Tuesday 9 March 2021

Ayrshire poor law records available on FamilySearch

The Poor Relief Records database for Ayrshire which was previously accessible through Ayrshire Roots (www.ayrshireroots.co.uk) appears to be disabled, whether permanently or just temporarily is not yet known. However, thanks to a couple of Scottish Genealogy Network colleagues, Graham Maxwell and Kirsty Wilkinson, I have learned today that the register records, which were previously only accessible on microfilm at the Ayrshire Archives search rooms, have in fact been digitised by FamilySearch and can be found through its catalogue.

The list of poor relief records microfilms available from Ayrshire Archives is detailed at https://www.ayrshireroots.co.uk/Genealogy/Records/Poor%20Relief/Poor%20Relief.htm. To locate the relevant rolls on FamilySearch, make sure you are signed in (registration is free), and then visit the catalogue at https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog. From here, I have found the easiest way to locate relevant records is to use the Keywords search field, and type in the name of the town of interest followed by the word poor

For example, if I type in Irvine poor, this is the immediate search return of likely possibilities:

 
 Clicking on the 2nd entry gives me this:

And by clicking on the camera icon besides the relevant collection, I can then see the digital microfilm (note that if you are not signed in you will not get access through the camera icon until you do!):


The records are not keyword searchable, so you will have to use them the auld fashioned way - have fun!

(With thanks to Graham and Kirsty)

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.

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