Help with some Scottish records

Question

I've been researching my nephews' Scottish/Irish ancestry and have been finding it so much harder than my own entirely English heritage, because I haven't found a good search engine for Scottish censuses. I know about the National Records of Scotland, but the free search only gives you very restricted information, as far as I can see. And FamilySearch and Ancestry seem not to have various Scottish censuses at all. Am I missing something obvious?

My most frustrating dead end is Jane Pearson Dow's parents. I can see them in the 1911 census and there is a marriage record that looks plausible:

1. ↑ ^2.0 2.1 Marriage of Jane's parents: DOW, WILLIAM, PEARSON, MARY, 1894, Falkirk. National Records of Scotland, ref 479/ 87.
2. ↑ ^3.0 3.1 1911 census: Leith North, Midlothian, DOW: William, M, 41; Mary, F, 37; William, M, 17; Jane, F, 13; Archibald, M, 7; John, M, 3. National Records of Scotland, ref 692/1 34/ 49.

But I have not found them even in 1901, let alone censuses further back. 

Answer 1

Hi Deborah,

Sad to say, FamilySearch blocked or deleted their Scotland census transcript records about a month ago, which means I, myself need to go through my own Scotland family profiles and recreate the source links or construct some other type of source style. I have a Findmypast subscription which helps. The only other good source available is Scotlands People which is free to search but it costs money to see the documents.

I hope that helps,

David.

Comments

David,

Did you ever find out more about this. The Family Search WIki page still seems to think they are there: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Scotland_Census. But when you click to search for the Family Search versions of the census, the search page still appears but no records appear. I'm curious if there was a licensing issue with Scotlands People.

I also found other information that talks about images of the microfilm for the Scottish Census' that are not linked to the Family Search index (that is no longer there as of late). Go to this section on the above page: https://www.familysearch.org/wiki/en/Scotland_Census#Family_History_Library You have to to be at the Family History Center (Not an affiliate) to view these apparently. I can't tell if they are gone, also. So, if this is still there, you could use the index at Scotlands People and then brute force scroll the scanned censu page images.

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Hi Marty,

I have not done anything yet to find out more about what has happened, but I do believe that there is now a copyright issue with Scotland's People, but I could be wrong.

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There are a number of England census records that have suddenly decided to be no-show.  Last week they were fine.  This week .. poof.

Maybe it's a bandwidth issue.

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I requested and received editing rights for the FamilySearch Wiki. I was going to ask a question on the Talk page about this and see if any one monitors that at Family Search. I think genealogy organizations in general like to tout when they have new collections, but are less outgoing about collections that get withdrawn or temporarily suspended. I don't spend much time with this record set as most of Scottish research is earlier.

Answer 2

Scotland's People has been mentioned.

There is also

  https://www.freecen.org.uk/search_queries/new?locale=en&search_id=5e9474e833045b647cabbeda

Scroll down to see Scotland and its various census locations.