Scotland's People Release Valuation Rolls For 1905

Back in April last year I wrote about how it was now possible to view the Valuation Rolls for 1915 on the Scotland's People website. Well, they have now released 74000 more images, this time for the year 1905. The files can be searched by name or address, and contain "the names of the owners, tenants and occupiers of each property."

While the 1905 Valuation Rolls do list entire families as the census does, they are nevertheless useful for pinpointing exactly where an ancestor was living midway through the decade. They can therefore be used along with the 1901 and 1911 census records, and the 1915 Valuation Rolls, to create a time-line of an ancestor's movements over a 14 year period. 

Another useful feature of the Valuation Rolls is helping to establish an ancestor's social class. Knowing whether they owned or rented a property is helpful in determining their status. 

The Valuation Rolls for 1905 and 1915 can be searched now at Scotland's People. 

More Wills Added to ScotlandsPeople Site

ScotlandsPeople have just added almost 400,000 more wills and testaments to their records. The new documents relate to the period from 1902 to 1925. This means that they now have over one million wills and testaments in total, some dating as far back as 1513.

Scottish wills and testaments can provide some invaluable information when tracing ancestors, and they can also be extremely interesting. ScotlandsPeople currently have some excerpts from the wills of famous Scots to view free of charge, Andrew Carnegie and Sir John Murray being the two prime examples.

The entire wills and testaments index is free to search, but there is a charge of 10 credits, which equates to £2.33, to view a document. With the amount of information contained in many of the documents this can often be well worth the money.

ScotlandsPeople 10 Year Anniversary

The website ScotlandsPeople has been providing invaluable genealogical information to people all around the world for 10 years. The first incarnation of the site was launched in September 2002, and although it has gone through some changes since then it is without a doubt one of the best resources available to anybody tracing their Scottish ancestry. 

ScotlandsPeople is the official government backed resource for state records. There is a huge amount of information available on the site, and it is expanding all the time. Valuation Rolls for 1915 were recently added, for example. The site is incredibly easy to use, and there is no annual membership. You simply buy and use credits as you need them. Very convenient.

With the amount of migration from Scotland over the centuries ScotlandsPeople is an absolutely essential resource for any genealogist. The ScotlandsPeople Centre in Edinburgh is also well worth a visit. Credit has to go to the relevant authorities for realising the importance of preserving historical documents, and for investing the time and money into making them available to us.

I for one am very grateful for the service provided by ScotlandsPeople. My family tree would not have grown anywhere near as much, or as quickly, without the information I found on the site. 

Congratulations to ScotlandsPeople on your success in the past ten years. Here's to many more.

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