Bill Arnold wrote:
BA: I had a similar experience with my parent's marriage, because they never
celebrated their wedding anniversary. When I finally pulled their marriage
record, I was in for a surprise. You can only guess. As for Edinburgh: here
in America and in Canada, I found in the south a real difficulty with ancient
records because records were not kept and when kept they were not kept
well. A lot of dead ends. In the north, and in Canada, better record keeping.
Obviously, at some point, with administration of such matters records are
found and searchable. In Edinburgh, how far back can you go and not
run into a lot of dead ends?
I have little experience of Edinburgh records other than what I have
recounted. I suppose I am fortunate in that much of my family pedigrees
are recounted in books. Some of them I have checked out and found
wanting, and investigated where necessary. Others, I just don't have
time for.
However, there is much online these days. Sometimes, you have to pay a
fee, but it's often worth it, and a lot cheaper than air fares and hotel
bills.
For example, if you subscribe to Ancestry.com you can examine the
original Scottish censuses from 1841-1891.
You can also find a few Parish Registers.
If you want to examine older Scottish records, then there is nowhere
better to try than the Origins Network, in affiliation with the Society
of Genealogists, in London.
http://www.originsnetwork.com/SOWelcome.aspxThey say of themselves:
Scots Origins features a Free IGI search, access to "Origins Experts"
research of Scottish Old Parish Registers Births, Baptisms, Marriages
and Death records and 1861 and 1871 Census Records, a Free Scottish
Place search, and expert articles and discussion on Scottish history.
Personally, I'm sure I've used this site to find old Scottish wills,
from the medieval period onwards, but at the moment, I can't find it.
Then there is Electric Scotland:
http://www.electricscotland.com/Not particularly a genealogy site, but very useful for those with Scots
ancestors.
Genealogy is a hit-and-miss game. Some Parish Records (PRs) in England,
for example, start as early as 1538. Others don't start until the mid
1700s. Most have a big gap during the Commonwealth Period (approx
1649-1660) but some do not. Some are complemented by Bishops Transcripts
(BTs), where the data varies a little from Parish Registers in that it
can hold more, or less, information than the PRs themselves.
There are all sorts of places to look. Often, genealogists have to look
sideways, to a brother, an uncle, a married aunt or niece. The elusive
ancestor may be living with the married niece in an obscure place with
their name spellt completely wrongly and so, mis-indexed (if there is an
index). Wills, censuses and even PRs can turn up all sorts of people in
places you least expect, when looking for a completely different relative.
Never believe the phrase "oh, our name was always spellt that way". It
wasn't, necessarily. It depended who was spelling it and how deaf they
were and how common or rare the name was.
Genealogy is much easier now than it was 30 years ago. Then, you had to
troop off to the local record office (now, invariably called History
Centres, or whatever), and personally browse through ancient
manuscripts, wills, PRs, censuses, etc. Not now. All
England/Wales/Scotland censuses and most American censuses are available
online at Ancestry.com. It's fair they charge because they have to
support it some way. Some people would say it should be freely
available, but it always costs money to put this stuff online,
especially in vast quantities.
Quite a few Parish Registers are available at Familysearch.com. You have
to read up about the source to work out whether it is from a PR (usually
a published one) or a BT, (the usual source), or whether the entry has
been made by an Latter Day Saints (LDS) member. If it has been made by
an LDS member, then there are two types. One type is reasonably
reliable, but always worth checking and that is those entries where
there is a definite date and place for an event. The LDS member has done
some research on that particular family, but has not made an extraction
of the whole PR or BT.
The second type is the one to be very wary of. This is the type which
says something like: "Mrs John Smith, born about 1567, of Wales". It
says nothing at all. We can guess John Smith may have married, but from
this entry, we don't know who she was, or where or when she was born.
That entry means nothing at all. Then there are the entries which say
"John Smith, born about 1567, Wherever-You-Like". Again, it says nothing.
Rootsweb Worldconnect can be useful. Some people have worked very hard
to put their pedigrees and connections online. We all have multiple
ancestors and none of us has the time to check them all, if we find some
of our clan in these databases. Maybe one day we will check it out, if
we have time, but ...
But others are complete disasters. They find two chaps called Michael
Chapman living within three villages (or even counties) of each other
and assume they are the same person and lock a whole family on when
there is absolutely no evidence whatsoever and they haven't bothered to
check the PRs, BTs, wills or anything else. There is even one database,
where I have found one of my own ancestors being born as so to his
ancestor, who lived 200 years previously. I wrote to the perpetrator but
he said he "couldn't be bothered" to change it. How many people have
done the same thing? Couldn't be bothered? All sorts of erroneous
pedigrees are out there being eating up by genealogists who expect
everything for nothing.
In the end, if we really want to know the truth, we will take these
databases with a pinch of salt, and check out what they say using
whatever sources we can.
Now, why am I rabbiting on like this? Ah, your question about how
reliable are Edinburgh records?
You just have to go and find out. As often as we can, genealogists need
more than one source (indeed, as many as possible) to help verify our
findings. Sometimes, there is only one source. Sometimes, there are no
sources at all.
I have a bit of a dilemma in my own ancestry. It is a rare name so it's
pretty confined but my ancestor, Thomas, wrote his will in 1546, naming
his sons Christopher, Thomas and William and daughter Janet. No parish
registers are available. I have no death for Christopher. I don't know
who or if he married. I imagine he was killed during the Uprising in the
North in 1569, but I have no proof. Yet.
However, his son, Thomas, wrote his will in 1584, naming some of the
lands which had been in the family prior to that other will of 1546. He
names his mother as Janet. The question is, was this the Janet, daughter
named in 1546 or was she really daughter-in-law? Was she the wife of
Christopher? (The other sons left wills and documents confirming their
relationship to each other, so I know it's the same people.
In an instance like this, you have to interpret what you find and that
is the nature of history and genealogy. Sometimes, you just don't have
the definite sources you want, you have only circumstantial evidence.
Maybe, one day, you will find what you want, but in the meantime, the
big question is: Do you conclude that Thomas died about 1546 leaving
sons Christopher and wife Janet, and sons Thomas and William? Or do you
leave it out altogether? Do you publish on the web and hope someone else
has the info you need?
The further back in time you go, the worse these dilemmas become. Often,
the only evidence you have is rare Christian names within a family.
Everyone is called Thomas, John and William, so that's no big deal, but
what about Phineas, Bartholomew, Nathaniel and other less popular names?
We have to take all sorts of strange clues into account, which in
Science, wouldn't count at all. Yet, if we ignore these clues, we'll get
nowhere. Someone, somewhere, may have the answer when we have gone.
Genealogy has been popular for at least 500 years. We are not the first
generation to discover its fascination and we won't be the last. We are
the first generation to be able to make our data available to everyone
else in the computerised world. How many of you have NOT received an
email from some obscure 20th cousin in Australia/South Africa/Russia or
elsewhere whom you would never have heard of if they had not found you
on the web?
There are genealogical purists who want every connection verified
absolutely but, in truth, that can't always happen. In this day-and-age,
when we can reach out to the furthest corners of our world, sometimes, a
published unproven pedigree is better than no pedigree. Someone,
somewhere out there, may know the answer.