Scottish 1881 census images go online

The following announcement is from the General Register Office for Scotland:

ORIGINAL IMAGES OF THE 1881 SCOTTISH CENSUS GO ONLINE

Exclusively available at ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk

Today images of the original 1881 Scottish census records are being made exclusively available on the website www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk, the official Government source of genealogical data for Scotland.

The census images chart the lives of the 3.7 million Scots living in Scotland on the night of 3 April 1881. Each census record includes the name, age, address, occupation and relationship to the head of household of every citizen. ScotlandsPeople already contains the census of 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1891 and 1901.

The new images of the census records will enable family historians to more easily trace their Scottish roots and the digitised versions of the original documents can also provide a keepsake of their ancestors’ lives.

This census offers a wealth of information about our ancestors’ lives in Scotland in 1881, a year when William Gladstone was Prime Minister of Great Britain, a treaty was signed ending the first Boer War, Alexander Fleming, the inventor of penicillin, was born in Ayrshire and Queens Park triumphed over Dumbarton in the Scottish Cup Final.

In addition to the high-quality images of the census entries, transcriptions of the census records are also available on the ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk website and the census is fully searchable by surname.

Duncan Macniven, Registrar General for Scotland, said: “The images of the original 1881 Scottish census records will help bring people’s family history to life, offering visual evidence of our ancestors’ lives recorded in history. Having access to images of the records as well as the transcribed data enhances the genealogy experience for family historians and helps connect today’s generations with the past.”

Chris van der Kuyl, chief executive of brightsolid online publishing, said: “We are delighted to release the 1881 census online. This has been a hugely successful partnership with General Register Office for Scotland and this release now completes the entire set available to the public through ScotlandsPeople.gov.uk.”

Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Scotland's Greatest Story
Professional family history research & genealogical problem solving