Family History Month: Using Maps for Scottish Research

Scotland and Its Shires 1745
reproduced with permission of the NLS

One of my favourite websites for family history is the National Library of Scotland's maps website. The National Library of Scotland has over 2.5 million maps in their collections. And they have the best online collection of digital maps bar none. Their collections include:

• estate maps
• town plans and maps
• military maps
• county and country maps

Estate maps can show the farms your ancestors lived and worked on. We can see quarries, coal mines, forests, lochs, farm fields and location of the buildings belonging to the estate.

Town plans and maps show us how densely populated the town or village was and often will have labels on the buildings. These labels may determine the type of building, or they may be the name of the building's owner or proprietor. 

The older, John Wood maps from 1820 (under the tab for town plans and views) show tremendous detail, often including the names of the inhabitants of homes in the town. 

And, best of all, with their geo-referencing feature, you can overlay maps and see how the area has changed over time - and in many instances can see that very little has changed over time! 

Here's the link: http://maps.nls.uk/