The Scottish GENES Blog (GEnealogy News and EventS): Top news stories and features concerning ancestral research in Scotland, Ireland, the rest of the UK, and their diasporas, from genealogist and family historian Chris Paton. Feel free to quote from this blog, but please credit Scottish GENES if you do. Cuimhnich air na daoine o'n d'thà inig thu!
I missed this from last week - FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has updated two Scottish Roman Catholic records collections, and added a third, as follows:
Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Marriages - 12,718 more records
Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms - 1,568 new records from 1881-1934.
Scotland Roman Catholic Directories - 63,901 directory records from 1829 to 2016.
*NB: FindmyPast has twice the available number of Catholic records available for Scotland than can be found on ScotlandsPeople. The records are sourced from the Scottish Catholic Archives.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
In almost twenty years working as a genealogist, I don't think I have ever been as angry as I was yesterday when I read about Ancestry's latest endeavour.
Ancestry is doing this because the NRS has refused to enter into a financial agreement with the records platform, stating that it would cost the archive £3.7 million a year in lost revenue, I imagine because the need for the ScotlandsPeople platform would collapse. The Information Commissioner's Office actually sided with the NRS, but Ancestry has challenged this with a body I have never heard of based in London, called the General Regulatory Chamber. It's reported that the Tribunal has ruled that the NRS should be able to make the records available, but has also noted that it hasn't got the legal authority to compel it to do so**. So there will now be a separate hearing.
In the past, Ancestry has entered into many agreements with the National Archives (TNA) in England to digitise and host records, often with exclusivity periods, for example with past census releases. But those were entered into as the result of a decision by that archive to seek commercial involvement (TNA also regularly partners with TheGenealogist and FindmyPast).
The NRS holds its records in trust for me and the people of Scotland. If I was to challenge the NRS that it was not providing access to Crown
copyright records that I felt it should open up, there would perhaps be a
moral case to support the challenge, with my being a Scottish based taxpayer. And indeed, there is a mechanism to
attempt to do so, the Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act, which I know various colleagues have attempted to use from time to time.
But Ancestry, by contrast, is a multinational for-profit genealogy company. Its main interest is its shareholders, no matter how fluffy the language on its platform may be for hungry genealogists. The idea that it may feel that it has a right to demand access to records so that it can make them available on a for-profit basis is quite frankly shocking.
If Ancestry succeeds here, which archive and country is next for its lawyers?
I have many issues with the NRS, which in many ways I find to be opaque and antiquated when compared to other UK based national archives. I have often discussed them on this platform, and continue to stand by the various criticisms that I have levelled at the platform in the past. The lack of a subscription based model for access to its records is just one of these criticisms. On that basis alone, I can imagine many people around the world will be supporting Ancestry's demands.
But this is a slippery slope. And as things stand just now, it is my sincere belief that Ancestry should back off (not the words I specifically want to use at this juncture, I have a few more that would be more appropriate!). From the reaction to this story on my Facebook page yesterday, Ancestry will certainly win few friends in Scotland with this action.
I'm absolutely disgusted. Good luck to the NRS in the legal proceedings.
UPDATE: ** In fact, that's not quite the case. Having now read through the judgment itself, the judge has found NRS was within its rights to refuse access, but that its description of what Ancestry wishes to do with the records is wrong. It has, however, noted that Ancestry can pursue as a point of law whether the NRS should have the right to allow exemptions to access in the first place. You can read more about the legal proceedings in my follow-up post at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/09/more-on-legal-proceedings-by-ancestry.html.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
From the Irish General Register Office, news about the forthcoming move of its search room in Dublin:
The office on Werburgh Street will close on Tuesday 30 September at 4.30pm. The office will relocate to the General Registrars Office (GRO) Research Rooms, Guild Building, Cork Street, Dublin 8 and will re-open on Tuesday 21 October at 9.30am.
The Research Rooms offer an email service Monday – Friday where you can request searches or photocopies, emails will be monitored during the move.
Our searches access all civil registration records up to present day.
Please email your request to GROResearchRoom@welfare.ie and a member of staff will reply as soon as possible.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
RootsTech by FamilySearch announced today that registration for RootsTech 2026, the world’s largest family discovery event, is now open. The event will be held 5–7 March 2026, in Salt Lake City, Utah, and online at RootsTech.org. Select content will be available in multiple languages. Register now for the in-person or online experience and plan to enjoy this one-of-a-kind global family connection and discovery event.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
Stephen Scarth kicked off proceedings with an update on the recent 5-year independent review carried out by Deloitte into PRONI's set-up. As a consequence of this, PRONI is and will be advertising for several new positions, including a new director, deputy director, head of marketing, and head of outreach. An interesting piece of news was that PRONI now has 88 members of staff, an increase from 64 a few years ago, reflecting the growing workload of Northern Ireland's national archive. In the next year PRONI will be implementing a new communciations plan with further advertising about its services, following successful efforts on that front over the last year in delivering key objectives for the archive, and with a specific budget allocation to do so.
The BIG headline item however is that PRONI's public facing website will be changing very soon. The site is currently available at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/campaigns/public-record-office-northern-ireland-proni (or the shorter https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni), but PRONI and NI Direct will be going their separate ways shortly. The archive is taking the opportunity to not only change the landing page URL (I have an idea what this might be, but will hold off on mentioning it until it is confirmed), but also to revamp and streamline the core content. There will still be access to research guides, records, and the catalogue, but a lot of dead wood will be stripped out, some content updated, and in all cases, the URLs that you may have bookmarked will be changing. So this is going to be quite a major evolution, although considering the site has not been updated in many years, it is quite understandable. As with previous PRONI content, the old site will be archived in PRONI's Web Archive (currently at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/information-and-services/search-archives-online/proni-web-archive, but this URL will also change!). I look forward to seeing the new site as PRONI confidently pushes ahead.
Sean Hayes updated us on the Now We're Talking Project (https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/now-were-talking-project), in partnership with the Nerve Centre (https://nervecentre.org/culture/now-were-talking). PRONI is currently cataloguing the papers of Michael J. Murphy (some 3000 items), and will soon turn to work on the Sam Hanna Bell Archive in the New Year. The Micheal J. Murphy collection (D4642) includes a great deal of folklore collated around much of the west of Ulster and some southern counties (Louth, Sliogo, Leitrim), covering a range of material from witchcraft to the atomic bomb! A small number of files will be digitised for access through the main catalogue as part of the project.
Grace Gordon updated us on many recent events with which PRONI has been involved, as part of the archive's currently year theme of creativity and innovation. PRONI attended the Belfast Mela festival for the first time, engaging with chikdren through a variety of resources such as images to be coloured in, stickers, archive based word-searches, and more. On Saturday 4th October there will be an Autumn in the Archives event at PRONI, with details on this available at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/autumn-archives.
In the main PRONI building, the new Axiell-based catalogue system has now been successfully launched in the search rooms, as of July, replacing the previous Calm-based software. Previous problems such as slow response times have now all been resolved. Stephen also advised that the PRONI maps viewer will be moved to a new platform. I asked at this point if this will affect the PRONI Suffrage Map available at https://dfcgis.maps.arcgis.com/apps/MapSeries/index.html?appid=58d83b0ec9ce4c60be299bfa12780c77, which Stephen will look into.
Next year sees the US 250 celebrations, as the United States celebrates its independence, with many Presbyterian Ulster Scots at the fore of the movement to break away from British rule (several were signatories of the Declaration of Independence). Both PRONI and its parents department will be organising events to tie in with this. PRONI will be producing a coffee table book highlighting 60 key documents highlighting the relationship between Ulster and the USA from the 17th to the 20th centuries. There will also be an on-site exhibition, featuring a letter delivered by Ulster Scot Charles Thomson to George Washington at Mount Vernon in April 1789, advising him that he was now the president of the newly created USA. This will be the first ever international loan on display at PRONI. There will also be a loan of a copy of the Declaration of Independence held at TNA in England, and a great deal more. PRONI is also preparing a travelling exhibition for display around Northern Ireland, and in the USA.
On November 7th there will be an Irish Studies Conference event at PRONI marking the 100th anniversary of the Irish Boundary Commission, more specifically the date when its findings were leaked to the press! The commission's political failure led to the modern border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Free State (now the Republic) being fixed along current lines. You can read more on this at https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/articles/1925-irish-boundary-commission-centenary-conference.
Finally, the last week of November (24th-28th) once again sees Preservation Week at PRONI, when archival productions will not be available for consultation, only the self-access materials in the public search room. Something to be aware of if planning a visit to the archive!
(With thanks to Stephen and the PRONI team)
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
For members of the Association of Professional Genealogists (https://www.apgen.org) based in Scotland, or for members who can get to Scotland (!), the following may be of interest:
Save the Date! APG is heading to Scotland!
Join us in Glasgow, 24 June 2026, for the APG Professional Genealogy Symposium, presented in partnership with the University of Strathclyde’s Institute for Genealogical Studies (SIGS).
What to expect:
• Sessions led by industry experts • Topics on business growth, client deliverables, financials, productivity, cross-border marketing, ethics & more • Two ways to attend: in person in vibrant Glasgow or online from anywhere in the world
Extend your experience by staying for SIGS’ two-day conference, Beyond the Family Tree: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on AI, DNA, Education and Community in Genealogy (25–26 June 2026).
Members can register interest for further updates on pricing, sessions, and speakershere.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
1955–56 TV times (London, England : 1955) 1956–77 TV times (London) 1967–67 TV times (Northern) 1977–80 TV times (Thames/LWT)
Regional editions of the TV Times were introduced from 1968, and as can be seen from this release, the titles available are mainly for London, with a year's holdings from a northern English edition in 1967. This means that the programming from Scottish Television, Grampian Television, Borders TV, and Ulster Television, will not be found in the release as available at present. It is unclear whether these editions will be forthcoming - but it is encouraging to see the northern English edition, which perhaps bodes well.
I remember reading this each week as a young lad delivering newspapers in Carrickfergus in the 1980s (along with customer copies of the Radio Times and RTÉ Guide!), back in the days when we only had four channels in Northern Ireland, and two in the Republic - fingers crossed we get our versions of these titles added soon!
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
The National Library of Scotland's maps platform (https://maps.nls.uk) has added just under 200 early maps of Great Britain and Scotland to its site:
We have added online 190 early printed maps of Great Britain, Scotland and more detailed places within these countries. This includes 78 maps of Scotland as a whole, 45 maps of Great Britain and Ireland, 38 town plans and 11 county maps. These maps are often very attractively coloured, variant states of these important early maps, many of which published within Dutch atlases of the 16th and 17th centuries. These maps are all from our Charlotte Smith collection, acquired by the Library in 2017.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
My next 5-week course for Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd (www.pharostutors.com), entitled Researching Scottish Ancestral Crisis, starts on Monday 27th October 2025.
For some ten years or so, Pharos offered two Scottish themed courses, Scottish Research Online and Scotland 1750-1850: Beyond the Old Parish Registers. In the first course, we've shown how to access certain records for Scottish research online, whilst the second course has taken things further by showing how to access records not just online, but in archives. At the same time it has also shown how various aspects of Scotland worked, as a means to locate records offline and online that might help when the OPRs don't.
In this third course, we now turn things seriously up to eleven...! In the past, records were often kept documenting various crises on a range of fronts, and in this course, I not only explore those scenarios, but also explain how the country worked, the types of records generated, and how to access them.
If you have done the previous two courses - or feel yourself to be somewhat further along with your research experience and at the relevant level - I hope you can sign up to this course, which I hope, as ever, will be both fulfilling and fun!
The following is the course description:
Researching Scottish Ancestral Crisis
As in our own lives, many of our Scottish ancestors had to overcome great adversity on occasions to simply make it through the day. Illness, death, bigamy, abandonment, accidents, eviction, victimhood, ethnic cleansing, and so much more a dramatic range of experiences across a series of lifetimes. And whenever such crises emerged, somebody was usually close to hand with a quill and ink to bear witness. In so doing, a great documentary legacy was created that can greatly help us to understand the true lives of our forebears, and the struggles that led to who we became today.
Many challenges and hardships were faced across time. There were the laws of the local parish church and the punishments awaiting those who breached kirk discipline, diligently recorded in the kirk session and presbytery papers, but additional courts existed elsewhere in society, from the Crown and the burghs to the local justices of the peace and trade incorporations. Records of the churches and heritors, as well as the post-1845 poor law records, can detail the struggles of those who struggled to avoid poverty, whilst documents such as letters of horning and warrants of poinding, as well as sequestration and cessio bonorum, can detail the persecution and stigma of being a debtor or a bankrupt. In other areas, the court records can also reveal some of the ingenious methods by which people could avoid inheriting the debts of their predecessors.
The darkest moments of the soul, from mental health issues and illness, are revealed in historic asylum and hospital records held in archives across Scotland, whilst cases of murder and suicide can be uncovered in court processes, newspapers and broadsheets. Dramatic moments of rebellion, when our forebears drew a line in the sand against a perceived tyranny or democratic deficit, can be found in contemporary records of the Covenanters, the Jacobites, the Chartists, the Suffragettes, crofters, and those cleared from the land to make way for more profitable sheep, from the forfeiture of lands and prosecutions to the folk songs of many who were forced to emigrate.
This course will reveal the many areas of Scottish ancestral hardship that have been documented over the last few centuries, and explore how to access the relevant records. It follows on from two previous Pharos courses, Scottish Research Online, which explores websites offering some of the more basic records for Scottish research, and Scotland 1750: Beyond the Old Parish Registers, which takes students to more advanced records found offline and online, and which flags up the importance of using catalogues. Although not compulsory, it is recommended that both courses are completed prior to studying Researching Scottish Ancestral Crisis.
Lesson Headings:
* Law and Order * Family Events and Relationships * Poverty and Debt * Medical Issues * The State and the People
Each lesson includes lesson notes, activities and forum exercises for students to complete during the week and a one-hour live tutorial (text chat or Zoom) with the tutor and the rest of the class. Times for the tutorials are set at the beginning of each course by the tutor.
"Wonderful topics to research and presentation and ideas of where to go to look for answers regarding these topics. Have learnt so much over the 3 courses and now have lots to do in updating and following through on the course materials and what I have learnt. Already looking at different ways of research and finding out heaps more. The 3 courses are so great and full of information and Chris is excellent in the Chat section with not only giving questions for us to reply to but also the answers."
"It was an excellent continuation of the previous course and really made me look at genealogy in a much broader way. Chris is a very encouraging tutor and willing to answer all questions. He has such an extensive knowledge of genealogy."
"The course content...amazing"
"All course materials were professional and thorough. Chris did a lot of prep work to make sure that we received the best information needed to be successful."
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. For purchase in tthe USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.
