>>> Scotlandspeople update: 1841 and 1851 census due in next 2 months

[trish251]

Mine lot left Scotland in 1852, so this is my first chance to find them. I keep telling myself they WILL NOT be part of these blue on blue pages

I keep telling myself .....


I keep telling myself ......

I guess there is always 1841 in about 2008

Trish

[jillruss]

Do we know which areas these blue on blue pages come from?

Bet it's Aberdeen! I think mine left Aberdeen about the same time, Trish - to come to Worcestershire. Was there a historical reason, do you think, or would it have been to find work?

Jill

[trish251]

Hi Jill

I really don't know. One of my family was enamoured of the Rev Dunmore Lang & came to Australia in 1849. His sisters, brother in law and parents followed in 1852. The brother-in-law was a highly qualified teacher & had work in Scotland until he left.

Dunmore Lang wanted to populate Australia with good Protestants. He was bothered about the Irish Catholics. Needless to say - they all came 

Trish

[JAP]

I hope that Mr Duncan Macniven, Registrar General for Scotland, will not mind his following post being posted on this board.  I am letting him know that I have posted it here.

His post appeared today on:
http://www.talkingscot.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=29444

It reads as follows:
1. I have not previously contributed comments to TalkingScot although, as Registrar General for Scotland, and as a historian by training who is keen on family history, I obviously have an interest in what it says!

2. My name is Duncan Macniven (not McNiven as this website has suggested) and my e-mail address is: Duncan.Macniven[AT]gro-scotland.gsi.gov.uk. You are welcome to e-mail me if you want and (so long as I do not get an impossible number of e-mails), I will do my best to reply. (I am sorry, incidentally, that those of you who e-mailed to Duncan.McNiven[AT]gro-scotland.gsi.gov.uk did not get through to me, because of the Mac/Mc confusion which we are all so familiar with!)

3. There is no need to e-mail me simply to reinforce the message that people want the 1841 Census on line as soon as possible. I am as keen as anyone else to see it (and the recent edition of the 1851 Census showed me that my great-great-grandfather had had a first marriage of which I was completely unaware: I hope for more revelations about my family when I see 1841). Our original timetable for getting the early Victorian Censuses on line was ridiculously over optimistic and I apologise that we raised false hopes. But we were doing something which nobody had done before – I don’t know of another website worldwide which gives such wide access to digitised family history images. We had originally thought that the main task was digitising the actual images. That was indeed a big job. But we had underestimated the further detailed work necessary to make sure that the images are correctly ordered and accessible – and that users are not, so far as we can help, suffering from the sort of inaccuracies which must have irritated those of you who tried to send an e-mail to ‘duncan.mcniven’! The 1851 Census was particularly difficult from that point of view due to the poor quality of the original records and is still imperfect (though we may be able to make further improvements and will report back on www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk the results of our efforts).

4. We are now happy with the quality of the 1841 Census images and they will be released during the first week of April for testing by the user group to see whether they can spot any faults which we have overlooked – a test which has proved well worthwhile in the past. Assuming that goes well, we plan to launch 1841 on or about 20 April.

5. Thereafter, the main digitised images which will not be on the website will be the Old Parish Registers. They have been much more difficult to put on the web than we had expected, because we have had to write a new index which gives access directly to the image that the reader wants, rather than to roughly the right place in a reel of microfilm. We are nearly finished that work. We will follow the OPRs with digital images of our Minor Records. To avoid over-promising (which I well realise has irritated many people) I will not fix publication dates for these. But you can be sure that we will lose no time.

6. I hope that you find that report helpful, and that it has lowered rather than raised your blood pressure. It seems to me that, in www.ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk, we have a fine resource for family historians and I’m keen that the fact that we’ve taken longer to achieve that than we’d originally planned, should not obscure the fact that no other country (so far as I know) has done it faster!

Duncan Macniven
Registrar General
24 March 2006
General Register Office for Scotland
Ladywell House
GTN 7166 435
E-mail: duncan.macniven[AT]gro-scotland.gsi.gov.uk

This seems to me an eminently sensible and helpful response to what had seemed (in my view) to be an inappropriately negative proposal for an emailing campaign.

We might well still be grumpy (and properly so) about so many earlier over-optimistic deadlines but that's in the past and let's hope that there won't be any more such.  And I note that the timeline for the 1841 census on the SP website now reads April/May 2006.  Congratulations Mr Macniven!

Regards,

JAP

Moderator Comment: e-mail edited, to avoid spamming and other abuses. Please replace [AT] with @
JAP says: Sorry Moderator!  Given that I'm your original pedant, I probably couldn't bring myself to change a quote i.e. the email address within it - but am very happy that you have done so 

[Shaztoni]

I've gone through the 1851 and for the most part I've been happy with it although there were a few missing people (which probably has more to do with the people than the census)
It also knocked a branch off my tree (100 years worth), a new shoot is growing slowly in its place.

Sharon

[jillruss]

Thanks for posting that, JAP.

Mr Macniven's statement is very welcome. It has certainly helped me to put the task and associated problems into context. I can't curb my enthusiasm for the 1841 census' arrival but I will try to be patient and recognise the work that is going on.

Jill