Citing Scotland census records

By Ron Stephen on Thu, 10/29/2020 - 14:44

Forums

I am hoping you can give me some direction in the area of citing Scottish census records. I feel if I can master this I will be able to cite Scottish vital records i.e. BMD records. As I mentioned on a previous post, I am new to genealogy and want to get off on the right track so as not to have to go back after I have done substantial research. My family on my fathers side come from Scotland so I anticipate doing considerable research.

I would like to get your comments on a citation I have done for the 1881 Scotland census containing my grandfathers family. I recall reading somewhere in the 3rd addition of Evidence or somewhere on this site about constructing citations on international records to conform with the format that you include in your book.

Here is the citation I have constructed:

1881 Scotland Census, Moray County, Scotland, district of Drainie, village of Lossiemouth, enumeration disttrict (ED) 1, p 17 (stamped), schedule no. 102, John Stephen, head and John Stephen, son, image, ScotlandsPeople, (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk: accessed 3 May 2020); citing census returns 1871, General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) reference no. 130/1/17.

The schedule no. on the Scotland census is the same as the dwelling no. on a U.S. census. Also, the reference to the son is because the son is my focus of this record rather than the head. Maybe I don't need a reference to the head.

I know this subject is similar to another post titled "How does one cite the "ever changing" ScotlandsPeople?" but I believe the above citation conforms more to the Evidence Explained book as apposed to using a "trail of breadcrumbs" style. 

The copy of the census is 4.36 MB so I am unable to attach it to the document. Thank you for your guidance.

Ron

 

 

Submitted byEEon Thu, 10/29/2020 - 18:04

Ron, if you don't use the "trail of breadcrumbs" (i.e., path with waypoints) how does the user get from the website's home page to the exact census page?

I guess the confusion may be my understanding of "bread crumbs" i.e. waypoints. 

To answer your question I went through my procedure to find the exact census page.

On the website home page on the people line I entered Stephen, (Surname) and John (Forename) and 1881 in the from and to fields (the census year) and clicked search. On the search results page under census returns I clicked on "view 285 records". On the next page "census search results I added Moray for County and Drainie for District then update search. This results in 3 items. Based on the GROS reference in the citation (130/1/17) the first 2 results lead to the census image. The two results were for the same census image for the father and son as mentioned in my first post. To get to the exact image I accessed 2 search pages not counting the websites homepage.

All of the information I used is mentioned in the citation included in the original post. I tried to base the format of the citation on (EE 6.31) "Online Images". As I mentioned, I recall reading somewhere about constructing citations of international records to conform with the format in Evidence Explained 3rd edition.

I hope you can add some clarity to my thinking

Submitted byHistory-Hunteron Fri, 10/30/2020 - 12:55

Ron;

I can understand the difficulty you are having with the ScotlandsPeople records. They have changed things quite a bit since the examples I found in my version of the EE book. The various search pages are located a few levels down and within the access page associated with the target collection. That said, I have no doubt one could somehow make a case for using a "traditional" trail-of-breadcrumbs method. However; I thought I'd exercise a little "artistic license", since citing is an art and not a science, and try something a bit different. 

Given how they've now structured the website, and that the analog of a website is a book, I thought I'd try citing their nested collections as chapters and sub-sections within a book. Once you do that, it is very straightforward to locate the search page from which you can access their records with the information from your citation. The result also doesn't appear to require my deviating from the book examples in any really significant way. 

The following is a bit of a personal "cheat-sheet" that I made for myself to see how it would look.

Perhaps this would work?

--------------

The following are examples based upon my interpretation of the guidance found in;

Mills, Elizabeth Shown. Evidence Explained. 3rd edition (for Kindle). Baltimore, Maryland. Genealogical Publishing Company. 2015.

Source List Entry

(Website as Master Source to permit one source list entry for the databases and images available on the site)

Scotland. ScotlandsPeople. Databases and images. http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk : 2019.

First Reference Note

(for Statutory registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths)

1. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Statutory registers: Births,” database and images, ScotlandsPeople(http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk : accessed 26 May 2019), image, birth registration, Jessie Cousland Baird, born 4 November 1860, registered 20 November 1860, Parish of Denny, County of Stirling; citing “Statutory registers Births 476/ 169.”

2. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Statutory registers: Marriages,” database and images, ScotlandsPeople(http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk : accessed 20 June 2019), image, marriage registration, Thomas Baird and Mary Gray Cousland, married 6 September 1859, registered 7 September 1859, Parish of Denny, County of Stirling; citing “Statutory registers Marriages 476/ 19.”

3. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Statutory registers: Deaths,” database and images, ScotlandsPeople(http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk : accessed 28 June 2019), image, death registration, Thomas Baird, died 15 March 1907, registered 19 March 1907, District of Gorbals, Burgh of Glasgow; citing “Statutory registers Deaths 644/17 223.”

(for Census returns)

4. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Census returns,” database and images, ScotlandsPeople(http://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk : accessed 22 June 2019), image, 1901 Scottish census, RD of Gorbals, City of Glasgow, p. 3, sched. no. 16, Thomas Baird (age 68) and family; citing “1901 ... Census 644/12 7/ 3.”
 

Subsequent Note

(for Statutory registers of Births, Marriages and Deaths)

11. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Statutory registers: Births,” ScotlandsPeople, image, birth registration, Jessie Cousland Baird, born 4 November 1860, registered 20 November 1860, Denny, Stirling.

12. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Statutory registers: Marriages,” ScotlandsPeople, image, marriage registration, Thomas Baird and Mary Gray Cousland, married 6 September 1859, registered 7 September 1859, Denny, Stirling.

13. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Statutory registers: Deaths,” ScotlandsPeople, image, death registration, Thomas Baird, died 15 March 1907, registered 19 March 1907, Gorbals, Glasgow.

(for Census returns)

14. Scotland, “Advanced Search: Census returns,” database and images, ScotlandsPeople, image, 1901 Scottish census, Gorbals, Glasgow, p. 3, sched. no. 16, Thomas Baird and family.”

History-Hunter,

Thank you very much for the "templates". I will add them to some templates I have re U.S. BMD and census citations. They are exactly what I have been looking for on the internet, but without any success.

Thanks again.

Ron