Daisy Goddard
Researcher
Mon Apr 28 2025
•
< 5 minutes read
It’s easier than ever to trace your Scottish roots – use digitised family history records, old newspapers and handy online tools to trace back generations of your family in just a few simple steps.
How do I trace my Scottish ancestry?
To find out about a particular family member, begin by carrying out a search for their name in online Scottish genealogy records. Birth, marriage and death records, recorded by the Scottish church, stretch back as far as 1855 and may illuminate the key milestones in your ancestor’s life. If your family were Catholic, you may find information about them within the Catholic Heritage Archive.
To trace your wider family story, start a family tree using a tree building tool for free online. You’ll be asked to input your name and date and birth, before building your family tree back through the generations with information about your parents and grandparents.
What do I need to get started?
When starting Scottish family history research, you’ll need basic information about yourself, your parents and your grandparents – a name and birthdate for each family member. These facts will be used to start your family tree.
If you’re missing any of this information, don’t worry. It may be useful to ask family members to fill in the blanks, or you can take a guess and find the details yourself within family history records.
If you’re new to Scottish family history, it’s good to be aware of how Scottish records differ from English, Welsh and Irish records:
- While English and Welsh parish records span back to 1538, the Scottish equivalents take the form of parish registers prior to 1855.
- From 1911 onwards, Scotland was recorded by separate censuses to England and Wales.
Scottish family history records explained
When tracing your Scottish ancestry, you’ll need to use parish birth, marriage and death records to establish key details about your relatives’ lives. These important records cover from 1855 to the present day, so may help you to discover your Victorian ancestors.
Scottish census records are available from 1841 to 1921 and can reveal where your ancestors lived at a particular point in time. As well as a name and address, you’ll find out who they lived with, where they worked and more.
Many old Scottish newspapers have been digitised and are available for you to search online. With everything from breaking national news to reports of weddings and community events, you can use historical newspapers to understand not just your ancestors, but also the world that they lived in.
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