Ancestry adds Dunbartonshire Valuation Rolls 1855-1930 collection

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) has added the following collection, albeit it is a bit strange in the way it has been done:

Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, Valuation Rolls, 1855-1930
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62870/
Source: Valuation Rolls. Dumbarton, Scotland: West Dunbartonshire Council Arts & Heritage Service.

About Dumbarton, Dunbartonshire, Scotland, Valuation Rolls, 1855-1930

This collection contains valuation rolls for Dunbartonshire, Scotland, dated between 1855 and 1930. Valuation rolls record property ownership information for use in assessing local taxes. The rolls were produced annually to provide ownership, tenancy, and occupancy information for every property in a county or city, including houses, apartments, churches, schools, and businesses. Information may be limited in the documents from the earlier years covered by this collection.

Using this collection

Records in this collection may include the following information:

• Name
• Occupation
• Name of tenant
• Name of occupant
• Address
• Parish name

In addition to the information listed above, valuation rolls normally state the type of property and its monetary value or rent charged. The information in each valuation roll provides a snapshot of where your ancestor owned property or lived at a specific time. You may be able to establish a timeline of your ancestor’s residential mobility and occupational history by searching for them in registers produced over several years.

Although they don’t have as much information as a census, the rolls are useful to research your ancestor’s life between the census years. The valuation rolls also may have information about buildings that a census wouldn’t account for because there was no one living there at the time of the census.

For further information visit https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62870/

Comment: After a few initial tests on this collection, I am a bit confused about the coverage. On the browse area to the right, it shows only the following as browsable registers, with images available:

1913-1914
1914-1915
1915-1916
1916-1917
1917-1918
1919-1920
1920-1921
1921-1922

Test searches prior to 1913 and after 1922 using common surnames such as Smith and MacDonald, do indeed return records as far back as 1861, athough I've not seen any yet going as far back as 1855. However, these are in transcript form only, with no images available. Records do indeed continue after 1922, and go up to 1930, but again in transcript form only. 

I don't know if more images are to be made available, I suspect not, as it is quite an odd way to gio about releasing them if so!

Note that valuation records for the same period can be found on ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk), with images for all in the coverage available (every tenth years from 1855-1915, every 5th year thereafter up to 1940).

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Griffith's Valuation replaced by... Natterjack Toads?

I've just gone ino the Griffith's Valuation section of AskAboutIreland.ie (https://www.askaboutireland.ie/griffith-valuation/), only to find that the database has gone, and has been replaced by, errr.... a page explaining the history of the Natterjack Toad in counties Kerry and Wexford.

I'm all for a bit of natural history, God only knows there is a lot to explain about us in Ireland (!), but I'd prefer to use this particular site for family history!

Hopefully this is a temporary glitch, rather than the loss of one of the most useful databases for 19th century Irish genealogical research. Alternative access is available via Ancestry (www.ancestry.ie) and FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk).

UPDATE: And it's back! I'm going to miss those toads...

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, on Threads at @scottishgenesblog and via Mastodon at https://mastodon.scot/@ScottishGENES.

Ancestry adds name index for PRONI's Valuation Revision Books

Two more of PRONI's collections have now been indexed by Ancestry, as follows:

Northern Ireland, Valuation Revision Books, 1864-1933
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/62658/
Source: Valuation Revision Books. Belfast, Northern Ireland: Public Record Office of Northern Ireland (PRONI).

About Northern Ireland, Valuation Revision Books, 1864-1933

This collection contains land valuation records from Northern Ireland between 1864 and 1933. Revision books wtook the form of chronological ledgers and tracked changes to a property's original valuation. Valuations were conducted annually.

Using this collection

Records in the collection may contain the following information:

• Names of property owners
• Names of occupants
• Description of property
• Changes in acreage
• Changes in property valuation
• Name of street
• Name of city, county, parish, and townland
• Name of affiliated poor law union
• Date of notation

This collection contains a wealth of useful information to help trace your ancestors. As valuation revisions were conducted yearly, you can use them to create a chronological family history. There are no surviving censuses for Ireland prior to 1901, which makes the collection even more useful. Records can even be used to confirm dates of emigration or death, as you can seamlessly trace your family member's address. If you wish to trace your family back even further, you may wish to pair this collection with Griffith's Valuation.


Web: Northern Ireland, Freeholders Records
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/70955/
Source: Freeholders Records. Public Records Office of Northern Ireland. https://apps.proni.gov.uk/freeholders/default.aspx: Accessed February 2023.

About Web: Northern Ireland, Freeholders Records
All data in this third-party database was obtained from the source’s website. Ancestry.com does not support or make corrections or changes to the original database. To learn more about these records, please refer to the source’s website.


COMMENTS: Note that both collections can be consulted on the PRONI website at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/campaigns/public-record-office-northern-ireland-proni, but this is the first time that the Northern Irish Valuation Revision Books (known as the Cancelled Land Books in the Republic of Ireland) can be searched by a person's name, with the records previously browse only by the name of a county, parish, townland or street name. So this is a major new finding aid for the records, which act as the'sequel' to the mid-19th century Griffith's Valuation records, continuing to provide information on land holdings up to about 1930 for the six counties of Northern Ireland. I have to admit that I am not sure yet whether I will use the Ancestry indexes, as there is often a great deal of value in browsing the relevant record books, but I suspect I will likely use both to pursue transfers of land ownership.

On the free holders records, these were previously name searchable on the PRONI website, but on Ancestry you can use wildcards for names, increasing the research flexibility there also.

You can find a great deal more about these and other Irish land records, with worked up examples on how to use them, in my book, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, available from Pen and Sword in the UK at https://www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Irish-Ancestors-Through-Land-Records-Paperback/p/19283, and from the USA at https://www.penandswordbooks.com/9781526780218/tracing-your-irish-ancestors-through-land-records/.

Chris

Order Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors in the UK at https://bit.ly/BelfastAncestors. Also available - Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. For the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

More Valuation Records on ScotlandsPeople than expected

I've been doing some further research today into a two times great grandfather, a tailor called John Brownlie MacFarlane, who was based in Nairn and Inverness in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In addition to his bankruptcy in the 1870s, which I have previously researched, and additional court cases flagged up in the press (which he won!) I have also discovered a couple of newspaper articles suggesting that a J. B. MacFarlane of Inverness had taken up the role of precentor at the United Presbyterian Church in Nairn in 1870, perhaps a role he sought knowing that he was about to move to Nairn to set up his own business. My assumption is that it is almost certainly the same person, but as an assumption is never just good enough, I thought I would take a look at whether there was more than one "J. B. MacFarlane" in either Inverness or Nairn at the time to see if there might be other candidates. 

One way to potentially check this was to see who was in Nairn in 1875 using the Valuation Rolls, which are available on ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk). The records note the names of tenants/vassals, landlords/superiors, and the value of annual rent etc. In so doing, I have found that there seems to be quite a few more records available than have been previously advertised.

The ScotlandsPeople guide on Valuation Rolls (https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/guides/valuation-rolls) notes this - "Indexes and images of valuation rolls for 1855, 1865, 1875, 1885, 1895,  1905, 1915, 1920, 1925, 1930, 1935 and 1940 are available to search on  this site." You have the option on site of selecting each year to carry out such searches; a record costs 2 credits to purchase.

I had previously consulted the relevant records on site in Edinburgh at the NRS (they have all been digitised from 1855-1958, but not all indexed), but have just been surprised to work out that considerably more of the records for John are now available online than was expected, as follows:

Search '1875' Nairn Burgh:
1870 – 14 High Street
1870 – 12 Rose Street
1871 – 81 High Street
1873 – 81 High Street
1874 – 81 High Street
1875 – 81 High Street

Search '1885' Nairn Burgh:
1877 – 81 High Street
1878 – 7 Bridge Street
1879 – 7 Bridge Street
1880 – 6 Church Street
1881 – 6 Church Street
1882 – 6 Sydney Place
1883 – 6 Sydney Place
1884 – 4 Sydney Place

Search '1895' Inverness Burgh:
1886 – 2 Hill Place
1891 – 2 Hill Place
1892 – 2 Hill Place
1893 – 2 Hill Place
1894 – 2 Hill Place
1895 – 2 Hill Place

Search '1905' Inverness Burgh:
1905 – 8 View Place

The NRS guide at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/valuation-rolls/problems-using-valuation-rolls states the same converage as the ScotlandsPeople guide, but notes "Indexes for further years will follow."  

I don't know how much wider the coverage is than has been advertised, but if you have used the records before, it might be worth a wee look to see if there is more there than you have previously found! (And I would be keen to learn what other coverage you might come across, if you would be good enough to share in the comments!)

Good hunting!

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

Shane Wilson launches 1830 Valuation of Dublin City beta site

One of the most useful research resources for Irish genealogy research is Shane Wilson's site at www.swilson.info, which carries many finding aids and conversion tools. 

Shane has now added a wonderful new resource, the 1830 Valuation of Dublin City, in beta format, which allows you to search for residents by parish and street name. As it is in beta format, there are no finding aids available just yet, but it's a good job, and if you have Dublin ancestors from this period, as I do, you should hopefully have some fun with this!

The beta site is available at swilson.info/dubcval1830.php

(With thanks to Shane @Shanew147 via #AncestryHour)

Chris

My new book Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records is now available to buy at https://bit.ly/IrishLandRecords. Also available - Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

TheGenealogist's 'Lloyd George Domesday Survey' passes 1 million property records

This announcement from TheGenealogist (www.thegenealogist.co.uk) specifically concerns England, but may be of interest if your family moved south, and is certainly a huge milestone for the collection concerned:

TheGenealogist reaches over 1 million 1910s Property Records TheGenealogist has now added a total of over 1 million individuals to its unique Lloyd George Domesday Survey recordset with the addition this week of 85,959 individuals from the 1910s property tax records for the Borough of Haringey. Covering the areas of Hornsey Central, Hornsey East, Hornsey West, as well as Tottenham A, Tottenham B, Tottenham C and Wood Green this week’s release is made up of maps and field books that name property owners and occupiers in a exclusive online resource that gives family history researchers the ability to discover where an ancestor lived in the 1910-1915 period.

When combined with other records such as the 1911 Census, the IR58 Valuation Office records give researchers additional information about their ancestors' home, land, outbuildings and property. While these records may be searched from the Master Search or main search page of TheGenealogist, they have also been added to TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™ so that the family historian can see how the landscape where their ancestor lived or worked changed as the years have passed.

All of the contemporary OS maps are linked to field books that reveal descriptions of the property, as well as listing the names of owners and occupiers. This release makes it possible to precisely locate where an ancestor lived on a number of large scale, hand annotated maps for this part of London. These map the exact plots of properties at the time of the survey and are layered over various georeferenced historical maps and modern base maps on the Map Explorer™. Only available online from TheGenealogist, these records enable the researcher to thoroughly investigate a place in which an ancestor lived even if the streets have undergone massive change in the intervening years. 

There are further details on the most recent update to this collection at https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2021/haringey-land-valuation-records-uncovers-the-modest-house-that-gave-its-name-to-a-famous-football-stadium-1429/.

COMMENT:  A parallel record set from 1910-1915 that you may not be familiar with in Scotland - and which are certainly not the easiest to use! - are the Inland Revenue Survey Maps and Field Books. These were compiled as part of a valuation exercise carried out in Scotland by the Valuation Office - for further details see https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/inland-revenue-survey-maps-and-field-books. 

In many cases you can see plans of buildings as they existed at this point, as well as other useful details about the properties, including on ownership and leases, but it is probably fair to say that this is one collection that you may certainly require some assistance with at the NRS in Edinburgh - but they may certainly be worth the effort!

Chris

Just out, Sharing Your Family History Online is on sale at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.

TheGenealogist uploads new property records for Greenwich

From TheGenealogist (www.thegenealogist.co.uk):

New Property Records for Greenwich

TheGenealogist has just released over 57,700 individuals from the Greenwich area into its Lloyd George Domesday Survey Records on the Map Explorer™. These fully searchable property records enable researchers to find where ancestors from Greenwich lived in the 1910-1915 period. This release now brings the total coverage of Lloyd George Domesday Survey Records to over half a million individuals.

By using TheGenealogist’s powerful Map Explorer™ family history researchers searching for where their ancestors lived in the period before the First World War are able to see the actual plots for buildings and explore the district as it was in that period on large scale OS maps linked to the field books containing descriptions of the properties.

Researchers often have difficulty discovering where ancestors lived as road names can change over time. World War II Blitz bombing saw areas destroyed and these sites were altered during redevelopment, making them unrecognizable from what had been there before. Lanes and roads were often lost to build estates and office blocks. The changes over the years can mean that searching for where an ancestor lived using modern maps can be a frustrating experience, as they won’t pinpoint where old properties had once stood.

The Map Explorer™ benefits from a number of georeferenced historic map overlays and modern base maps, allowing users to see how the topography has changed over the years by simply sliding the opacity controls.

The Lloyd George Domesday Survey records are sourced from The National Archives and are being digitised by TheGenealogist.

TheGenealogist’s Lloyd George Domesday records link individual properties to extremely detailed maps used in 1910-1915

• Full descriptions of each property with its valuation recorded in field books
• Locate an address previously found in a census or street directory down to a specific house
• Fully searchable by name, county, parish and street
• The maps will zoom in to show the individual properties as they were in 1910-1915
• Transparency sliders enable you to compare and contrast modern and historic street maps,
• change the base map displayed to satellite or hybrid to more clearly understand what the area looks like today
• Overlay with a range of old maps to see the wider area as it had once been
• Allows you to display county or parish boundaries
• Searching for an ancestor identifies their property with a green pin
• Check neighbouring properties by clicking the red pins and selecting ‘View Transcript’

Read the article: Greenwich property records reveal the lost past much changed by the blitz, bombs and the building of a historic landmark
https://www.thegenealogist.co.uk/featuredarticles/2020/greenwich-property-records-reveal-the-lost-past-1233/

(With thanks to Nick Thorne)

Chris

You can pre-order my new book, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 (out April). Also available, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.