COLLINS TRACING YOUR SCOTTISH FAMILY HISTORY

Written by Anthony Adolph

One of Family History Monthly's Top Ten Books of 2008: "Adolph triumphs here with a clear and accessible guide to Scottish research”

This book has been written to mark the 250th anniversary in 2009 of the birth of Robert Burns, the Ploughman Poet, whose words captured the spirit of the Scottish nation. His anniversary year has been declared Scotland’s Homecoming Year. Homecoming Year’s organizers aim to encourage Scots all over the world to come back to visit, and, presumably, to assure them of a homely welcome when they do.

To come home you need to know where you come from. Underpinning Homecoming Year is genealogy, the study of family trees or pedigrees, and its associated discipline of family history, the study of the stories behind the pedigrees. In many countries, computerisation of records has rocketed genealogy from a minority interest into an immensely popular obsession. But in Scotland, knowing your roots is nothing new. Right back in the 16th century, the French joked of any Scotsman they encountered ‘that man is the cousin of the king of the Scots’, for that was what he would surely claim. A rather more cynical view was penned in the mid-18th century by Charles Churchill (1731-1764), in his ‘Prophecy of Famine’:

Two boys, whose birth beyond all question springs
From great and glorious, tho’ forgotten kings,
Shepherds of Scottish lineage, born and bred
On the same bleak and barren mountain’s head…

Sarcastic, yes, but accurate, for many of the widespread Lowland families and Highland clans were indeed founded by scions of Scotlands’ ruling dynasties, be they in origin Pict, Briton, Gael, Viking or Norman. And such knowledge was not lost, especially in the Gaelic-speaking parts, when ancestors’ names were remembered through the sloinneadh, the patronymic or pedigree, in which two or more – often many – generations of ancestors’ names were recited, and which was a natural part of everyone’s sense of identity.

Such essential knowledge was threatened, diluted and sometimes lost by movement, whether to other parts of Scotland or over the seas in the white-sailed ships. Where it persisted, it results in many people, not just in Scotland but all over the world, being able to point at a particular spot on the map of Scotland and say ‘that is home’.

This book is for those who can’t do that yet, or who can but want to learn more. Many aspects of genealogy, such as DNA and nonconformity, can seem terribly complicated, and some specific elements of Scottish genealogy (such as services of heirs, wadsetts and precepts of clare constat) seem to have been designed purposely to intimidate the feint-hearted. And, given the great amount of contradictory information flying about, does your Scottish surname actually indicate that you belong to a clan, or may wear a tartan, or doesn’t it?

This book has been created to guide you through these issues, to develop a much fuller understanding of your Scottish Family History, and to find your own way back, so to speak, to your Scottish home.

CONTENTS:

GETTING STARTED
How to start your family tree
Archives and Organisations
Scotland’s names
Know your parish

THE MAIN RECORDS
General Registration
Censuses
Church registers
Religious denominations in Scotland
Testaments, deeds and other useful records
How they lived
What people did
The burghs
Land holders
Farmers and crofters
Clans and tartans

COMINGS AND GOINGS
Emigration
The origins of Scotland’s people
Genetic evidence

REVIEWS

".. Adolph triumphs here with a clear and accessible guide to Scottish research. All the major, and minor, sources are included and there is plenty of information for beginners on how to use them, whether starting their reserch in Scotland or as a member of the considerable Scottish diaspora. There is plenty for the casual reader here too, inclusing a treatment of the legendary origins of the Scottish clans and the romantic history of the Highlands that injects a bit of life and excitement into the book. Its Yuletime release should ensure that it will end up in many Scottish researchers' stockings come Christmas morning. And rightly so!" - Sarah Warwick, Family History Monthly, Christmas 2008, p. 73.

“..witty yet informative...” The Middleton & North Manchester Guardian, 13 November 2008, p. 39