Category: Scotland's People

New records added to Scotland's People

26/6/2017

Great news from Scotland's People this morning - 36,000 new records have been added to the website. The records include:

20,255 births and baptisms from 1744 to 1855
10,368 marriages and proclamations from 1729 to 1855
5,422 deaths and burials from 1783 to 1855

These records are all from dissenting churches that have subsequently rejoined the Church of Scotland. The Scotland's People news release doesn't explicitly state which new parishes/churches have been added, so we've prepared a handy list:

Abernethy Associate (Antiburgher) Congregation, Abernethy United Presbyterian, Abernethy United Free South (CH3/687) PERTH
Banff Free, Banff High United Free (CH3/1303) BANFF
Biggar Associate (Burgher), Biggar Moat Park, Biggar United Free (CH3/1248) LANARK
Campsie West United Free, Campsie Relief, Campsie United Presbyterian (CH3/1041) STIRLING
Chirnside Reformed Presbyterian, Chirnside United Free (CH3/336) BERWICK
Comrie Associate, Comrie United Presbyterian (CH3/608) PERTH
Cromarty Free Church (CH3/586) CROMARTY
Dallas Free, Dallas United Free (CH3/1131) MORAY
Dunbar East United Presbyterian (CH3/86) EAST LOTHIAN
Dunblane Leighton Associate, Dunblane United Presbyterian, Leighton United Free (CH3/90) PER
Dunfermline - St Margaret's United Free (CH3/1232) FIFE
East Kilbride Relief, East Kilbride United Presbyterian, East Kilbride West United Free (CH3/1001) LANARK
Edinburgh - Broughton Place United Associate (CH3/564) EDINBURGH CITY
Edinburgh - Corstorphine Free Church, Corstorphine United Free (CH3/514) EDINBURGH CITY
Edinburgh - Second Associate (Antiburgher), Potterrow United Presbyterian Church (CH3/117) EDINBURGH CITY
Glasgow - John Street Relief Church, John Street United Presbyterian, John Street Secession, John Street United Free (CH3/806) GLASGOW CITY
Howgate (Antiburgher) Associate Session, Howgate United Presbyterian, Howgate United Free (CH3/1363) MIDLOTHIAN
Kilmarnock (Crookedholm) Reformed Presbyterian (CH3/1318) AYR
Kirkcowan United Secession, Kirkcowan United Presbyterian, Kirkcowan United Free (CH3/871) WIGTOWN
Kirkliston Free Church, Kirkliston United Free (CH3/1008) MIDLOTHIAN
Knockbain - Munlochy Free, Knockbain United Free (CH3/1200) ROSS AND CROMARTY
Lanark - Broomgate/Bloomgate First Relief, Lanark United Presbyterian, Lanark United Free (CH3/1449) LANARK
Montrose - Second United Associate, John Street (Burgher), Montrose - John Street Associate, Montrose United Free (CH3/858) ANGUS
Newton Stewart Relief Church (CH3/246) WIGTOWN
Nigg (Antiburgher) Associate, Nigg United Secession, Nigg United Presbyterian (CH3/1433) ROSS AND CROMARTY
Paisley - Abbey Close Associate Session (CH3/465) RENFREW
Polmont Free, Polmont United Free, Polmont South, later Brightons Parish Church (CH3/1196) STIRLING
Stewarton Original Secession, Stewarton Free, Stewarton United Free (CH3/789) AYR
Thurso Associate Congregation, Thurso Original Secession (CH3/1399) CAITHNESS
Yetholm Burgher (New Light), Yetholm United Presbyterian (CH3/578) ROXBURGH

(This may not be a complete list of the new additions - we compared the new full list on the Scotland's People website to an earlier version to find the differences).

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Bug fixes to Scotland's People

20/4/2017

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The Scotland's People website was down for a couple of hours this morning, to allow the team to update the site. They've made a number of improvements, or rather fixes, to the search engine. Arguably these should have been in place when the site was relaunched in September last year, but after having regular meetings with the team behind the site over the last 6 months, we're a little more understanding of the difficulties they faced than perhaps we were at the time.

The announcement of the fixes reveals that two of the biggest grips Scottish genealogists have had with the new website have at least been fixed:

Marriage searches: finally it's now possible once again to search for a marriage using two surnames (one for the bride and one for the groom). This is a major improvement on the initial version of the revamped site, and one which genealogists will warmly welcome.
Marriage results: related to the marriage-search fix, marriage searches now show both parties' names on the results page. This is another big improvement on what went before, when you had to click on a link to get a pop-up showing the spouse's name. That was fine if there were only a few results of your search, but quickly became tedious if there were more than a few results.
Death searches: You can now search death records using an approximate birth year. This is another important change, making it far easier and a lot less hassle to find the death your looking for. We understand from our discussions with the National Records of Scotland that this was a particularly tricky problem to resolve, as the searches were behaving in unpredictable ways. This problem now appears to have been resolve successfully.
Search forms: The labels and column headings have been improved.
Return to image view: After reporting a problem with an image, you are returned to the image you were viewing at the time. A minor change, but any improvement in the page flow should be welcomed.
Divorce and dissolutions: A gender field has been added.

There are a couple of quirks arising from the changes. Marriage searches may produce duplicate entries - at first glance this seems to happen where one of the parties has alternative versions of her/his name. It's a fairly minor inconvenience, greatly outweighed by the new display of both parties' names. Perhaps of some concern is the National Records of Scotland's statement that "for the majority of searches this will have a successful result" - presumably this means that some searches may produce a false-negative (in other words, the system might tell you there isn't a match when there is one). A little more clarity on this statement would be welcome.

Another consequence of the multiple results for the same marriage is that sorting the search results by "spouse surname" doesn't quite behave as you might expect. We've not done enough testing on the new interface to be sure, but the new system appears to group all results for the same marriage together.

These are however minor quibbles. The changes introduced are a major improvement to search functionality, and we'd like to thank the team at NRS for their hard work in fixing bugs.

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Scotland's People update

27/2/2017

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We've written before about the revamped Scotland's People site, and some of the problems and bugs we found. (See for instance here, here, here and here.) Over the last few months, the staff at the National Records of Scotland and their contractor have been working to resolve the various problems, posting regular updates on their progress.

Over the weekend, we noticed for the first time that one of our particular bugbears has been fixed. When the site first relaunched, the default file names for images were simply date stamps - not very helpful if like us you download large numbers of images. Now when you save an image, the file name defaults to a useful name that incorporates the reference number for the record, making it much easier to keep track of your images.

To clarify this, one image we bought over the weekend for a client was automatically given the following filename:

ScotlandsPeople_C1841_898_00_007_000_2_007Z

Using this filename, you can identify the following information:

record type (C = census)
the year (1841)
the parish/registration district (898 = Stoneykirk)
the enumeration district (7)
the page number (also 7)

This is a fairly minor change, but makes keeping track of the records you buy from Scotland's People much easier, and we would like to thank the NRS for making this change. Our sources at National Records of Scotland tell us that other fixes/improvements will be coming shortly, so keep an eye on the updates page on Scotland's People.

It's always important to remember, though, that not all records are available online. We've published hundreds of thousands of Scottish records not on Scotland's People, and visit the National Records of Scotland regularly. If you're looking for information in these offline records, why not ask if we can help?

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Technical Issues on Scotland's People

2/10/2016

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We've already discussed some of the teething problems of the new Scotland's People website, which was launched this week. Clearly the staff at Scotland's People are listening, because they've acknowledged at least some of the problems. They've also accepted that some of the features of the old site which have been removed will likely be reinstated.

Some people have been having problems logging in to the new site - new help pages have been added to help resolve this issue
Some deaths in church registers are showing an age of 131. This should be taken to mean that there is no age stated in the index (although it may be given in the actual record).
The spouse's name search option in the church marriage registers search is not working. "Please do not use this field in searching or filtering for the time being."
The new site uses a single surname variant algorithm (which is actually a great improvement on the old soundex system), but it's not currently working for some surnames
The image viewer isn't working for some devices and internet browsers - if this is happening to you, let them know your combination of device and browser version.
For saved images, they are looking to make the filter system work on the image header as well as the "Description" field. This is really important to us - we have thousands of images saved, and the ability to filter them by the image header (which crucially includes the name of the person in the record) is essential. Manually adding descriptions to these images would be very time consuming.

They're also asking people to report other search problems. It's great that they are listening, although one of the major search issues - searching for the death of say a married woman using both surnames is still not working and has not been acknowledged (we've described it here).

Meanwhile, we're in the Scotland's People Centre regularly - if you can't find what you're looking for on the Scotland's People website, we may be able to help.

(You can read the full announcement from Scotland's People here)

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September 29th, 2016

29/9/2016

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The new Scotland's People website launched yesterday, and there are some great new features (we'll be writing more about them shortly), and most importantly, some extremely useful new record sets. Eventually it will be a major improvement on the old version, but we've had some misadventures when searching. So far we've found what appear to be four different bugs in the search engine:

The date filters for at least some of the new baptismal registers weren't working last night (see here). To give them credit, their twitter person promised to look into this today.
The allocation of some districts to counties isn't working properly (Angus and Forfarshire are effectively the same county) - see here.
Cross-referencing of surnames in marriages doesn't appear to be working. In my own family, I have a William Smith married a Cecilia Deas in Leslie, Fife, in 1875. Cecilia's certainly in the index:

So is William, the second entry in this list:

The Reference and entry numbers are the same, showing that these index entries refer to the same event (which I already knew, I have a copy of the certificate). The search is supposed to allow you to search for a marriage record using both surnames. But when I tried to do so, this is what came up:

Similarly, if you search for a death with two surnames - a standard tactic for finding the death of a woman who married, who should be indexed under both surnames - the search returns index entries that match *either* surname, rather than *both* surnames. My great-great grandmother, Elizabeth Smith, married John Mathieson. From other sources, I know she was alive in 1901, but was dead by 1937. So what happens if I run a search on both surnames?

2643 matches! Quite a lot to trawl through. Now what happens if I search for her under just one of the surnames?

Given that 2493 + 60 = 2553, what the search engine does when you search for a death with two surnames is return all index entries that match either surname. Potentially a useful option in some cases, but not very practical at all in this case. I'm sure Scotland's People will fix these quickly, but just be warned, the search results may not be quite what you're used to.

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Where exactly is Coupar Angus?

29/9/2016

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Coupar Angus is a pleasant little town, with a slightly complicated geography. It's generally accepted that it's mostly in Perthshire, but partly also in Forfarshire/Angus. I say generally, because it seems the new Scotland's People website has a third option - it's in neither.

The clipping above shows what happens when you search for deaths in Coupar Angus in 1855-1890. There are quite a few, a little under 70 a year. (The actual number will be somewhat lower, because married women are indexed under their maiden names and married names.)

But were these deaths in Angus or Perthshire?

Not in Perthshire, apparently, so presumably they were in Angus:

Oh. So where was Coupar Angus?

Somebody's got some county-coding mixed up ...

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Now you see them, now you don't

28/9/2016

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The new - and slightly delayed - version of the Scotland's People website went live this afternoon. The new records added are obviously more than welcome, but something strange happens when you search the records.

This is what you see when you search for ROBERTSON in one of the new record sets - Bon Accord Free Church baptisms in Aberdeen (NRS Ref: CH3/874/15) - with no dates specified (see the top line of this image for the search parameters):

You'll notice that the 4 entries are dated between 1849 and 1854. Now watch what happens when you search in the same register for Robertsons born between 1849 and 1854:

I *think* what's happened is that the baptism dates are not being mapped properly on to the birth date search parameters, but I can't be certain. It's certainly not limited to one record set. The same thing happens when you search in the Kinclaven Associate Session, often referred to as Kirk o' the Muir (NRS Ref CH3/502/2).

I don't think it should be too difficult to fix this problem, but I'd really have expected this to be picked up in testing.

Have you tried the new Scotland's People website? What are your impressions?

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Scotland's People relaunched

28/9/2016

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After several unplanned delays, the new-look Scotland's People website went live this afternoon. There are a few changes worth noting:

indexes are now free to search - before they cost 1 credit for up to 25 results. This is a great improvement, something many people (including us) have been lobbying NRS to introduce for some time
a large collection of non-Church of Scotland registers has been added - these are Protestant churches that rejoined the Church of Scotland up to 1929, mostly Free Church and United Presbyterian Church congregations
other new records include civil partnerships (from 2005), divorces (from 1984) and dissolutions (from 2007)
the site now has an image library. This appears to be fairly small so far (739 images) and they cost £30 each. I suspect this one will be expanded over time, but I'm not sure how many people will pay that price
credits now cost £7.50 for 30 (an increase of 50p)
images of Statutory Registers, census returns and old parish registers now cost 6 credits, compared to 5 credits before. This means that these images have gone up from £1.16 to £1.50. The free index searches will offset some of this increase though.
the search interface has changed and will probably take some getting used to.

Overall, though, I'd say this looks like a reasonably positive development, especially for people with a common surname (trust me, I'm a Smith!)

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Scotland's People website down next week

16/9/2016

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The Scotland's People website will be down from 23.59 (BST) on Wednesday 21st September until Monday 26 September. This is due to preparatory work for the launch of the new version of the website, which is due to go live soon. Service in the Scotland's People centre in Edinburgh and the local family history centres around Scotland will be unaffected.

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Scotland's People website downtime delayed

6/9/2016

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We've just received an email from Scotland's People:

Last month we contacted you to let you know that our website would be unavailable from Wednesday 7 September 2016 until Monday 12 September 2016. We are writing to let you know that this site downtime has now been postponed to a future date. We will confirm the new dates as soon as possible.

We would like to thank you for your continued patience as we work towards launching a new ScotlandsPeople website. You will be pleased to note that once the new site is launched, all of your credits and saved images from our existing site will be available and accessible.

Looks like the relaunch of the website might have been delayed. Presumably this is as a result of issues detected during testing (which has been going on for some months). Better to iron out problems during the testing phase than after the relaunch.

We're looking forward to the relaunched site as some interesting new features are due to be added. Hopefully the new site won't be delayed too much.

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An Old Scottish Blog

New records added to Scotland's People

Bug fixes to Scotland's People

Scotland's People update

Technical Issues on Scotland's People

September 29th, 2016

Where exactly is Coupar Angus?

Now you see them, now you don't

Scotland's People relaunched

Scotland's People website down next week

Scotland's People website downtime delayed

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