When someone appears in a record on one website but not another

[CraigM63]

I see others have twigged as to why you are unable to find your ancestor in the Sheriff's Court Paternity Decree Indexes on Ancestry. It's because the indexes on Ancestry have come from ScottishIndexes, and not OldScottish, two companies who do pretty much the same thing in terms of photographing and indexing Sheriff's Court Paternity Decrees in Scotland, although their areas of coverage clearly vary.

Note that Ancestry only has the indexes, which is the same information that you would get by searching on the ScottishIndexes website itself, and which would be more up to date in any case. For the original documents, which will be photographs of the relevant pages of the Sheriff's Court registers, you would have to order them directly from OldScottish in your case. I don't know how much OldScottish charge, but I have ordered Sheriff's Court Paternity Decrees from ScottishIndexes, and have found the cost to be minimal, and the service excellent, the turn around time is within a couple of days. The record itself will probably cover just under a page of the register, and should have also led to an entry in the Register of Corrected Entries which should in turn be linked to the original entry in the Register of Births on ScotlandsPeople. 

[Gr8scot227]

Thank you, everyone.

I learn something everyday doing family history!

[oldfashionedgirl]

That’s very interesting, that’s something I couldn’t figure out.
 Thanks for the info.

[brigidmac]

Great question ....and answers

Sometimes names are mistranscribed totally differentlyon different sites

[carolineasb]

Can I ask why anyone would pay for the copy from any other website than Scotland's People, when the RCE will be attached to the original birth entry IF the Decree was granted? I have not joined the Old Scottish site, however, I note that the Scottish Indexes site often has Decrees shown with no Processes and vice versa. It is an impossibility to have a Decree with no Process, however, there can be a Process where no Decree is granted in the case.

[CraigM63]

I can only speak to my own experiences, but the RCE only records the name of the father, and when you have a father and son with the same name living at the same address, the Sheriff's Court decree quite often contains additional information that allows you to determine which of them was actually the father. There are also details of any financial settlements arising out of the decree, which helps flesh out the story

In the case of the second illegitimate child that my great grandmother had, cross-checking the name in the RCE with the 1911 census lead to the conclusion that the father was a 43-year old married man living in the same miner's rows. The actual Sheriff's Court decree showed the same name, but with the word junior after it, and also noted that the individual was absent from court. A little bit of searching showed that there was a son with the same name, who had left Scotland for the US between the birth of the child and the date of the Sheriff's Court case, which was before the 1911 census was taken. I would have never identified the true father without the Sheriff's Court decree.   

[Gr8scot227]

I did some more digging and what I found may help someone.

As Dundee correctly noted, Ancestry's source was Scottish Indexes. When I went to Scottish Indexes, it turns out that they have yet to index Glasgow Paternity Decrees. Old Scottish make their own indexes from the original records and identified the court in my ancestor's case as Glasgow. So that is why I can't find the case on Ancestry, because their source hasn't indexed Glasgow yet.