been able to find local groups who share records for the specific village online. These are tiny local groups that google ignores.
In one case I had a month by month breakdown of what happened, a mine accident, a divorce, a nasty case of adultery (in detail!) it was such a tiny village and i knew he lived there from census records it gave me a great insight into what his life would have been like, what was happening around him.
In another case, my relative wasn't mentioned but the landowner for his address was, and in checking that out further i was able to get records relating to my tree.

If you're really stuck with names/people i'd look into the places in more detail.
It may be that an innocuous address was actually a hospital etc and you'll then be able to seek their records.

If people seem to disappear completely - check English records to see if they pop up - many of mine do.

Good luck

[sancti]

Dave, is Samuel Forrest a shoemaker living in Lesmahagow on 1851 and 1871 census?

[sancti]

This looks like him on 1861 census 

I wonder if there was a demand for Master Shewskers in Lesmahagow at that time 


Name: Sanuel Jonest

Age: 46

Est birth year: abt 1815

Spouse's name : Jane G Jonest

Born: Bothwell, Lanarkshire

Reg dist: Lesmahagow


Address: Lower Main St

Occupation: Shewsker (master Employ 14 Man 5 Boys)

[daval57]

Thanks for all previous replies.

Excellent find Sancti - that's definitely him.

I always knew I was related to the San Jonest family! 


Dave