New Record Release from the NRS

The National Records of Scotland has added maps and plans to their website database. This is promising and provides a wonderful new resource for family historians. 

From their website about the release: 

More than 2,400 historic maps, plans and drawings from National Records of Scotland (NRS) collections have been made available on the ScotlandsPeople website. Many of the maps show the changing Scottish landscape over time. They also record where people lived or worked, so they can throw light on ancestors’ lives and even suggest new avenues for research. The maps and plans cover certain areas of Scotland, but not the whole of the country. They include both country estates and plans of towns and cities, including for example Glasgow. Most of the maps and plans originate in the records of court cases, Scottish government departments, Heritors’ records, as well as in private collections gifted to or purchased by NRS.

If you would like to find out more, read our maps and plans guide, or search the maps and plans.

The maps and plans collection is amongst the finest in the UK and contains the largest number of Scottish manuscript maps and plans held by any single institution. Spanning four centuries, the collections cover both manuscript and printed topographical maps and plans. They are particularly strong in estate and railway plans; architectural drawings; and engineering drawings, particularly of ships, railway engines and rolling stock. More maps and plans will be added to the ScotlandsPeople website.

It appears that the maps and plans are FREE which an added bonus. 

Enjoy the search!

Project GB1900 Needs Help!

The team at GB1900 needs people to help complete the project. They are working to preserve the place names on old ordnance maps and have been running a crowdsourcing project to get this much needed work done. 

The project is wrapping up (January 8th, 2018). All of the place names have been transcribed, but volunteers are needed to verify the transcriptions. In an effort to get this moving, the team have put together a fun little incentive. Here's the info from their latest newsletter:

We need to finish up GB1900 and we realise that it is getting harder and harder to find new “pins” to create. We also know that the current leader board no longer provides the right incentive, as we now mainly need confirmations and most of you can only improve your ranking by creating new pins.

We can’t change the leader board within GB1900, and want to go on using it to recognise the contributors who have made the greatest long term contribution to the project. However, we are adding a separate system to reward those who do most in these final months:

These final months will be a kind of treasure hunt, searching out the last few names on the maps, so it is appropriate we pay you in Doubloons. Each week we will pay out one MILLION Doubloons.

Half of those Doubloons will be paid for doing confirmations, and half for new pins. Each week they will be divided up between all volunteers active that week according to how many of each kind of task you have done. It is already much harder to find new names, so the amount we pay for each one will be greater — but we pay you for a new pin only when it is confirmed.

As the weeks go by, both kinds of task will get harder, so the amount we pay for each one will go up. We would not be surprised if in December we pay out the whole weekly amount for a single new pin.

We are back-dating this system to the 1st of September, when we announced that the project would be winding up. These are the numbers of new pins and confirmations for each week since, and the resulting payments. 

We recognise that as piracy has been stamped out on the Spanish Main, Doubloons are no longer legal tender. However, the five contributors ending up with the most Doubloons will instead receive a bespoke, site-centred printed copy of the Six Inch map of their choice, a warm welcome and behind the scenes tour to view selected map treasures, and a free cup of tea if they can make their way to either of the National Libraries to receive it. We will do the same for the five contributors who are topping the existing leader board.

Doubloons, tea and a behind the scenes tour! What more could a genealogist ask for? 

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/

Family History Month - Working to Preserve History

There is a big crowd-sourcing project underway to assist with preserving the names of local towns, villages, estates, farms and streets of 1900 Scotland. And best of all, it is incredibly easy to use. Here's a walk through:

Warning: this project can be highly addictive!

Click on: http://gb1900.org/

Click "Login"

Scroll down the page and click on "Sign Up"

Fill in your email address, create a password, fill in your name and you are ready to go. 

Return to the home page

Read through the tutorial. It is not lengthy and is really easy to follow. 

Return to the home page. Scroll to the bottom and enter the area of Scotland where your ancestors lived. Even if they didn't live there in 1900. 

Wait for the map to load

Zoom in

Click transcribe at the top of the page. 

Click on any word on the map. Then in the pop up box, type the word that is visible on the map. The transcription program is case sensitive, so pay attention. Then click "done" You will see a brown location balloon appear.

If you see a green location balloon on the map, it means someone has already transcribed the word and that transcription needs verification. If you click on that green balloon and then type in what you see, the program will check to ensure your typing matches the other person's typing, and the green balloon will then turn purple. 

Purple balloons mean that the word on the map has been transcribed AND verified. The transcription is complete. 

If your area is all completed, find a new area to transcribe. 

Well, what are you waiting for? Enjoy your new black hole of genealogy fun!
http://gb1900.org/

Family History Month - Mapping It Out

The National Library of Scotland has the best digital map collection bar none http://maps.nls.uk

Maps can show you neighbouring counties where your ancestors may have met spouses or had children. And they can show you how county boundaries may have changed over time.

The older, John Wood maps (under the tab for town plans and views) show tremendous detail, often including the names of the inhabitants of homes in the town. These tend to be from the very early part of the 1800s.

Old maps are a fantastic resource for giving you a feel for the community that your ancestors lived in. You can see how rural or urban the area was, how large or small the village, what factories, mills, mines, schools, institutions, or other landmarks were in the area. You can see whether the area was mountainous or open field, whether there were any rivers or streams that ran through the area, or whether they were near a lake.

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! 

You can also plot where your ancestors lived over several decades, using the census returns and valuation rolls. You might be surprised to find that although they may have moved several times, they likely stayed within a 5 or 10 mile radius of where they started. 

Addressing History

This website takes old postal directory addresses and super-imposes them on both old and current maps. The listings also list address and occupation if known:

http://addressinghistory.edina.ac.uk/

Gazeteer for Scotland

A great wee website for all sorts of information including historic timelines, descriptions of  villages, towns and cities as well as old maps. Have a look and see what you can learn about your Scottish ancestors.

http://www.scottish-places.info

Happy Hunting!