Scottish Research Online Resources

Declaration of Arbroath is the declaration of Scottish independence from 1320.  It is an early record with many (elite) Scottish names attached to it.

Last Tuesday I went to Braswell Memorial Library in Rocky Mount, NC to listen to a presentation by Craig R. Scott, CG on Scottish Research.  It was a very thorough discussion (over 2 hours) and I couldn’t even begin to go over everything he touched on here.  I am interested in Scottish history and family research but a lot of the materials about clans,  tartans and heraldic baubles I find kitschy and historically iffy, but he didn’t really touch on that much. I am going to try and do some research on my family  based on his presentation and I will post my findings at some point. Here are the online resources:

Family Search- searchable database of indexed Scottish Church and civil records as well as family trees.

GenUki– links to other sites with helpful genealogical resources and databases for the UK and Ireland.  It is organized by country, then county, then parish, and by topic

Scotland’s People– a fee-based government site, searchable databases of civil, census, church, and probate records, as well as other info and links.

National Archives of Scotland– Access to the archive’s online catalogue and information and research tools.

National Library of Scotland– an online catalogue of the library’s vast book collection and maps, including some viewable online.

Scottish Archive Network– links to the website of every archive in Scotland, research tools, and handwriting guide.

Scotland’s family– link to other sites with helpful genealogical resources and databases for Scotland. It is organized by topic. Includes parish maps for each county.

Scotland’s Churches after 1700– Articles on places and people.

Vision of Britain– Groome’s Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland.

Rampant Scotland– links to information on topics for Scotland

Electric Scotland– links to information on numerous topics for Scotland, and Groome’s Ordnance Gazatteer of Scotland.

Statistical Accounts of Scotland 1791-1845– statistical accounts give historical background information on each individual parish of Scotland.

The Scottish Genealogy Society– genealogical resources held by this society.

The Heraldry Society of Scotland– heraldry in Scotland and its proper use.

Internet Archive Library– birth registers from the Scottish Record Society

Italian Sailors in Wilson Jail, 1941

Clipping from an Italian newspaper of the prisoners in Wilson

“Imported Spaghetti”

One of my patrons found a great collection of pictures in an estate sale in Italy of Italian sailors being held in the Wilson County jail .  Yes an estate sale in Italy.  I guess some people get up very early.  Anyway the photos are quite extraordinary and I was lucky to be able to digitize them.

There are certainly some questions that go unanswered from what looks to be a news wire about them.  Supposedly their freighter, the Villerperosa, was sabotaged in the Wilmington, NC harbor, but it doesn’t say who sabotaged them.  The date of the photos are 30 June, 1941 so it would be almost six months until we were at war with Italy, yet the sailors were detained in the Wilson, NC jail, which is two hours away from Wilmington.  So many questions!

If anyone has any info about this slice of history, please let me know.

Wilson Boy Scouts, 1933

This picture was featured in the Wilson Historical Society Newsletter, but I thought I would place it here too.  From the Newsletter:

This photo of the Boy Scouts’ 1933 Gipsy Trip to Washington, DC comes to us from Charles Rountree of Wilson. Charles reports that his uncle, who died in 1944, and for whom he is named. Had the photo in his scrapbook. John Hackney is fifth from the left on the second row. Charles S. Rountree, Jr. is eighth from the left on the second row. The trip roster below also lists the following names: Woody Harrison, Dave Oettinger, Eli Joyner, Jimmy Fitzgerald, Tom Harvey, and many other prominent leaders in Wilson, Farmville, Kinston, Rocky Mount, and Greenville. Can you identify any of these folks? Email WCHA president Perry Morrison pmorrison@nccomplaw.com if you can, and we’ll include the names and identities in the next newsletter.