Scottish GENES

Tuesday, 10 February 2026

Departmental bunfight in Ireland over 1864-1870 death records?

I commented the following on the Irish Government's Department of Culture, Communications and Sport's Facebook page yesterday (https://www.facebook.com/DeptCultureCommsSport):

"What about the 1864-1870 death records? Sporadic death indexes, absolutely no images. Come on lads, it can't be that difficult to put them online!"

And I received a response:

"This week’s release includes the annual update of records, adding an additional year of civil records to the website. The Irish Genealogy website now provides access to Civil birth records from 1864–1925, marriage records from 1845–1950, and death records from 1864–1975.

"Please note that while death records from 1864–1970 are indexed on the website, the associated images are not yet available. These images remain with the General Register Office (GRO). The Department has informed the GRO that we will prioritise uploading these records to the Irish Genealogy website as soon as they are provided."

First of all, the indexes are absolutely not complete for death records from 1864-1870. But secondly, have we been unable to see this small group of records for all this time because one Irish governmental department is simply not collaborating with another?

I'll repeat the last line again:

"Come on lads, it can't be that difficult to put them online!"

Chris

Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available -Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, 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. To purchase in the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.

Monday, 9 February 2026

Update on plans for proposed Glasgow Necropolis eastern entrance

The following has been sent by Annette Mullen, chair of The Friends of the Glasgow Necropolis (https://www.glasgownecropolis.org):

Dear Supporters,

Further to my previous correspondence, I wanted to provide an update on the proposed Eastern
Entrance to the Glasgow Necropolis

The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis had been invited to a Progress Update Meeting on the 27th
Jan 2026 with Glasgow City Council (GCC) representatives, Ian Elder, the current Project
Manager of the proposed Eastern Entrance and Alice Fayaud - Project Assistant.
Attending the meeting on behalf of the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis: Annette Mullen, Chairperson; Colin Campbell, Deputy Chairperson

The following Progress Update was provided:

Topographical Study – complete.
Ground Penetration Survey - not completed as yet, will take place imminently.
South side of Firpark wall is the proposed site for the new entrance.
Discussions have been held by GCC with the following representatives:
Parks Management
Police Scotland
Neighbourhood Co-Ordinator (Ward 22 Dennistoun)

We were informed that GCC are looking at a sustainable approach with possible CCTV cameras
and appropriate lighting at the Firpark Street side of the wall looking into the Necropolis.
CCTV cameras would be managed/monitored 3pm – 3am seven days a week.

We were informed some trees have already been cleared from the Firpark Street side of the
wall area, but many of these had already been highlighted for removal previously due to ash
dieback.

We were informed it is anticipated that the design plan will be ready to be shared with the
Friends of Glasgow Necropolis in 4 – 6 weeks at another progress meeting.

It was confirmed Historic Environment Scotland have been informally engaged.

Time scales for the Project:

Planning & Operating Plan – 8 week process
It will then move to formal planning application. If formal consent approved, work would start
asap, with an anticipated timescales to complete of 4 weeks.
Completion anticipated late Summer/Early Autumn.

The current Project Manager Ian Elder is moving to a new role in 4 – 6 weeks. At the next
progress update meeting, the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis will be introduced to whoever will
take forward the project.

It was confirmed that the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis will continue to be engaged in the
progress of the project by whoever takes over the role as Project Manager from Ian Elder.
We will update you as soon as we have the next meeting which we anticipate will be towards
the end of February or early March.

As soon as we are aware that the Planning Application consent has been progressed, and we
are monitoring this, it is the intention of the Friends of Glasgow Necropolis to formerly object to
the Planning Application.

There will be a very short window to object and our understanding is this must be done via the
Glasgow City Council planning portal by email, or by post within the specified consultation
period (usually 21- 28 days).

This will be your opportunity to make your voice heard and we sincerely hope you stand with the
Friends of Glasgow Necropolis in objecting to this Planning Application and prevent this very
real threat to the future of the Glasgow Necropolis.

Annette Mullen
Chairperson - The Friends of Glasgow Necropolis

(With thanks to Annette)

Chris

Free access to 100 million pages of British Newspaper Archive content via FindmyPast

The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) will be reaching 100 million pages of content this week (it's currently at 99,924,013 pages). The same content is also made available to view via a FindmyPast subscription, and as such, FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) is opening up its access to the collection for free until February 16th to celebrate. The following is its announcement:

Findmypast opens newspaper archive for free to celebrate 100-million-page milestone

Findmypast and the British Newspaper Archive reach 100 million historical newspaper pages digitised and published online to the public
The collection dates back to 1699, covering over 2,700 titles and more than 7 million issues, offering a vast, powerful resource for uncovering vibrant family stories
Findmypast’s high quality digitisation process and powerful search tools mean it's easier than ever to make discoveries, add them to family trees, or save them to Workspace projects
To celebrate, Findmypast is offering free access to the entire newspaper archive until 16 February 2026, giving family historians a full week to explore

Findmypast, the home of British and Irish family history, is celebrating a monumental milestone this week: its ever‑growing digital historical newspaper collection reaches 100 million fully searchable pages, opening up countless new opportunities for family historians to uncover hidden stories, forgotten moments, and long‑lost ancestors.

This milestone marks one of the world’s largest long-running digitisation projects to enable broader access to these significant historical records. To celebrate the occasion, Findmypast is offering free access to its entire newspaper archive until 16 February 2026, giving researchers a full week to dive into centuries of headlines and discover the unexpected.

Spanning 400 years and featuring more than 2,700 titles and 7 million issues, Findmypast’s newspaper archive is one of the richest sources for building a vivid picture of your ancestors’ lives. Whether you're chasing down a great‑grandfather’s wartime escapades, tracking a long‑forgotten marriage announcement, or stumbling across a scandal that reshapes your family narrative, these pages offer a window into events as they happened.

Findmypast’s newspaper search tools are designed to help family historians uncover stories quickly and accurately. Researchers can draw on extracted details from birth, marriage, and death notices—instantly linkable to family trees—and refine broad searches with smart filtering to pinpoint the most relevant results. Clip and save articles to your tree, add them to your Workspace, or create a Collection around a family member or project.

The vast, continually growing archive includes newspapers from the UK, Ireland and beyond, digitised page-by-page on an ongoing basis by a team based in Boston Spa, Yorkshire.

Using the latest equipment, the pages are scanned to a high resolution, and the images processed using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. This extracts the text data, enabling Findmypast’s own machine learning technology to identify key terms powering a more detailed search, including information like names, dates, locations, and even phrases. Quality checks ensure that the pages are clean and readable before they are processed and added to the archive.

Lee Wilkinson, Managing Director of DC Thomson History, which owns Findmypast, said: “Reaching 100 million published newspaper pages is a landmark moment for Findmypast, and a powerful reflection of what long-term partnership can achieve. Over 15 years, we have worked closely with major British & Irish archives, cultural organisations, and publishers to preserve these fragile records and expand public access to them. Each page adds depth to our shared history and gives researchers, educators, local historians and families new ways to understand the lives and communities that came before us. I’d encourage everyone to go online and explore this rich resource for free.”

Delve deeper into your family history at www.findmypast.co.uk

(With thanks to Madeleine Gilbert)

Chris

Annual update for IrishGenealogy.ie - but still no 1864-1870 death records

The IrishGenealogy.ie platform (www.irishgenealogy.ie) has received its annual update of vital records, meaning that biorth records from 1925, marriages from 1950, and deaths from 1975 can now be viewed online free of charge.

Please note that these are for records in what is now the Irish republic - for Northern Ireland, the equivalent records can be found at the pay-per-view GRONI website at https://geni.nidirect.gov.uk (note this site has an ongoing weekly update of records to reflect the same closure periods of 100 years for births, 75 years for marriages, and 50 years for deaths).

In what is now becoming a well-established IrishGenealogy.ie tradition, there is still absolutely no news as to why the death records from 1864-1870 continue to remain inaccessible on this platform. Will they have to kill us if they release them, are they really so top secret?! Note that death records for the six Northern Irish counties from this same period are available on the northern GRO site, there's absolutely nothing remarkable about them!

Chris

Saturday, 7 February 2026

Registration now open for Strathclyde's postgraduate genealogy courses

From the University of Strathclyde:

Registration is now open for the April 2026 start Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogical Studies.

The online modular route offers greater flexibility, perfect for students who prefer to learn at their own pace over a longer period of time. There are no formal exams on any of our courses. Instead, you’ll complete modules through engaging assignments and coursework.

What you will gain from the programme:

develop a grounding in the theory and practice of genealogical research, records, archives and heraldry;
focus on the sources available to genealogists and family historians;
gain a deeper, more critical understanding of the field, its literature, professional and academic practice;
professional recognition (ASGRA, AGRA, RQG) from PGDip level.

Application deadline

Please submit your application no later than the 31st of March 2026.

Normally, a degree or similar evidence of study skills is required however non-standard educational or professional qualifications will also be considered Download our FAQ document for further guidance.

Information including fees and course content can be found on the MSc Genealogical, Palaeographic and Heraldic Studies course page.

** This year marks 20 years since the Postgraduate Certificate in Genealogical Studies course first commenced, as designed by Bruce Durie. I was in the first cohort of students for this, and the subsequent year's Postgraduate Diploma, although did not continue to the masters, as this took a bit longer to set up and I was already onto other things (I may go back some day to complete the Masters, who knows?!). I can thoroughly recommend the course for those wishing to take a serious approach to becoming a professional genealogist.

It's not an easy course - there is a LOT of work involved - but the rewards are worth it!

Chris

Forthcoming talk: The Bombing of Edinburgh and Leith

From Leith Local History Society (https://www.leithlocalhistorysociety.org.uk):

Please join us on Tuesday, 17th February at 7pm in Leith Community Centre to listen to Tom Woods fascinating talk about the bombing of Edinburgh and Leith during World War II. He has recently published a book on the same topic. Tom was previously one of the most senior law enforcement officers in Scotland and his last role was in command of the investigation into the infamous World's End murders. After leaving the police he has worked in various posts including Adult and Child protection and writes for the Scotsman on crime and justice. Tom has also written another best selling book Ruxton. The First Modern Murder.

Further details at https://www.facebook.com/events/909716141427158/.

Chris

A search for bilingual Gaelic and English headstones in Scottish kirkyards

The BBC's Gaelic news page, Naidheachdan, has an interesting article entitled "Am faca sibhse clach-uaighe dhà-chànanach?", meaning "Have you seen bilingual headstones?", available at https://www.bbc.co.uk/naidheachdan/sgeulachdan/ckgkmel4vlko.

The article discusses a headstone from Monzie graveyard in Perthshire, dated to 1793, which is written in English on one side, and in Scottish Gaelic (Gàidhlig) on the other. The dialect of Gaelic spoken in Perthshire at that time has now been extinguished, making the find a sort of 'Rosetta Stone', providing evidence of local pronunications of the language in this part of Scotland at that time.

The article discusses whether other examples can be found to help flesh out the picture some more.

The article is written in Gaelic, but can be easily translated with Google Translate.

Chris

Share discoveries with the British Newspaper Archive as it approaches 100 million pages of content

The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk), a collaboration between the British Library and FindmyPast, is on the point of reaching 100 million pages of content, with the current total at the time of writing at 99,828,117 pages.

On the site's Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/TheBritishNewspaperArchive), it asks the following:

Now, as we approach our 100 millionth page, we’d love to hear from you. What have you used the BNA to uncover? #100MillionPages

By replying, you’re happy for us to quote your comment (and your name) in our milestone blog and related marketing.

The following are the latest additions for Scotland and Ireland over the last 30 days:

Scotland:

John o' Groat Journal
1957, 1986-1987, 1989-1993

Invergordon Times and General Advertiser
1887, 1889-1891

Fifeshire Advertiser
1849-1856, 1858-1869, 1900

Edinburgh Evening News
1996-2004

Govan Press and Weekly Advertiser for Govan & Kinning Park
1889, 1891-1892

People's Friend
1930-1948

Sunday Post
1929, 1940

Ireland:

Irish Railway Gazette
1844-1850

Belfast Telegraph
1986-1999

Chris

Sunday, 1 February 2026

Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers genealogy course returns 16 March

The next 5 week long Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers family history course from Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd (www.pharostutors.com) commences in just over a week's time from Monday, 16 March 2026.

The following short video introduces the course:

(Also available at https://youtu.be/1aGSA-mEiQY)

And the following is the course description, and how to sign up if interested!

Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers

This is an intermediate level course in Scottish family history for those who are going back beyond 1850. You should have some experience with research in the Old Parish Registers (OPRs) of the Church of Scotland and in using major websites for Scottish research.

This course discusses sources that fill the gap when the OPRs are uninformative or missing, such as the kirk session and presbytery courts records generated by the Kirk (Church of Scotland), as well as the records of dissenting and seceding Presbyterian congregations. From the forerunners of Scotlands modern towns and cities are the administrative records of the burghs, and the trades incorporations and merchant guilds, as well as other professions, which can enhance our understanding of our ancestors lives. And in the final two lessons the course turns up a notch and tackles two areas where the Scottish records, as generated through the feudal system, are truly unique, namely the various registers of land records known as sasines, and the separate legal processes in Scotland for the inheritance of both moveable and heritable estate.

Whilst some of the records discussed in the course are available online, many are available only in the archives, or in private hands, and a strong focus of this course will be in how to successfully employ the relevant catalogues and finding aids to locate such treasures.

Whilst not compulsory, it is strongly recommended that you complete the Pharos course Scottish Research Online before studying Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers, as it will be assumed that you are already familiar with the more basic resources available online for Scottish ancestral research.

Lesson Headings:

    * Kirk Sessions records and parish poor
    * Burgh records and town poor
    * Occupations, taxation and early lists
    * Land transfer and the value of sasines
    * Land, inheritance and estates

Each lesson includes exercises and activities; a minimum of 1 one-hour chat session per week. (See How the Courses Work at https://www.pharostutors.com/howcourseswork.php.) NB: Unlike previous courses, I am trialling using Zoom for these chat sessions, rather than the previously used text-based chat rooms - recordings of Zoom sessions will be made available after each lesson chat.

Relevant Countries: Scotland
Course Length: 5 Weeks
Start Date: 16 March 2026
Cost: £70

Student feedback:

"The exercises helped you to explore new lesson concepts right away. Especially by directing students to apply new research aids to their own work."

"Very clear explanations of terminology and legal processes Really helpful exercises and comprenesive list of useful catalogues and other references Chat sessions very helpful and engaging."

"This being the second genealogy course I have taken, and the second with Pharos, I found these were detailed foundation courses which will permit me to search better and with less effort in my future research work."

"Great subject-matter and excellent tutor/written materials. It could not have been better."

For further details, and to sign up, please visit https://www.pharostutors.com/scotland-1750-1850-beyond-the-old-parish-registers.

I'll hopefully see you online there!

Chris

Scottish GENES Webinar: Tracing the Irish in Scotland

My next monthly Scottish GENES Webinar will take place on Saturday 21 February 2026 at 7pm (UK time), and will be entitled Tracing the Irish in Scotland.

Following the event, a recording of the presentation will be available for one week to registrants, and a handout will also be supplied.

The following is the talk's description:

The first census in Scotland, the Senchus Fer nAlban, documented the descendants of Irish Gaels in the west of Scotland, a people known to the Romans as the ‘Scotti’ from which ‘Scotland’ derives its name. The stories of both Scotland and Ireland have remained intertwined ever since. Whilst the 17th century Plantations of Ulster led to the settlement of thousands of Scotland in the north of Ireland, the incorporation of Ireland into the UK in 1801, and the subsequent Great Famine of the 1840s, led to an equally vast migration of Irish folk into Scotland in the 19th century, and beyond.

In this session, family historian Chris Paton will explore the Scottish records which can assist in not only documenting what became of the settlers who have arrived over the last two centuries, but which in many cases can also identify an original point of origin in Ireland from which they came. He will cover the vital records as created by the state and the various Scottish churches, the records of confirmation (probate), the administration of poor relief, the records of religious and political conflicts, and more, explaining how such records can help to shed light onto their ancestral stories. In addition he will also flag up some Irish resources that can provide clues to family circumstances in Scotland.

To register for the event, please visit https://us06web.zoom.us/webinar/register/WN_9aN1bbcrQYyt_jjTZ1dbiw - the registration fee is just £10 Stirling.

I hope to maybe see you there!

Chris