Mark McLaughlin
Edinburgh Evening News
September 15, 2009
Scotland's People Centre situated in the centre of the Capital offers a user-friendly facility for archive hunters Shirley Manson's are Viking, Gavin Esler's are German and Scot-baiting Jeremy Paxman's were famously found north of the Border. Finding your family roots has become a 21st century obsession - and not just among celebrities. In the first of a four-part series on genealogy, MARK McLAUGHLIN finds out about the city's earliest inhabitants and how to trace your own ancestors at the new Scotland's People Centre
THE locked gate swings open and the climb begins up the vast iron staircase to the top of New Register House to visit some of the oldest prisoners in Edinburgh.
With its spiralling, cylindrical cages and layer-upon-layer of locked chambers, the West Register Street rotunda resembles the gaols designed by 19th century sociologists to keep a close eye on their subjects.
But these "prisoners" are not living people. They are the records of every person whose lives have left a paper-trail over the last five centuries, and the cages aren't there to keep the prisoners in but to keep the public out.
But now the guardians of some of Edinburgh's most precious records have staged their own jailbreak, setting loose millions of previously inaccessible records into cyberspace.
The new GBP 7.5 million Scotland's People Centre, which opened earlier this year at the General Register Office and National Archives of Scotland complex near the east end of Princes Street, has given visiting rights to the relatives of anyone whose lives made their mark anywhere in Scotland.
Millions of documents have been digitised and indexed, and are ready to be scrolled through and pored over endless times without damaging the fragile documents themselves.
Dee Williams, head of the new Scotland's People Centre, grabs a set of keys and a pair of white gloves, and heads up to the highest part of the "prison" to take a look at some of the aging documents that have now been digitally preserved for posterity.
Like any valuable prisoner, these documents are kept under tight security.
"The oldest paper record we have of a person living in Edinburgh can be found in the old parish rolls of the Canongate from 1564," Dee explains as she pulls out a nondescript folio from the shelves.
She opens out the folio to reveal dozens of loose-leaf slips of paper, more than five centuries old and in written in an apparently impenetrable scrawl.
"The first name that appears is for a man named Thomas," she says over the rims of her reading spectacles. "Unfortunately the paper is torn so his surname has been lost, but if we move down a line we can see that this document is a record of births from that year.
"The first full record we have is for the birth of a child on 2 September 1564. It reads, 'William Bour: ane [one] child callit [called] Johne. His witness: Lard [Laird] of Brownstoun'.
"The record also contains the oldest remaining death certificate issued in Edinburgh for one Thomas Scot of Saint Johnston on 2 April 1566 - 'hangit at the corse of Edinburgh under ain callar [charge] of treason for the religious cause' - six years after the Scottish Reformation which severed Scotland's links with the Catholic Church.
"The oldest surviving marriage certificate can also be found in the old parish rolls of the City of Edinburgh, where a Robert Murheid married Janet Muir on 13 April 1595."
Other early Edinburgh surnames that can be found in these files include, amongst millions of others, Lawchlane, Adameson, Halyday, Ballentyne, Cambell, Richardson, Ray, Todd, Smyth, Spottiswod and Mowbray.
All of these names are still around today in one form or another, but you won't need a set of keys, a pair of white gloves, the patience of a saint and the research skills of historian to discover if you're related to any of these early Edinburgh-dwellers.
All of these names and more have been digitised and indexed, and a virtual record can now by called up at the touch of a button.
As well as the existing digital searches of statutory registers of births, death and marriages dating back to 1855, which have been available at General Register House for a number of years, the new Scotland's People Centre includes raft of new resources, including a search facility for wills and testaments stretching back to 1513, old parish registers dating back to 1553, and full census records from 1841-1901.
But it's not just those interested in their own family history who find the information useful, explains Dee.
"The police can use the information to search for birth records of current criminals or to research cold cases," she says. "We also have a pair of researchers from NHS Lothian who are down here almost on a daily basis searching through the family records of current patients.
"They see their work as essential to saving lives, as family history can tell you a lot about the current state of health of living people. For example, my mother died of breast cancer and two of my aunts have been diagnosed with it, and I've been told I have a 50-50 chance of developing it myself based on the medical history of my closest relatives.
"But if you were to search further into the past into older death certificates, I might discover that some of my older relatives also died from it which could maybe push the chances up to 80 per cent.
"This kind of information is vital for someone considering early screening and preventative treatment."
The ground floor of General Register House contains three fully refurbished rooms - the Adam Dome, the Reid Room and the Matheson Dome.
The Adam Dome has been set aside for two hour "taster sessions" in the mornings and afternoons, where people can come in and search their family history for free.
If they want to do more in-depth searches they can book a daily session, which costs GBP 10, or even purchase quarterly (GBP 440) or annual (GBP 1,250) passes to do some hardcore family history hunting.
"It can become something of an obsession," explains Alison Lindsay, head of the archives' historical research section. "However, you'll have a better chance of discovering a detailed picture of someone's life if they were very rich or very poor.
"If they had a lot of money there will be records of rents, taxes and wills, while the very poor would maybe show up in hospital or poor-house records, and may have fallen foul of the law and ended up hanged or imprisoned.
"For this reason, the 'respectable poor' - who only earned enough to scrape by and kept their noses clean - are rubbish ancestors to have!"
The Scotland's People Centre is open on weekdays from 9am-4.30pm. Taster sessions in the Adam Dome are available on a first-come-first-served basis from 10am-12pm and again at 2-4pm.
For more information visit www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
19th CENTURY RECORDS ARE BACK ON LINE
THE opening of the Scotland's People Centre has also plugged a major digital gap that's been bothering family historians for years.
Problems with the digitisation of the 1881 census meant its contents were virtually inaccessible, but earlier this year the Scotland's People technicians ironed out the glitches and revealed a wealth of information about some of Edinburgh's most notable citizens.
It's now possible to see the census record of Peter Pan Author J M Barrie, who was a 20-year-old student at the time living in lodgings on Great King Street with his landlady and a retired Army Officer.
The record also shows a 21-year-old Arthur Conan Doyle, who at the time was listed as a student of medicine, but went on to create the fictional detective Sherlock Holmes, living with his mother and four of his ten siblings at 15 Lonsdale Terrace.
At 42 Palmerston Place there lived a 19-year-old Oxford University undergraduate called Douglas Haig, who later went on to become Field Marshall Haig, the 1st Earl Haig, left, and leader of the British Expeditionary Force during World War I.
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