Ancestry/Scotland's People

[BinBandit]

I'm fairly new to this so forgive if this has been asked before.

Quite a few years ago used the Scotland's people site (and paid for some records) but life intervened and I've really not done anything for about 10 years at least.

Anyway, I had a tree that I made in genes reunited and I started with that and joined ancestry.com to take it a bit further. Whilst I have no clue what I'm doing, I've been enjoying using the hints from other peoples trees and the details from the censuses and have got quite a bit populated.

I was looking to check some information on my grandfather (born in 1908), I was curious about whether he had older siblings as I can remember a photo in their house of someone in uniform in a wheelchair and I don't know who it was.

Anyway, it seems that you can only get scottish 1911 census via Scotland's people on an additional payment basis although Ancestry has it for England and Wales etc.

So I take it that given I need to go back to the 1700s to find any English connections, I'm going to be a bit stymied for any "recent" information on ancestry?

I'm not really sure what you are asking. Ancestry does have some more recent records, but it depends what type of records you are after.

Census wise, the 1911 (England and Wales) census is on Ancestry, the 1921 (England and Wales) is on Find my Past pay-per-view, the Scottish ones are all one Scotland's People.

On another note, do be careful of using other peoples info from Ancestry without checking it all yourself, it is not always accurate! The number of people who have my GGMother date of death recorded as 1915 when she lived until 1938 is amazing and nothing to do with the fact that I recorded it wrongly when I first started out and they have all copied it

Agree that other people's trees can be wildly misleading - they just add someone with the right name.

I have some Scottish ancestry but haven't traced that far back. My ancestors moved south, and pick up on the 1861 census. I can confirm families back to the 1841 Scottish census, and I've delved into Scotland's people a few times, but the names I researching are common, and it's proving tricky to be sure I have the right people.

Happy to try to help you OP but not quite sure how much help I can be. I have subscriptions to Ancestry and to FindMyPast.

Agree - do be careful piggybacking on other people's information. I've come across some really daft errors that it wouldn't take much effort to confirm correct details. Sometimes just googling names, especially of they're more recent, can throw up information.

I've seen some daft errors too on Ancestry.
Do people stop and think ?

You can hardly access any Scottish records on ancestry and need to pay to look things up on Scotland's People instead. It's really expensive and makes it very expensive (I think around £10 each) to view or order certificates.

Gingerkittykat it is annoying. I've a branch I'm researching at the moment who moved en masse from Tweedmouth to Hawick - I can guess why, but the census information on the Scotland census doesn't provide employment details unless you pay for the census copy.

And I also have an issue with a GGG grandfather who on the marriage certificate that my antecedents are descended from (the marriage), is detailed as a widower. Most others researching the tree have listed his first wife as their ancestor - it appears she was the mother of his first son, but definitely not the following 7 children, because she was, err, dead.

Rapid I had someone with a common ancestor in their tree. He pops up on a marriage certificate in the 1800s and the person who listed him has linked a daughter - born 100 years earlier!!
Also, they said he was Scottish but I find no trace of him on Scotland's people (on the free, exploratory search). The name sounds more Scottish, but if he isn't (Wondering if he possibly could be Irish) it might explain a "blip" I found in my DNA.

RiftGibbon, I find American genealogists are quite gung ho about the facts - there's a man with the same name as my GGG grandfather (not an unusual name) who ended up on a prison ship after a larceny conviction in 1820. It's really outside the realms of possibility it's the same person, but they've taken it as gospel. I know it's exciting to find an antecedent with an interesting story, but to me, there's no point if it's untrue, or unlikely.

I'm very tempted to do a DNA test/search - I'm already been in touch with family members many times removed who've provided so much interesting history, but the DNA don't lie and it might help to iron out a few anomalies.

It's not as expensive as that! Ancestry does have quite a bit of Scottish content - not birth/marriage/death civil registration but there are a lot of births/baptisms, electoral registers and transcriptions of 1901 and previous censuses on there. |FamilySearch has similar. FindMyPast also good for Scottish content, you can get free access through National Library of Scotland if you live in Scotland and register for an account.

Scotland's 1911 census is only on Scotland's People though, and the 1921 census STILL hasn't been released.

To view records on SP you have to buy credits 40 credits cost £10 and it costs you 6 credits or £1.50 to see a birth/marriage/death cert. This is a pdf of the original, not a transcription or an index. If you are looking for more recent ones then yes you'll have to order an original in the post then that costs £12 which is roughly equivalent to the GRO in England/Wales. Depending on how common the surnames are that you are working with you might get far with just the index listing which will give the name(s) of the people, the year and the registration district. My technique is to do as much as I can with ancestry/FMP and then only use Scotland's People credits when I really have to.

As for people doing bad research - it's endemic. So many people just don't know what they are doing and websites like Ancestry with their "hints" lead people into making assumptions and creating entire trees which are just nonsense. Agatha, born in 1856 in Glasgow, married in 1860 in London and having children in North Dakota in 1945 - seems reasonable.🙄

In my direct experience though, telling people they've got it wrong doesn't usually go down well. Even though I get paid for doing this and have professional qualifications which back up the fact I know what i'm doing, people get the hump at being told they are wrong. Especially when they've built a whole narrative around their "ancestors". Always, always, ALWAYS do your own research and never ever take anyone else's as gospel. If they've linked documents and records check them, if they haven't linked any records take it with an even larger pinch of salt.