We’re settling in to our new home at Scottish Indexes (www.scottishindexes.co.uk). It’s
been amazing to hear all of your comments and compliments on the new site –
we’re so excited about our new venture and it’s lovely to hear that you are
too!
Having got our breath back a bit, we thought now would be a
nice time to discuss why we made the change, and what the new site offers. Questions
and comments are always welcome – contact us here or join us on Facebook or Twitter to
have a natter.
Even while up to his ears in dusty documents, Graham has always
recognised the possibilities of modern technologies to help make your ancestral
research easier. Cast your mind back to those far off days when the internet moved
at the pace of a decrepit sloth, access was billed by the minute and plugging
in the internet immediately meant you’d miss the phone call you’d been waiting
for all day. Our founder Graham Maxwell, undeterred, created his own website http://web.archive.org/web/20000816164141/http://website.lineone.net/~family.history/
(catchy URL, we know!)
This first website Graham had is listed in the guide,
“Cyndi's List: A Comprehensive List of 70,000 Genealogy Sites on the internet,
Volume 2” (2001 edition).
Back then, Graham focused on
researching the ancestors of individual clients to create family trees. This
involved regular trips to Edinburgh to painstakingly search documents such as
the census - there were few indexes in those days. It wasn’t long before Graham
moved his site to http://maxwells.freeserve.co.uk/. There’s still a version online – looking
back it is very basic and quite embarrassing but at the time we were quite
proud of it!
Genealogist Emma joined the business in 2001 and together
the husband and wife team created www.maxwellancestry.com in 2006. Intended to
provide a clearer service to their clients, the website showcased not only
research services but also the printed indexes which the company had already
made available, mostly consisting of many South of Scotland census records from
1841, 1851 and 1861. As technology moved on, companies like Ancestry,
Scotland'sPeople and FreeCEN started offering immediate online
access to the census. Graham and Emma updated their website, adding a
searchable census database with free access without subscription. Since then
our online database of indexes has grown enormously, with a variety of records
from around Scotland.
Today many people want to trace their family tree for
themselves rather than enlisting a professional to do it for them. We totally
understand the thrill of engaging in your own ancestral research, so while we
still offer a full research package we’re also here to offer our expert advice and research assistance to
those who simply need a little help along the way. As genealogists, Graham and
Emma know that basic sources such as the census and birth, marriage and death entries can only take you so far. Records like prison registers, court registers and health records can tell you much more about the real people in
your family tree.
This is why Graham and Emma are launching a new website www.scottishindexes.com.
Since the early days we’ve often found it easier to index records than to return
to the physical copies again and again. By making such records more widely
available we hope to make genealogical research simpler for amateurs and
professionals alike. We're keen to make ancestral research as affordable as possible so that everyone has the opportunity to discover more about their past. On the website, you can search intuitively across a broad
range of records, deepen your understanding of Scottish genealogy resources in
the learning zone and buy books from the bookshop. We’re always standing by
though, so you can get help when you need it from expert Scottish genealogists.
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