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Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Topic started by: alan_rowe on Sunday 21 June 15 21:05 BST (UK)
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I waste a lot of time searching multiple sites. Much of it is probably pointless, since the underlying databases are the same.
Can anyone point me at a history of indexing of Scottish records - what was scanned, how many times, and where the results went. For example, Scotlandspeople OPRs are the same as LDS (other than later corrections of typos etc). But not SRs. And LDS has (very usefully) indexed parents of SR births, where Scotlandspeople does not, so that must have been a different indexing operation.
LDS results went, I assume to Ancestry. SP's is licensed to FindMyPast.
Scotlandspeople seems reasonably up-to-date. LDS will sometimes find more, but seems to have faded out in the 1960s?
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Alan, welcome to RC :)
Have to say, not sure on what sources you are looking at for Scotland records :-\
I will point you to some links here on RC:
www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=24468.0
www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=578172.0
www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0
www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=562668.0
Monica
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Thanks you Monica.
However, it doesn't answer the question - how can Scotlandspeople not have indexed parents for births certificates, where LDS has. LDS must have done their own indexing, independent of SP (or National Archives). For example: "Scotland, Births and Baptisms, 1564-1950," Database, FamilySearch (https://familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:FQK4-RZR : accessed 21 June 2015), Walter Read, 04 May 1872; citing DELTING,SHETLAND,SCOTLAND, reference ; FHL microfilm 6,035,516.
How and when did this FHL film get created? And who uses it its records (other than LDS).
A related question is why a person can appear in some databases and not others (including SPs). There must have been different indexings, and I'd like to know what they were.
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The ONLY source of original records online for Scotland is Scotlands People here www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk (for sure, sounds like you have experience of the site and service). They have access, through their relationship with the General Office of Records of Scotald (GROS), the only source of original records to BMDs, OPRs and census images.
Re LDS, they are a useful addition and aid for Scottish research for sure, but they are only an aid. They only have indexes to the original records held by SP/GROS. With their transcription, as indexes, they only really feature up to 1870s...some new records added, not many, through 1880s or so.
What is it you need Alan? Might be a good place to start...
Monica :)
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... how can Scotlandspeople not have indexed parents for births certificates, where LDS has. ...For example: ...Walter Read, 04 May 1872; citing DELTING,SHETLAND,SCOTLAND,
There is an entry showing on SP in Delting in 1872 for a Walter Read. The image for this birth on SP will likely be helpful and add more details.
Monica
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how can Scotlandspeople not have indexed parents for births certificates, where LDS has. ...
They have all used the same source material, but produced a different index based upon their own criteria. Since LDS compiled an index for their church purposes - so that everyone's ancestors could be baptised into the LDS church - they had fields in the index for the parents, if they were recorded in the original registers.
SP obviously chose not to have fields for the parents' names for the statutory indexes.
Then different people produced the transcriptions for the different indexes - obviously some writing can be difficult to read and is open to interpretation. There will be checks, double-checks etc, but humans are human and errors often creep in. And then the searches don't work in the same ways.
Nell
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My question is not who owns the original records. That's SP (or, more precisely, the NRS and licensed to SP). It is about the indexed databases created from the records. Consider this -
David Campbell Lawson
Scotland, Births and Baptisms
Name: David Campbell Lawson
Gender: Male
Christening Place: Peebles, Peebles, Scotland
Birth Date: 02 Feb 1891
Birthplace: Peebles, Peebles, Scotland
Father's Name: John Lawson
Mother's Name: Elizabeth Campbell Lawson
Indexing Project (Batch) Number: C01955-4 , System Origin: Scotland-EASy , GS Film number: 255160 , Reference ID: v 768 p 6
this is an LDS index. As Nell pointed out, it clearly different from SP which does not include parents. So in this case, LDS is better (and free:)
So my question remains: how many indexes were created (there are clearly 2 or more), when, and who uses them. Because I'd rather use (or at least start with) the most suitable database., and I'd rather not waste my time with databases which are the same underneath, or with searches that are doomed because there are no records for that year.
Monica noted that LDS stopped after 1880. My impression is that it was later, but it might be on a per-parish or per-record-type basis. Somebody must know the exact answer.
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I'm not sure that there is a definitive answer to your question.
I must admit that I have not really thought about how many indexes were created, when and by whom. For me, it is more about finding pertinent entries.
It is impossible to say which is best overall since there are mistakes and omissions in all of them, just as in the England & Wales GRO indexes.
I use both the LDS index - a good general indication - and the SP index, since occasionally there are some real howlers in the LDS index. As with all family history research, all available sources perhaps have to be consulted and the contents considered. Even then, there might not be an answer.
Nell
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Might indeed be true, Nell. But is LDS and SP enough? Can we assume Ancestry uses LDS - it seems to? What does FindMyPast use (I've never used that one).
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Just adding my thoughts here:
I am supposing that SP do not provide parent's names so that the punter is compelled to purchase credits to find out further details (if available in the time frame).
Maybe you could check Familysearch first and if you think you have found the right record, then go to SP and purchase the record in case further information is given. :-\
To find out where each set of records on various sites originated, you would probably need to go to each one to find out. For example I think Ancestry generally note the origins of their sets of records. (it's not something I check though)
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Hi
For the period post 1855 the LDS have filmed the Scottish Statutory Births from 1855 to 1875, and the births for 1881 and 1891 They have created their own index for these births. They don't have Statutory Births for other years but have included a very small number of church christenings which accounts for their record set end date of 1950. Scotlandspeople is the Scottish Government official website and have created their own index for births from 1855 up to 2013. The England & Wales equivalent is the GRO Index.
The record sets on both Ancestry & Findmypast are sourced from Familysearch.org (LDS) and whilst I haven't checked it out I would guess that they are using the LDS Indexing.
Andy
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This may be out of date now, but if you click on the appropriate county it tells you coverage of records:
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~hughwallis/IGIBatchNumbers/CountryScotland.htm
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SP obviously chose not to have fields for the parents' names for the statutory indexes
I don't think that this is something that SP 'chose'. It was imposed one them by the way the indexes were made up when statutory registration began.
In the good bad old days, when you went to New Register House, all the indexes to the statutory registers were heavy tomes, the earliest ones handwritten, that you hauled off a shelf, consulted and then heaved back on to the shelf again. Until 1929, mothers' surnames are not included in these tomes.
Some time later, these entire volumes were digitised, that is, the data in them was computerised.
Later again, the internet came along and SP was set up using that index. It would be a major task to go back and re-index everything from scratch, and I'm sure the indexes as they are now are better than no indexes at all while they find the resources to improve them.
I see that mothers' maiden names are now gradually being added, but this is going to be a long, slow and expensive process as it requires indexers to go back to the original books. It has been suggested that the GROS could get volunteers to do this, and that it would make more sense to start at 1929 and work back rather than at 1855 and work forward, but these things take time.
Meantime, in the late 1970s, the LDS were allowed to create, for their own purposes, an index of records over 100 years old, as part of the IGI. The purpose of this index is to 'seal' children to their parents and spouses to one another as part of the LDS' own procedures, but the LDS have been kind enough to make this index freely available. It covers only the first 20 years of the statutory records of births and marriages, plus two later years, so although it is a fantasic resource, it is limited in its time span.
Now, the OPRs. The LDS also indexed these, but it's a bit complicated, and I may have got the wrong end of some sticks. For a start, although northern counties are, in theory, fully indexed, there are some curious gaps. For instance, the IGI completely omits the entire register of baptisms in the parish of Duffus from 1820 to 1854 - it looks as if they just forgot to do it - and there may be other similar gaps. Then the southern counties were not completed as part of the project to index all of the OPRs by the time the IGI extraction programme ended, so although many of the southern counties have been indexed, they are often in the 'contributed' section rather than the 'indexed'. In some parishes, the LDS appear to have indexed all the baptisms of males but not females, and in others it's vice versa.
I think that the SP OPR indexes were based on the LDS indexing, but with additions, because the southern counties appear to be complete (unless someone has evidence to the contrary). My reason for thinking that the LDS OPR index is part of the SP OPR index is that the Duffus baptisms between 1820 and 1854 were (and possibly still are) missing from the SP OPR index too.
I may of course be quite wrong about some or all of this. I write only as I have found using these various resources over the last 30+ years.
See also http://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0
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An excellent and enlightening insight Forfarian. :)
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I agree Ruskie. That is a really useful summary for all, Forfarian :)
Monica
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It might also be worth remembering that, where a child was born in wedlock after 1855, the official record held on Scotlandspeople will specify the date and place of parents' marriage.
Thus, if you have an ancestor born in (say) 1870 whose parents were married in 1860, the record that costs you six credits on SP (£1.40) allows you to locate the earlier record, from which for a further £1.40 you can ascertain the names of the child's four grandparents. I agree that if we were starting to digitise from scratch there might be a better way of indexing the information, but it really is a remarkably easy research tool when used with a little discrimination.
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Just to help futher....marriage date and place was added on birth certs from early 1860s...However, if you have an 1855 birth cert, this detail (amongst lots of other detail for that first year of official registration from 1855) was also included too.
Monica :)