FLHIG

Family and Local History
Indexing Group

Selected articles from the Newsletter

This article first appeared in SIGGNL 14   (February 1997)

Indexing of Scottish Records
by Margaret Shand

Introduction

The indexing of primary sources such as the Census, is aimed at assisting family historians to locate their ancestors.  Therefore names of persons and places are of greatest importance, and accuracy is a paramount consideration.  Using a computer database, however, imposes one or two constraints, which I will deal with later.

Area of interest

My main field of interest is the county of Banffshire, including two parishes which have alternated between, or are divided between Banffshire and Aberdeenshire or Moray; and one parish (St Fergus) which is not contiguous, but which was included in Banffshire in 1851.  Both 1851 and 1861 censuses have been completed, and some parishes in 1841 and 1891.  The county's economy was mostly rural or seafaring.  [Fishing and pastoral pursuits and the quarrying of slate and marble are carried on: World Pictorial Gazetteer & Atlas, circa 1930 - Ed] There are only four large centres of population - Buckie, Banff, Macduff and Keith.  Smaller centres include Dufftown, Portsoy, Gardenstown and Aberchirder.  An index of the burials in Gamrie parish, and some sections of the Old Parish Registers of Gamrie and Mortlach have also been completed.  The latter include the names of witnesses to baptisms.

Equipment 

All indexing is done on a Macintosh computer, using the MicroSoft Works database.  At first the small 512k model was used: this was soon found to be too small, and now indexing is done on a Classic II with a hard drive.  This, too, is ancient in terms of technology, but as long as it serves the purpose, it will do.  The other piece of equipment is a hand-held microfilm reader manufactured by the Federation of Family History Societies.  This slots into a home-made aluminium stand for 1891 and 1891 censuses and the Old Parish Registers, as they have to be read horizontally.  For the others, the microfilm reader sits on top of a pile of books to raise its height, in order to prevent too much neck-ache!  A sixty-watt light bulb illuminates the film.

Method 

For census indexing, nine fields are created for the database: place, name, rel (relationship to the head of the household), marriage status, age, occupation, birthplace, enumeration book number, page.  These coincide with the headings on the census page itself.  Each computer screen hold thirteen lines, and each enumeration book (for the 1851 census) holds twenty-five.  After completing each page of the enumeration book, the entries are checked and counted so that none is missed.

When a census is complete, it can be manipulated in any way desired, for instance to produce a surname index.  Various occupations can be extracted, and a place- name index can be created.  With the 1851 census, I extracted the name, age and birth-place, and forwarded the information (in hard copy - six inches thick of it!) to the Aberdeen and North East Scotland FHS, and they are publishing it in eight volumes.  I followed this up with the full transcription on computer disc, enabling the Society to reorganise the information into various groups of parishes.  For the other indexes, I have merely forwarded a transcript in database form on disk, and the Society is printing these for the use of researchers in their Family History Shop.  Recently, I have been sending transcripts to Aberdeen by e-mail in a matter of seconds.

Conventions 

Initially, as I was compiling an entire county index for the census of 1851, and as the computer files alphabetically letter by letter, I made all surnames beginning with Mc or Mac begin the same way - with Mac.  I believe that the fewer sequences researches have to consult, the better.  However, for surnames such as Stuart/Stewart, Morison/Morrison, Thomson/Thompson, I transcribed them exactly as written in the original text.

Another convention, which may be somewhat controversial, is the customisation of some female Christian names, where the spelling used by the enumerators was erratic.  This, too, was done to reduce the number of sequences, especially as in this part of Scotland, there are very many people with the same surname, and there was not a great variety in Christian names.  For example, there were very many Helen Watts, Margaret Gordons, and Isabel Grants.  The names customised were Jannet/Janet; Hellen/Helen; Elisabeth/Elizabeth; Margret/Margaret; Isobel/Isabel.  Male Christian names were spelled with greater consistency.  The only contraction I used was Alex for Alexander, and where the enumerator had used contractions such as Jn or Wm I used the name in full.

As I did not have a field in the database denoting the sex of a person, in a few cases where a Christian name was not obviously male or female, I specified which it was in brackets: for example, GRANT, Primrose (male).  Where a wife's maiden name was given in the 1851 census, I made a separate entry under that name.  Where tee-names or by-names were given, I included this in inverted commas after the name: for example, SMITH, George "Laird".  Where a title was included - Rev, Mr, Mrs, Esq - I placed this after the Christian name, as these distinctions were important in Victorian times: for example, SMITH, John Esq.

I used "?" where anything was not clear.  Very occasionally, I inserted a comment in square brackets.  This was only done when I wished to draw attention to a possible anomaly: for example, some of the enumerators must have transcribed from their field-books column by column, instead of across the page, and at times there was a strong possibility that the wrong place of birth or occupation had been recorded.

In the 1851 census, I included any notice of blindness, and so on, in brackets in the occupation column.  In later censuses, I have not included such information as the number of rooms with windows, or whether the person was a Gaelic speaker.  I would assume that all good family history researchers would inspect the original census for this.

To ensure the accuracy of place-names as much as possible, I used the Ordnance Survey Pathfinder series 1:25,000 series; these include farm names.  Books I found useful were Lewis's Topographical Dictionary of Scotland, published in 1851, and Nigel Tranter's books The Northeast and The Eastern Counties.  Lewis was specially useful for deciphering villages and parishes in other parts of Scotland.  In the 1861 census, for instance, there were many railway labourers in Banffshire who came from other counties.  Excise officers and coastguards, too, often came from other regions.  I used the standard three-letter abbreviations for counties.  From time to time, I have extracted strays and sent them to the relevant Family History Societies.

After I had transcribed the burials in Gamrie parish, I indexed them under the headings of name, place, year and transcription page number.  I did not use the page numbers of the original Old Parish Registers, as the burials were in three separate sequences, and page numbers were erratic, misleading or non-existent.  The year should be enough indication for anyone wishing to look at the original films, and notes in the transcript describe where on the microfilms the burials may be located.

Since I have been indexing censuses in Banffshire since 1989, its place-names have become very familiar, and last Christmas, when I drove around Banffshire, it was a great thrill to recognise villages and farms which were still in existence.  Indexing such primary sources is a great pleasure, notwithstanding the stiff neck and occasional tedium of all those streets of fishermen in such places as Buckie.  It is a way of unlocking primary records which sheds a great deal of light on our ancestors, and it is a most rewarding pursuit.

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