Wednesday 10 February 2010

Perthshire Ancestry.co.uk databases - progress

The Perthshire material digitised by Ancestry.co.uk almost three years ago is slowly making progress towards being published.

The following collections have now been transcribed as part of the content supplier's World Archives Project:

Perth, Scotland, Survey of Inhabitants, 1766, 1773
Perthshire, Scotland, Militia Survey, 1802
Perthshire, Scotland, School Registers of Admission and Withdrawals, 1869-1901


The surveys of inhabitants are essentially early census listings, whilst the Militia Survey from 1802 was to create a list from which a ballot would be drawn for people to serve in the militia - the following is the instructions at the top of each ballot page:

TAKE Notice that you are hereby required within Fourteen Days from the Date hereof, to prepare or produce a Lift in Writing, to the best of your Belief, of the Christian and Surname of each and every Man resident in your Dwelling House, from and after the age of Eighteen Years complete, and not exceeding the Age of Forty-five years complete, distinguishing every Person in your Dwelling House of such age as aforesaid, claiming to be exempt from serving in the Militia, together with the Ground of every such Claim delivered to my house at South Street Perth.

Needless to say, these will be fantastic when they eventually go online. At present, the collections are on the 'In Processing' list which is defined on the site as "projects that have completed keying and arbitration by the community. These projects are now being worked on by the Ancestry team to prepare the indexes and images to go live on the site as searchable, indexed databases."

It is worth noting that these collections form just a small part of the vast amount of material that was digitised in both Perth and Cupar some three years ago. To date, the only records to have gone online at Ancestry from the exercise have been the newspaper indexes to both Perth and Fife newspapers.

Chris

www.ScotlandsGreatestStory.co.uk
Scotland's Greatest Story
www.twitter.com/chrismpaton

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