Scottish Census on Findmypast and Ancestry

[Alexander Bisset]

I was somewhat confused to see the article on Scottish Census records on Findmypast and Ancestry in the latest newsletter (Feb 2014). The Scottish census records have been available as part of a UK subscription on Ancestry for at least 6 years and on Findmypast for at least 3 years. The 1881 census has been on Family Search for at least 12 years.

The difference between these census searches and Scotland's people is simply that on Scotland's people you get to see the actual census image scan and can download it and save it to your computer for 5 credits (£1.20). Typically the indexes are sufficient but they do miss useful information such as married/single/widowed and often the addresses on Ancestry in particular are a complete nonsense eg: mis-spelt place names.

 

[SarahLC]

Also, I believe that the 1911 Scottish Census is only available on Scotland's People and not elsewhere. Like you, I have been searching the 1841-1901 Scottish censuses for years on Ancestry and Findmypast. Even with the sometimes frustrating, but often amusing gibberish in the addresses and occupations, the search on Ancestry is flexible enough to find people most of the time. Then, if it's important, it is easy to find the image on Scotland's People.

 

[peter]

I was somewhat confused to see the article on Scottish Census records on Findmypast and Ancestry in the latest newsletter (Feb 2014). The Scottish census records have been available as part of a UK subscription on Ancestry for at least 6 years and on Findmypast for at least 3 years. The 1881 census has been on Family Search for at least 12 years.

Indeed, you do seem to be somewhat confused, Alexander - the Scotland 1881 census has only recently arrived at the FamilySearch website as part of their collaboration with findmypast. Whilst FamilySearch co-ordinated the first transcription of Scotland 1881 it has only ever appeared online at Scotlandspeople. Whilst the England & Wales 1881 census was online at FamilySearch from c2003, Scotland 1881 was only available as part of a CD ROM set.

I don't know precisely when Ancestry added the Scottish censuses (though I can tell you that it was less than 2 years ago that findmypast added the 1881-1901 censuses), but clearly a lot of people haven't noticed because members with Scottish ancestry have, on average, entered less than half as many relatives from 1881 on their My Ancestors page as those with English ancestry. Many haven't entered anyone at all from their collateral lines, even though those are the relatives most likely to lead to 'lost cousins'.

My aim is for members with Scottish ancestry to have just as high a chance of finding cousins as those with English ancestry - and that's why I wrote the article. It might be old news to some of us, but we're not the ones the article was intended for.

 

[Alexander Bisset]

Ah of course the CD Rom Set. I have that and indeed that's what I was searching for many years. I know the Scottish census has been on Ancestry for at least 6 years as I've got entries sourced with Ancestry sources dated from 2007. The FindmyPast census entries have been gradually introduced over the past 3-4 years. I believe they started with the 1841 census. My subscription has been lapsed for 2 years gone October on findmypast and I had a subscription for 2 years in a row having first taken out a subscription when I noted saw address searchable census records, ie: you can put in a parish/district name and get everything in that ED. Hence it has been 3-4 years on Findmypast since the Scottish census (at least 2-3 of them) have been available.

The confusion was that the article sounded like it was something new rather than a reminder that this was available.

 

[chrispaton]

There has been a big issue with FindmyPast's Scottish censuses over the last while - it's source citation info on the UK site is occasionally poor, with references such as 644/1 occasionally being rendered as 6441, and with irritating gaffs such as using terminology used to describe English and Welsh returns, as sourced from and catalogued by the National Archives, to describe Scottish records - but with the overseas version of FMP (US, Ireland and Australasia) the references are complete gobbledigook, bizarrely citing non-existent Scottish RG numbers.

An example is with my 2 x gt grandfather William H Paton in 1871, located at Blackford, Perthshire. The source for his entry:
i) According to FMP.com (US): "Archive Reference RG10, enumeration district 2". Huh?
ii) According to FMP.co.uk (UK) "Piece 333, Folio 2, page 16" - Scottish censuses don't use folio numbers and pieces for their citation.
iii) According to Ancestry - "Registration number 333, ED 2, page 16, line 1" - The correct description is almost given here, except 'registration number' should be 'registration district' - but beyond that, a much better effort than FMP.

Transcripts on Ancestry are definitely duff though, and tend to be better on FMP, but you can still find poor transcriptions on both. In the above example again, William's birth place on FMP is given as "West Church Porth"; on Ancestry it is brilliantly noted as "Ka??ch Perth, Perthshire". It is actually West Church, Perth. And that's why it is worth paying to see the original on ScotlandsPeople, or on microfilm, where possible. All are on microfilm up to 1901 - 1911 is not on microfilm, it was only digitally imaged.

You'll also find Scottish censuses from 1841-1891 on FamilySearch, as Peter says, but they are next to useless to use - limited info is presented and it is difficult to locate who else is in the same household. The source info is limited also - you get the Registration District name and the county (so for the above, Blackford, Perthshire), and a GS number, which is a Genealogical Society of Utah microfilm number. The citation given by FS at the bottom of the entry is as follows:

"Scotland Census, 1871,"index, FamilySearch accessed 13 Mar 2014), William H Paton, Blackford, Perthshire, Scotland; citing "1871 England, Scotland & Wales census," index, findmypast.co.uk( : Brightsolid, 2012.); PRO T 1, p. 16, New Register House, Edinburgh; FHL microfilm 104072"

Again, that looks duff to me, as I think PRO refers to the Public Record Office, the old name for the National Archives at Kew, but it does give the page number in addition to the above (not sure what T1 refers to), and does say the material has been obtained from New Register House in Edinburgh, where the National Records of Scotland is based (formerly the National Archives of Scotland, and before that known as the Scottish Record Office).

The LDS CD data transcripts from 1881 do exist in database format on ScotlandsPeople (where household entries are only a credit to view) - and also once very briefly on the FamilySearch itself. They mistakenly uploaded the data into their English and Welsh census collection in 2011, and removed it just as quick! (see here).