New Series: Discovering Links … Scottish and the US to Start With
I’m not that keen on study. Never was. And probably never will be. At least not in the long-course-structure-type-learning-thing anyway. But I am continually learning, and expanding my genealogy knowledge because through all of my genealogy-related reading (such as genie magazines, blogs, as well the numerous social media sites), and even just chatting with customers in our store at Gould Genealogy I come across some fascinating websites and interesting info. While not all are relevant for my own research, I still find it interesting. But unfortunately they don’t ALL stay stuck in my head as they should (not enough UHU or blu-tac obviously), so I write them down.
I find writing them down is good, but to be useful I need to have access to my list of interesting links, as I don’t carry my little book everywhere with me. And yes it is a physical notebook, old school style I know, but it works for me. So rather than simply creating a file which I can dump into my Dropbox folder, which I can then access from anywhere, anytime, I thought I’d create a series of posts, so others can discover these cool sites too. So here begins my series of “Discovering Links”.
This new series is something that I’ve been thinking about for a while now, and no doubt it’ll continue to evolve as I go along. So bear with me as it does, and I hope you find some of the links useful, and discover some new ones along the way. I have tended to group them by country, state or topic in my book, so to make it easier for readers (an me to re-find my links) I’ll group them similar to that. And while I do have a whole heap of Australian links that I’ve collected, before we dive into them lets start off with a few Scottish and United States ones first …
=== SCOTTISH LINKS ===
My Ain Folk
Kirsty Wilkinson is a professional researcher in Scotland, and she has compiled a number of lists that she has put up as PDFs on her website (My Ain Folk). These cover Scottish population listings pre 1841, Records of the Scottish poor, and a list of the Scottish Family History Societies. All useful if you have Scottish research.
Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE)
Do you have a Scottish doctor in the family? If so this could be worth a look. The Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh (RCPE) was the headquarters for the Scottish Medical Service Emergency Committee who controlled the enrollment of doctors in Scotland during the WWI. They sent out forms to all medical practitioners across Scotland between December 1915 and 1919 and this index contains information transcribed from these forms.
Achievements
Achievements is a professional research organisation based in Kent. And they have details on Gretna Green Marriages. For many couples (particularly those without parental consent) eloping to Gretna Green in Scotland to get married was as way to get married, because they didn’t have the same laws that England did. Achievements has an index which covers irregular marriages at Gretna Green from 1795 to 1895, with a few earlier references. In all over 4500 entries are recorded. Ask yourself: “Did my great-great-great grandmother elope to Gretna?”. This is an online searchable surname index with pay-for-use to obtain additional details.
=== UNITED STATES ===
Famine Ships
If you have Irish family who went to America, bookmark this one. As this site contains an extensive searchable database of records on passengers (almost 400,000 of them) who arrived at the United States between 1846 to 1851 and listed their country of origin or nationality as Irish or Celtic.
UK Immigrants
Contains an extensive searchable database of over 166,000 passengers who arrived in the United States between 1846 and 1851 and listed their country of origin or nationality as United Kingdom, British Isles, Britain, England, etc or ethnicity as British, English, Welsh, Scottish, etc.
One Response to “New Series: Discovering Links … Scottish and the US to Start With”
Leave a Reply
Greta idea for a series – I’ll be watching out for these posts.