Jessie KENNEDY of Dull (Perthshire) and census records

[Nick_Ips]

Hello, I'm new to research in Scotland, so please be gentle 

For many years I've been trying to locate someone called Jessie who married a George COLTHORPE from Suffolk. Jessie (aged 23) was living with her grandfather James CAMPBELL in Dull on the 1881 census. Over the years I've tried to find out Jessie's surname as I couldn't find a marriage to George. The new GRO birth index records for her children finally gave me the surname KENNEDY.

Using the free FindMyPast access over the weekend I managed to find James CAMPBELL in 1861 and (with some lateral thinking!) managed to 'discover' that his granddaughter 'Jannet' aged 3 was most likely to be one and the same as Jessie! The Jessie/Janet equivalence was a new one to me 

The bit I'm now having trouble with is how to accurately record the census record references, having only used the England & Wales /Piece/Folio/Page style before. I understand the method in Scotland is to use parish number, ED and page and I assume the 1851 reference for James on the ScotlandsPeople website "346/6/28" is in that format. However the same record on FreeCEN has a piece number "SCT1851/346", and transcriptions on FindMyPast for later years use the RG9,RG10 style but without anything in the piece/folio/page fields.

So, am I right assuming the SP site reference 346/6/28 is Parish/ED/Page, and is there a standard way of quoting this to avoid confusion with the England & Wales Piece/Folio/Page? Is the FreeCEN prefix of "SCT1851" the generally accepted way of doing it?

Many thanks for reading and any help/advice you can offer.

Nick

[Forfarian]

I understand the method in Scotland is to use parish number, ED and page and I assume the 1851 reference for James on the ScotlandsPeople website "346/6/28" is in that format.

Yes and yes.

Since the source of the Scottish census records is the General Register Office for Scotland, I don't think it is necessary to try to match the referencing system to that adopted in England and Wales, and there is no standard method that I am aware of. I think prefixing Scottish census with RG would be counter-productive because the 'RG' stands for 'Registrar General' whose remit did not extend to Scotland.

I would suggest using

GROS/yyyy/district number/ED/page though if you would find it easier to use

SCT/yyyy/district number/ED/page there's no good reason why you should not.

For clarification, I have said 'district number' rather than 'parish number' because the boundaries of districts in urban areas don't always conform to the boundaries of parishes, and in some cases (e.g. Dundee) a parish can be divided into two or more districts for purposes of registration and census. Also the boundaries of census districts, and of EDs, do change over time.

PS I take it that you have viewed the original census at Scotland's People, not just relied on the (possibly mis)transcribed versions available online?

PPS I see that Jessie's daughter Isabella was born in Glasgow on 13 August 1880. She is registered as Bella Calthorpe, daughter of George Calthorpe, gunner in Royal Artillery and Jessie Calthorpe, maiden surname Campbell, who were married in Glasgow on 4 February 1880. However the marriage indexes her as Jessie Kennedy. If you take a look at the marriage certificate (Camlachie 1880/644.2/61), available to view at modest cost at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk, it will tell you the names of Jessie's parents, including her mother's maiden name.

Given the ambiguity of surname and the fact that she seems to have been brought up by her grandfather, it would not surprise me to learn that she was illegitimate. If so, there could be a record in the Kirk Session minutes of the parish of Dull. These are available to view in the Historical Search Room in General Register House, Edinburgh and in various local archives. They are supposed to become available on Scotland's People but I do not know when this is likely to happen. In the meantime, if you cannot get to Edinburgh you could hire a searcher to find and transcribe the record, if it exists.

You can look for James Campbell in the 1841 and 1851 censuses at http://www.freecen.org.uk/cgi/search.pl   

[Nick_Ips]

Many thanks for replying Forfarian. Just for clarity I wasn't aiming to match the referencing system for England and Wales, I just wanted to be sure that I was using the right one for Scotland (if there was one) and would be able to give others a source reference which would make sense. The FindMyPast use of RG9, RG10 etc did seem out of place, but I noticed they hadn't gone as far as to use “HO” for the 41 and 51 census!

Thanks for the clarification on the 'district number', a really important point.

I've not viewed the original census image yet, but do intend to. I make it a habit to get images to check the details, which in part is the reason for me wanting to get the census reference correct as I save the image files with the census reference as the filename and then use this to create an automatic link from my database back to the original image file.

All I was aiming to do this weekend was to get a rough idea of who was who so I could work out what to do next as the approach taken in Scotland is all new to me. The marriage certificate is one of the things on my list to look at, especially given the very reasonable cost in comparison to the GRO.

I too thought it was interesting that Jessie was living with her grandfather, even after her marriage, and was forming the same view you have. Thank you for the tip about the Kirk Session minutes, it is something I'll keep an eye out for, and certainly go and view when I can persuade the family that Scotland would be a better holiday destination than the usual hot places... it has been a good many years since my last visits which I enjoyed very much.

Many thanks again,

Nick