Scotland's People, Ancestry, FamilySearch etc: which to use?

[curiousgeorge1]

I always get a buzz when I see ‘paid’ on a cert I had previously forgotten.

And the free search facility has helped me look after my credits. You can learn a lot from the searches.

You get so used to everything being there that it is a chore when you find something not available at the click of a button eg a more recent will. Need to get up to the history room in Edinburgh 😁

[dowdstree]

If you are coming to Edinburgh it would be advisable to book your seat in advance. It is easy to do online through the SP website. £15 for a whole day's researching + cost of credits you need to get your certificates.

One wee bit of advice if you get some certificates that you want to keep (and who doesn't when they are there) it costs 6 credits to download them to your own device but you can print them out for 2/3 credits if memory serves me right and then scan them in when you get home. Cheaper to do it this way if it suits you.

Happy hunting,

Dorrie

[curiousgeorge1]

Thanks for this. I’ve used the search room before, a long time ago.

The wills, I think, are viewable in the history room. You have to ask for the relevant books a few days in advance so this will need planning.

[Forfarian]

If you are coming to Edinburgh it would be advisable to book your seat in advance. It is easy to do online through the SP website. £15 for a whole day's researching + cost of credits you need to get your certificates.

There is no additional cost for certificates unless you print them out. If you transcribe the information there is no extra charge.

You aren't allowed to save them to a memory stick now, because someone's stick introduced a virus that crashed the system a year or two ago.

And I don't think you can print birth certificates less than 100 years old, marriages less than 75 years old or deaths less than 50 years old - you can only transcribe the information from them.

[gjs1949]

Do they allow taking photographs of the on screen certificates?

[Forfarian]

Do they allow taking photographs of the on screen certificates?

No. There are actually notices specifically forbidding this.

[raonull4]

hi forfarian
                i ve just read your origonal post,
and agree fully with scotlands people being the best source of origional docs,
but i ll add that for anyone visiting the scottish isle's such as isle of lewis,
doing research is ask the locals as on  our very first visit there researching
we got directed to an old lady and in her possession was the registrars book
going back into the 1700s,
how many instances there is of these books still being in the possession of registrars famillies
there is, is anyones guess but it has to be worth asking questions of locals  as we found their knowledge of local famillies was vast and of great help to us as my wife discovered she still has many relatives there as she has local to where we live now,

keep up the good work
Raonull4

[Forfarian]

for anyone visiting the scottish isle's such as isle of lewis, doing research is ask the locals as on  our very first visit there researching we got directed to an old lady and in her possession was the registrars book going back into the 1700s,how many instances there is of these books still being in the possession of registrars famillies there is, is anyones guess

If it goes back to the 1700s, it can't be a registrar's book, because there were no registrars before the start of civil registration 1855.

But I agree, there are probably still some pre-1855 parish registers which escaped being collected in 1855, and registers of churches other than the Church of Scotland which are still in private hands. I hope this lady has taken steps to make sure the book is kept safe and the information is made available.

[raonull4]

hi
 your most probably correct and it was parish register,
as for where the book is now i d hope it was possibly
handed over to the carloway historical society,
the lady was fairly old when we met her but that means very little
as another lady we met was 103 this year and i must say it was a treat meeting that lady,
and what a fantastic memory she had in her 90s when we met her mowing her garden,
the conversation was a touch strange while we asked questions the lady and a friend
would discus the question in gaelic then answer it in english,
those experiences makes the reserching all worth while.

Raonull4