Treasures you won't always find on the web

Published on Monday 6 November 2006 11:17

SOMEONE once described the internet as the world's greatest library. It is, and it will continue to expand. But there are millions of books not on its shelves – and they include many gems for the ancestor hunter. They can be found not on your personal computer but in the reference library or at your local branch.

Let's start with sources on individuals you have tracked down. Of course many of our ancestors will have strolled from cradle to grave without getting into print. But it's surprising how many do get a mention.

Schools

Many of Scotland's schools have kept rolls of those who attended and some have published these in book form. For the genealogist, the information varies from the disappointing to the mouth-watering. Just take a look at this page taken at random from the rolls of Aberdeen Grammar School. (All files can be opened with Acrobat Reader.)

Where will you find such books? Primarily in the city reference libraries or in the local libraries in the area you are searching. And the photocopying facilities that are always available will make the information "portable".

Universities

Scots have been lucky with their universities. While England had to make do with two until the 1850s, Scotland had St Andrews, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen (with two of its own!). A high proportion of Scots attended university and - if you haven't discovered it already - the rolls will let you track them down and maybe learn some details of what they studied.

Again, look at this page from Glasgow University.

The Professions

A large number of Scottish family trees will show doctors and lawyers, churchmen and financiers. In all these cases there are good professional records. And don't just try the public libraries. The professional associations – The Royal College of Surgeons, its counterpart for Physicians, The Law Society - all have good specialised libraries. The individual banks and insurance companies might also be able to help.The Tradesmen

The professions were not the only ones to be covered. Directories were regularly produced for all the large communities listing not just landowners and farmers and professionals but a host of small businesses from shoemakers to bonnet weavers, cow-feeders to innkeepers. These, the Yellow Pages of the 18th and 19th centuries, are available at the big libraries and in the local libraries for the area they cover. Interestingly, ancestry.com has a trawl of a large number of British directories which may short-cut the process for you.

The Church

Thanks to the Church of Scotland's favouring of matrimony for its ministers as well as its flock, the sons and daughters of the manse crop up regularly in family research. Give thanks when you come across some, for the Church records of its servants is without equal. The great Fasti Ecclesiae Scotiae details the many ministers ordained and tracks down their movements throughout the country.

See a typical page from the Fasti.

If God's shepherds are well documented, the flock is no less well covered. Many of the session books of the Church of Scotland have been transcribed and published and can be found in bigger libraries. Not every parishioner gets a mention but a fair number of them had their deeds and particularly their sexual peccadilloes noted.

The Statistical Account

Not strictly a Church document, the great Statistical Account of 1792 must be mentioned here because its data gatherers the Church of Scotland ministers.

At a time when people believed that everything could be measured and scientifically studied, Sir John Sinclair decided to record Scotland. Church ministers, being literate and ubiquitous, provided the raw material to Sir John's template. Most large Scottish libraries hold copies and - as most of you will establish just where in Scotland your ancestors were living around 1800 - you can get a fascinating pen picture of the parish in which they lived.

Novels

We often overlook one juicy source of material – the works of fiction. In the case of my own Welsh roots, for example, I have got the feel of the lives of my father's ancestors from How Green Was My Valley by Richard Llewellyn (1939) and of my mother's from Rape of the Fair Country by Alexander Cordell (1959). And when they were growing up, they shared a Scottish doctor called Archibald Joseph Cronin, who set his first blockbuster, The Citadel (1937), in my home town.

You Scots are incredibly well off for novels covering the whole country. No one with roots in the Mearns should miss Lewis Grassick Gibbons, and the scorned Kailyard writers have much to stimulate the imagination of ancestor hunters. There is no end to the chances here. If your folk were evacuees in the Second World War, get Robin Jenkins's Guests of War (1956). If they worked in the shipyards of the Clyde, try George Blake's The Shipbuilders (1935). And so on, ad infinitum...

If you enjoyed reading this, you may want to read:

Using the web to track your ancestors