Scottish Census Returns and OPRs on FamilySearch

I was recently wanting to retrieve census returns along with baptism, birth, and marriage registrations for several potentially connected branches of my Murdoch and McKinlay family that resided in Scotland. Normally I would head over to ScotlandsPeople and pay a few pounds to quickly access those records from the comfort of my home. However, being on a tight research budget for my own genealogy and family history, I was feeling a bit frugal and decided to see what FamilySearch had available.

First of all, the fine folks at FamilySearch have digitized the census returns of Scotland for the following decennial enumerations:

1841	Residence on 6 Jun 1841. Enumerators were instructed to round down the ages of persons 15 years and over to the nearest five years. Hence a given age of 28 would be recorded as 25, one of 63 as 60 and so on. If a person lied about their age, this, combined with the rounding down, could severely distort the actual age. You will find instances where enumerators did not adhere to this instruction on age and inserted the given age.
1851	Residence on 30 Mar 1851.
1861	Residence on 7 Apr 1861.
1871	Residence on 2 Apr 1871.
1881	Residence on 3 Apr 1881.
1891	Residence on 5 Apr 1891.

Due to the efforts of many volunteers the census returns have been indexed to make our lives a bit easier when trying to find our ancestors. Unfortunately the images of those records aren't available from home. Yet that's not too much of a problem for me since there is a Family History Center in Ottawa that isn't too far from where I live, even if I use public transit.

Once at the Family History Center I was able to search for the people I wanted to find in those census years. Then, by clicking on the image presented, I quickly viewed and saved the pages from the census returns to a USB stick. Of course I also made sure I saved the pages that described the enumeration districts in question.

1871 census of Scotland, Lanarkshire, Blythwood, Civil Parish of Barony, enumeration district (ED) 10, Description of enumeration district; FHL microfilm 104,026, image 465.

FamilySearch also has a number of the Old Parish Registers or OPRs searchable on their site. Again the images are only viewable from your Family History Center. But they are searchable on FamilySearch.

Other than expending time to save some money why would you want to use FamilySearch and not ScotlandsPeople to look through the census returns and Old Parish Registers?

On ScotlandsPeople there are 14 recorded Church of Scotland marriages in the Parish of Eastwood in Renfrewshire for people with the last name of McKinlay. To view all of those images it would require me to purchase 84 credits on ScotlandsPeople. That works out to be 2.8 packs of 30 credits. Since I can't purchase fractions of credit packs I would have to buy 3 bundles of 30 credits for a total of £22.5 or about $38 Canadian.

Instead I can copy the list from ScotlandsPeople into a spreadsheet to create a to do list for my visit to my local Family History Center. A check on FamilySearch reveals that the Parish registers for Eastwood, 1674-1854 are digitized and indexed. However, yet again the images are available for viewing only at the Family History Center. With this collection being indexed I can search FamilySearch from home using film number 001041057 to also create a to do list for my next visit.

Of course, the Family History Centers are only open on specific days and times and they do frown upon you wearing your pyjamas at their computers. Yet if you have a number of these records to review the necessity of having to get dressed and visiting your local Family History Center may just outweigh this inconvenience.

Next time I will write about some of the Scottish civil birth, marriage, and death registrations that are freely available on FamilySearch and how you can find them.

This hobby of ours can get quite expensive at times so finding ways to save money can be a big win.