Taking family history further
Adding context to your family tree
Registration and census records are the starting point but not the end of family history research. You can use records to find out more about what your ancestor did and about the place that they lived. To do that, you may enjoy developing some new skills.
Occupations
You will find the last occupation of an individual on their death registration and even if you cannot find any detailed employment records, you can still explore the kind of work that someone with that occupation did.
First, you might need to work out what the occupation was. There are several free online dictionaries of occupations and trades such as https://www.familyresearcher.co.uk/glossary/Dictionary-of-Old-Occupations-Index.html For Scots words use the Dictionaries of the Scots Language. https://dsl.ac.uk/
Then try finding out whether the occupation was unusual or whether lots of people in the area had the same or similar occupations. Local history societies and community heritage groups are a tremendous source of information about what people did in their local area. They will know, for example, if there were lots of nailers in one area and where they worked, or whether there were only a couple of clock-making businesses in their town. They may publish a journal with articles about the history of the main industries in the area or they may have a website.
If your ancestor worked in a big, industrial occupation, it is unlikely that you will find records that mention them by name, but you can find out more about what they did from local museums as well as archives. For example, Falkirk Museums has examples of patterns made by ironfounding pattern makers. https://collections.falkirk.gov.uk/explore Other local museums will have objects from local employment, whether that is industry or agriculture or shipbuilding or a multitude of small and large businesses.
If you have a good idea of where your ancestor worked, try finding out about it. They may have advertised in old newspapers or in the programmes of local bazaars. You might also find newspaper articles mentioning them. The local archives might hold their records and these may include product catalogues, accounts, minutes of the board of directors or other records that tell you what they did and who they traded with.
Places
If you have the name of a place but don’t know where it is, start with ScotlandsPlaces. This website lets you search for a place by name, including older placenames where the settlements themselves may have disappeared. It has links to other gazetteers and has many digitised records where the place you are looking for may be mentioned.
The National Library of Scotland has a large number of historic maps available online: National Library of Scotland – Map Images (nls.uk)
Once you have identified the location, have a look at a modern map which will show which modern council area it is now in. This will help you identify which local archives service to contact and help you look for the appropriate local history society or community heritage group or community archives.
Clubs, groups and hobbies
Throughout the nineteenth century, many more people belonged to local societies, clubs and associations relating to their church, place of work, local area or hobbies. If your ancestor was active in their local church community, for example, you may find their name mentioned in church group minutes, or through their participation in church charitable committees. Many charities in through the nineteenth and early twentieth century published regular magazines, which gave lists of donors and published letters from supporters, which may offer another source giving details about your ancestor.
Skills in using records
The information in different records makes more sense when you know why the records were created in the first place. The topics section in the Knowledge Base contains some short articles which explain this background detail – who was responsible for administering a topic and what they were supposed to do. Legislation is a really important factor in determining whether records were created, by whom and what information they had to contain. You will find references to relevant legislation in each topic article and you can see this online either through https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ or https://statutes.org.uk/site/collections/british-and-irish/chronological/
You may need to develop some skills in reading old handwriting. It can be daunting at first but there is help on the Scottish Handwriting website https://www.scottishhandwriting.com/
Many of the records available in local archives or specialist archives can help you find out more about your ancestors or about the places they lived in and how they lived their lives. You can use My Ancestor and the Knowledge Base to find out about the contents of different record types and how these might help you develop your family history interests.