The Glen Family of Paisley    |     home                 Scottish Research This is not intended to be the know-all guide to Scottish Genealogiacl Research, more like a short introduction to Genealogical research in Scotland, there will be plenty of links to better information on how to trace your Scottish ancestors. In Scotland the archives are ideally organized. The parish registers of the (Presbyterian) Church of Scotland were all called in to the central archives in 1855, this coincides with the start of official Scottish registration on the 1st of January 1855. Nearly all the records a family historian will need are housed in the two adjoining buildings of the Scottish Record Office and the West Register House in Edinburgh. In addition to the normal sources of general registration, parish registers, testaments (wills) and the census records there is a large amount of records unique in Europe, which reflect the fact that the laws of Scotland are based upon Roman Law and not the common law of England, Ireland and America. These records are legal records, relating particularly to the ownership, inheritance and aquisistion of land the most important of which is 'Services and Sasines' since in Scotland, land could not be devised by a will but could only pass by either inheritance or by legal act, a great deal of the genealogy of any owners of land and their relations is recorded in these archives.        All contents copyright © 2001 John Hugh Glen. All rights reserved. Created by John Hugh Glen. Url http://www.btinternet.com/~johnhglen/