The National Archives in Edinburgh holds one
of the biggest repositories for Scottish historical records in the
country. If you think of the General Register Office in Edinburgh as the
source for the basic skeleton of your family tree (with birth, marriage,
death and census records), then consider the NAS as one of your first
stops to try and put some flesh onto the bones. The archives hold an
impressive collection of church records (including the non-established
protestant churches and the Roman Catholic church); records of the
various courts in Scotland including criminal trial papers; deeds and
sassiness of heirs; industrial records; maps and plans; government
papers, both pre and post the union with England; and much, much more.
There are two main search rooms at the NAS –
General Register House and West Register House, which are about a ten
minute walk away from each other on either end of Princes Street (with
WRH on Charlotte Square, just off Princes Street). The General Register
House contains two main search rooms, the Historical Search Room
(church records, government records, early Court records pre 1800,
valuation rolls, family and estate papers etc), and the Legal Search
Room (public registers and adoption records); and the West Register
House, which contains the West Search Room (for maps and plans,
court records post 1800, industrial records, and more).
If you live overseas, the NAS have very
helpfully put their entire catalogue online at
http://www.dswebhosting.info/NAS/dserve.exe?dsqApp=Site20&dsqCmd=Index.tcl.
The buildings are open between 9.00am and 4.45pm, and access is free.
Should you wish to visit in order to check records, or should you wish
someone to attend on your behalf, it is always worth checking in advance
whether the documents are stored on site, as many are not and need to be
ordered in from storage sites.
Copies can be purchased of many records,
subject to their condition, though there are some peculiar rules around
what you can and cannot do. On any one visit, you can order up to a
maximum of 20 copies to be made there and then, or you can place an
order to a maximum of 50 copies if you are happy for the documents to be
sent away (usually between 1 – 2 weeks for them to be done for you).
Larger orders may require the collection to be microfilmed, if it has
not already been so. For more on the copying services visit
http://www.nas.gov.uk/searchRooms/copyingFees.asp .
Research work at the National Archives of
Scotland is just one of the many services on offer from
Scotland’s Greatest Story. Customers have in the last two
months commissioned research work into a double murder trial in 1913 for
which the father of two murdered children was subsequently hanged
(including the shock discovery that some of the children’s body parts
are still retained to this day by an institution in Edinburgh);
successful research into the Roman Catholic baptismal records to try and
find an immigrant family from Ireland which had fled their homeland
because of the 19th Century famine; and research into the
Perth kirk session records to find one individual who was subsequently
discovered to have represented his parish as an elder at the great
Disruption of 1843 (where the Church of Scotland split over the issue of
patronage).
For more information on how we may be able
to help, please visit us at
www.scotlandsgreateststory.co.uk for a free estimate. We look
forward to being of assistance!
