Voilá! Or, perhaps more appropriately in Scots Gaelic: Mar sin!

My Canadian cousins have completed the digitization of the List of Pollable Persons within the Shire of Aberdeen. The data for Volume 2 is now available as a second tab in the original spreadsheet shared at the link above. They are very pleased to share this important work. For convenience of reference, here is the database and a link to the file:

Aberdeenshire Poll Book Volume 1 & 2 database

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By the numbers

The statistics:

• Volume 1 : 650 pages and 5,516 entries
• Volume 2 : 632 pages and 6,701 entries
• Total : 1282 pages and 12,217 entries (selected names only)

Interesting observations

Looking at the numbers, I find it curious that the second volume contains nearly 1200 more entries than the first, but does so using 18 fewer pages. A second curiosity is that entries for the Presbytery of Deer are split between the two volumes. There are 912 Deer entries in Volume 1, and 989 in Volume 2. However, when we map them, a jurisdictional logic emerges. Volume 1 features the parishes of Peterhead, Longside, Streichen, Deer (the parish), and Rathen. Meanwhile, in Volume 2, we find Auchredie, Lonmey, Crimond, Tyrie, Aberdour, Pitsligo, and Fraserburgh. Zoom in on this updated map to see the split:

And yet a third curiosity crops up: if you do a search — did I mention this is a searchable database? — notice that there are nearly 3 dozen Robbs in the second volume. Well, how many new Cromars show up?

Only one!

Here, we simply find a single John Cromar, husband of Marjorie Keith, as a tenant in Aschallach, parish of Forgue, presbytery of Turreff. It’s a small fermtoun about 3 miles south of Forgue, and about 30 miles due north of Kincardine O’Neil. The modern orthography is Ashalloch.

So, we can confirm the Cromar reputation for being a close-knit family. And the wide Robb dispersal, seen in Volume 1, makes them now even more difficult to track down! We will map these instances in our next post.

Speaking of orthographies…

One of the really terrific features of this work is found in the third tab of the spreadsheet. Wendy has analyzed the orthographic variety of all the surnames found in the Poll Book, and presented them here for reference.

The standardization of spelling for surnames was still in its infancy when the Poll Book was compiled, and this is one of the most difficult things about using it to trace identities. For example, Jannet Dun, the wife of Robert Cromar 2.1, has several variations on her name associated with her identity. We’ve seen Dun, Dune, Dunn, and Don in the record. But the Dun variations are legion: add Done, Donne, Dunes, Donn, and — I kid you not — Dwn and Dwne to the mix!

So when you’re trying to track down the 8 variations on Dun or the record-breaking 17 variations on the name Steven, thank our Canadian collaborators for going this extra mile for you!