Using Sasines to Research Your Scottish Family History

Dumfries High Street

Scottish Property Records or Sasines (pronounced 'say-zin') can be a great way to trace your family tree: if your ancestors had property.

When property was transferred through purchase or inheritance a legal document called a sasine was created. As well as telling you where the property or land was they also give the ‘designation’ of the old and new owners. If the transfer is between family members this is particularly useful but even if it’s between unrelated people the clues can help you piece together your family story.

The great thing is that from 1781 Scottish sasine records are indexed. The register begins in 1609 and some counties have indexes before 1780 (there are some records before 1609 but they are incomplete). With the exception of burgh registers the sasines have digitally imaged by the National Records of Scotland.

National Records of Scotland

Obviously until the 20st century most Scottish families did not own property so this is not a resource that is universally useful. If your family did own property though the sasines are definitely worth consulting. You can read more about sasines on the National Records of Scotland website or get in touch and we can search them for you.

Scottish Adoption Records

The National Records of Scotland

One of our Frequently Asked Questions is: How can I locate adoption records? It comes as a surprise to many people that until 1930 there was no formal adoption process in Scotland. Formal adoption records are closed for 100 years but if you are the child concerned you can access your own records. See the National Records of Scotland’s website for details.

In most cases people ask us about adoption records because they have been researching their family tree and discovered that their ancestor was orphaned at a young age, raised by someone and record these ‘adoptive’ parents as their parents on a marriage certificate or other record.

In many cases the arrangements for an orphaned child were done on a private basis, perhaps the child was taken in by a relative, friend or neighbour. In some cases children were ‘boarded out’. These are usually cases where a child would have been in the poorhouse but rather the parish arranged for a local woman to care for young children, what we would call foster care today. Of course some children did end up in the poorhouse if there was nobody to care for them.

If this has happened to your ancestor, you may well want to find out more about the situation. Poor records are often the place to start. You can find a comprehensive list here, click the link ‘Records_of_the_Scottish_Poor.pdf’. This list, created by Scottish genealogist Kirsty Wilkinson will tell you which records exist and where to find them.

If you need any help get in touch and we’ll see how we can help you.

Scottish Handwriting

We genealogists (amateur and professional) have all experienced the joy of finally locating the document we need. Whether it’s online or in an archive, that sense of joy and achievement can soon dissipate when you open the document to realise you cannot read a single page. You may even be sitting there wondering what language it is in!

Never fear, help is at hand! www.scottishhandwriting.com is a free website to help you learn how to read Scottish handwriting from the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries. The free tutorial you will find on this website will help you learn to read older documents. There are tests so that you can see how well you are doing and helpful background information so that you can understand what you are reading. 

Of course if you are still struggling, get in touch and we can help you out with sections of a document or make a full transcription for you: www.scottishindexes.com

Scottish Roman Catholic Parish Records

You can now access Scottish Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms, Marriages and Burials on FindMyPast. These have been available on ScotlandsPeople for a while but for those of us with the British subscription package to FindMyPast these Catholic records will be included in our existing package.

If you’re researching on a budget it’s worth asking if FindMyPast or other sites are available through your local library. One library they are available in is the National Library of Scotland. Also FindMyPast offer a free trial so this could be a great time to start tracing your Scottish family tree.

If you’ve been researching your family tree but you’re a little stuck, come to us and we can help you get over the brick wall and get your research back on track.

Scottish Kirk Sessions

The biggest problem I have in my work is that I am way too easily distracted! Here is an example. I was searching the Tongland Kirk Session Minutes (CH2/1244/2) in the National Records of Scotland the other day and found this very interesting entry from 2 September 1869:

Voluntarily compeared Ann Bird or Morton wife of Joseph Bird, Sailor who confessed that in the month of October last she gave birth to a child in uncleanness, she having been married in the month of July previous: On being admonished to be ingenuous and to speak the truth, she declared that Jonathan Turner was the partner of her guilt and the father of her child. Her husband Joseph Bird is known to bear testimony corroborative of the statement, and although disowning the paternity of the child has adopted it as his own. Having been solemnly admonished by the Moderator she was absolved from scandal.

Tongland Kirk

A search in the birth records found the birth certificate of the unnamed child. James Morton (or Bird) was born on 1 October 1865, and it is column 4 of his birth certificate which is the most interesting. Column 4 on a Scottish birth certificate gives the ‘Name, Surname, & Rank or Profession of Father, Name, and Maiden Surname of Mother And Date and Place of Marriage’. In this column on James’ birth certificate we read: “Ann Morton, married on 22nd July last to Joseph Baird, sailor who she declares is not the father of the child, & further that he was at sea for Months prior to 18 July 1868.”

A search in the census of 1871 shows that James (aged 2) was living with his maternal grandparents. I’ve not traced this family any further as I really should be doing research for clients but if you are related I would love to hear from you.

What do we learn from this? It is important to look at as many records as possible to get a full picture of what’s going on within a family, which can take effort. Historic Scottish birth certificates are available online but Kirk Session records are not (yet). For the time being you can access them in Edinburgh and various satellite locations around Scotland, including archives in Hawick, Aberdeen, Kilmarnock and Glasgow. There are other archives who also have access to the digital images, it’s worth checking with the National Records of Scotland to see if an archive near you has access.

The fact that the Church of Scotland Kirk Sessions are digitised is a great help but there is as yet no index to most of these minutes. Having said that, I wouldn’t have found this entry if I had used an index, when you browse a volume interesting entries jump out at you. If your family is from a small to medium-sized parish in terms of population, and you have access to the digital images, I would recommend browsing the volumes; who knows what you will discover!

Scotland's Community Heritage Conference 2016

We recently attended Scotland's Community Heritage Conference 2016 in Aberdeen. It was a great day so I want to tell you a little about it.

We genealogists (professional or hobbyists) approach research looking at the people. First we gather names and dates, then we start to think about their lives. We met many people at the conference who work from the other direction, they focus on a community, thinking first about people’s lives then perhaps looking at the individual people. This means that these are the people we need to contact once we have our lists of people and dates! This is particularly true if you are planning a trip to Scotland to research your family history and have a limited time here.

One of my favorite talks of the day was given by Lorna Summers of the Portsoy Salmon Bothy. Laura has worked hard in Portsoy to not only tell the story of Portsoy Harbour but also make history live. Within the renovated bothy is a museum but they also have a lot of events going on which bring the fishing industry to life for young and old alike. The highlight of the calendar is the The Annual Scottish Traditional Boat Festival. If your ancestors were involved in the fishing industry this would be a great place to get a feel for what their life was really like.

Before lunch we experienced ‘One-Minute Mayhem: 60-second presentations against the clock. If you have met me you may well imagine that I was tempted to join in but at the same time I did have to think about what I was going to say. Jean Shirer, our dear friend from the Aberdeen Family History Society, stood up and did an excellent presentation and so I raised my hand and followed in her footsteps. Graham recorded my 60-second presentation so you can judge for yourself how well I did!

At lunchtime there were some tours on offer, we opted for the St. Mary’s Chapel and Mither Kirk Project and the Aberdeen Archives tour. To be honest I did not know what to expect on the first tour, we had time so we went but I had done no research; we were amazed. As you can see from the photos this old church (now in trust) has been excavated and an archaeological dig has taken place. It was clear to see the remains of previous churches and graves, burials from before the time our research often takes us. As we stood looking at the bones stuck in the wall (in places they had been used as rubble when the building was redesigned) it reminded me that when we see a gravestone or a death certificates these are very very real people! One of the amazing objects to be found was a scallop shell, a pilgrim token from Santiago de Compostela, Spain! There are various open days so if you are in Aberdeen I can definitely recommend that you visit and see the place for yourself.

After lunch Amy McDonald from the National Library of Scotland gav a talk called, “Connecting Scotland’s Sounds”. She played Scottish fiddle music taken from a wax cylinder of 1909! To be able to hear something your ancestors created and/or listened to brings a whole new dimension to your family history! You can follow Amy and the team on twitter to learn more about preserving and sharing Scotland's sound heritage!

All in all it was a great day and hopefully there will be a similar event next year.

Life in the Asylum

There is no denying that asylums across Scotland varied greatly in the mid-nineteenth century. Some details that were published in the 1857 Royal Commission Report are quite sobering. Some accounts however are quite encouraging. I like the entry for Miss Campbell's House:

"MISS CAMPBELL'S HOUSE, MUSSELBURGH; Visited 2d May 1855.

A good house, in a garden. There is only one patient, an old lady, who has been here many years. She was out walking, accompanied by an attendant, when the visit was made. On a second visit she was seen, and appeared to be comfortable, and properly taken care of."

By searching our index for all entries for “Miss Campbell's House” we see that Miss F. Gordon entered the asylum on 9 December 1812, it’s nice to know that she was so well cared for. The full entry in the General Register tells us that Miss F. Gordon died in August 1869.

There are many surviving records for our ancestors who were admitted to Scottish asylums. The national series of records show the date of admission, some background information and when the person died or otherwise left the asylum. The records of individual institutions, now often deposited in local archives, can give details on treatment and sometimes even contain photographs.

From the new section of our website you can read about each Scottish mental health institution, locate it on a map and in most cases find out where the records are now held. We update our database regularly so keep checking back to see what new records we have indexed.