Primary sources | Mapping | Symbology | Trustworthy sites | Caveat Indagator

When I’m not a clumsy amateur genealogist, I’m an artist and an educator so I love to help people learn stuff visually. One of the great intersections between genealogy and visual art is that genealogy leans quite heavily on data visualization, something I completely nerd out on. I suspect genealogy may be one of the earliest examples of a discipline that used the visual diagramming of data in human experience.

When I first started researching my genealogy, I ran completely amuck with Ancestry family tree hints. I quickly learned this is quite possibly the worst sort of way to “research,” but not quickly enough to avoid creating a semi-fictitious tree of 20,000 people. It was a bit like foolishly starting a dissertation in Wikipedia.

But all is not lost. One thing I have learned about crowdsourced resources is that they are actually not terrible places to start research, but they are terrible places to finish it. So I don’t consider my dalliance in Ancestry to be a total waste. It gave me a hypothesis to test, and that is where my journey is now. Through trial and error and discovery, I’ve found solid research tools, which I am sharing below. Check back from time to time to see new material in this list.

Primary sources

Well, not exactly. In genealogy a “primary source” is an actual document from the era: a birth certificate, a deed, a census record, etc. I can’t even find my own birth certificate floating around in some box in my house! There are, however, repositories that archive these primary sources and allow access to digital copies or records of the same. Here are some I find trustworthy enough to function as a proxy for actually holding the primary source in my hand. I use these to establish a conclusive hypothesis about a branch or leaf on the tree.

• Family Search | I know it’s kinda creepy that they are an arm of LDS, and they rely on crowdsourcing so therefore should NOT to be considered a primary source. Nevertheless, of all the genealogy sites, this one is the most useful for creating leads to verify because 1) it’s not gated by paid subscription, and 2) it can lead to primary sources in many instances. Therefore I don’t include this among the more spuriously crowdsourced sites below. The key is to dig into the sources tab for a given person. No sources listed? Don’t use the data, or at least make a cautionary note for follow-up.
• Family History Library | LDS again, but a physical research resource and some online learning tools. A good example of these are the webinar videos that provide strategies for pouring through records like the Old Parish Registers (OPR). Type a logical search term (like “Scotland” for example) to access lessons here.
• Scotland Online Genealogy Records | Links to dozens of directories and records.
• National Records of Scotland | Family history searching at this government records website. Many of the government record websites below are affiliated with NRS.
• Scottish Archive Records | National Records of Scotland now maintains this site.
• ScotlandsPeople | A Scottish government archive. The beauty of this site is it lets you search for a record and will list it for you before you commit to purchasing a digital copy of a primary source. Birth, marriage, census, and death records primarily.
• Scottish Post Office Directories | Coverage of occupations and places for prominent citizens from late 1700’s to 1911.
• The Scottish Association of Family History Societies | Promotes and encourages the study of Scottish family history, a good source for publications.
• The Scottish Genealogy Society | Research center at 15 Victoria Terrace, Edinburgh.
• The Scottish Genealogy Blog | Graham and Emma Maxwell’s strategy blog, with excellent tips and tricks for searching databases.
• The Scottish Genealogy Network | Network of professional genealogists, with a blog.
• Aberdeen & North-East Scotland Family History Society | Research center at 158-164 King Street, Aberdeen.
• Anglo Scots Family History Society | Scottish indexes for those who moved or married away from their birth parish.
• Aberdeen City and Aberdeenshire Archives | Online catalogue containing descriptions of records.
• Cromar History Group | Local history in the Howe of Cromar. Amplifies family history with history of the region.
• Scottish Indexes | Good searching for primary sources, focused currently on central Scotland, but growing.
• Old Scottish | Bad news if you are here… asylum records, registers of the poor, in addition to some more conventional deed and school records.
• Internet Archive | There is a growing collection of of old primary sources, often in books, scanned but searchable through OCR for free.
• Find A Grave | Yeah, yeah, it’s crowdsourced like Family Search and therefore not a primary source. But is a photograph of a tombstone pretty fundamentally helpful? If used carefully, you can get solid data with no paywall. I almost want to cross-list this one with mapping sites because it can be a good source of location data for burials. So let’s segue to…

Mapping

Dates are not enough! Correlate your data with place information and increase the accuracy of your hypotheses:

• Google Maps | Enough said. Find any place that has not been lost to time. No historical overlays, so a street, town, or even country may no longer be “on the map” but there are solutions…
• GENUKI | UK & Ireland Genealogy – High-resolution historical map overlays, from contemporary back to the 1840s. Excellent search function for obscure and historical place names. Zoom interface is clunky, but worth the data found.
• The Statistical Accounts of Scotland 1791-1845 | Series of documentary publications, related in subject matter though published at different times, covering life in Scotland. Fine online access.
• National Library of Scotland | Map Images viewer. Easy zoom, quite searchable though not strictly intuitive. Many maps are CC licensed.
• David Rumsey Map Collection | Use the various viewers to search maps in multiple ways, including overlays in Google Earth and Google Maps!
• geograph | Photographs across the UK indexed to a grid system map. CC licensed and free to use.
• Megalithic Portal | Ancient sites, good data in a poor design but worth slogging through.
• Aberdeenshire Council | Links to maps of graveyards. Contact the council to visit.
• Burial Grounds in Northeast Scotland | A wonky post-Google-Map-API-revision interface but still a quite useful gravesite map.
• Index to Monument Inscriptions | An Aberdeen & North-East Scotland Family History Society sub-page, strictly speaking not a mapping site, but useful to synthesize inscription info with graveyard locations. Use the search function (for example, to find a list of “Cromar” in Kirkton of Aboyne).
• Boston Planning & Development Agency | Hosting Mapjunction historical map comparisons.
• Library of Congress | Geography and Map Division
• Google Earth | Create projects and tell stories using an interactive 3D web-based application.
• Google My Maps | Create embeddable maps like mine. Synthesize with historical data from other sources above to create icon markers and links out to the web.
• GeoNames | A massive database containing the standard name of every place on Earth. Indispensable and licensed Creative Commons Attribution!

Symbology: heraldry, vexillology, and others

Heraldry, the design of armorial bearings, is a common Western symbology representing family groups with roots in the Middle Ages. Vexillology, the study of flags, is an extension of this grouping propensity toward larger groupings like towns, counties, or nations. In Scotland, other symbology relating to the clan system include crest badges and tartans. Graphically, we might recognize these as “logos” that represent groups. We often see heraldic shields, flags, or symbols adorning family trees in Europe, and I have been using these in much the same way. In my family tree, I created vector-based flat graphic icons as a way to inventory and sort groups of people. These were sourced from various sites:

• Wappenwiki | Heraldry from about 1100 onward. I used their well-developed SVG (vector-based) graphics to create my stroke-free, flat-graphic icons. CC BY-NC-SA licensed.
• Wikipedia | Though not to be used as a primary source, helpful with developing hypotheses for historical figures, and with graphic information such as national flag colors, heraldic crowns, etc. Many are in vector format and contain color information. CC BY-SA licensed.
• The Scottish Register of Tartans | Government website for tartan design.
• The Society of Scottish Armigers | Information about the proper use and display of Scottish clan symbology, under the Court of the Lord Lyon.

“Trustworthy” research sites

Genealogy sites are a blessing and a curse. On the one hand, they can generate incredible leads. On the other, they are filled with crowdsourced fake news as a function of the average person’s ignorance of best research practice. Full disclosure: I started off as one of those persons! Experience has shown me which of these sites are more or less trustworthy. It should nevertheless be noted that all such genealogy sites should be treated with a heavy dose of healthy skepticism, chased by cross-referencing among trusted sources that are not simply citing one another in a horrid internet echo chamber.

• Humphrys genealogy | The genealogy site of Mark Humphrys, and a godsend. The amateur genealogist has much to learn from Mark! He’ll introduce you to, among other things, the concept of the World Family Tree, the Royal We and pedigree collapse, and why it’s OK to link to Wikipedia.
• Past Lives | Family history blog by Martin Robb (a relative?), and the inspiration for this blog. The data and diagrams are interesting, but Martin’s narrative style brings his family to life, in a way that I hope to emulate for mine.
• The Ancestors of Thomas Reese Parry and Violet Michie | By Venita Parry Roylance, backed by sources. NOTE: The site is down as of this writing (Oct 2022) but portions can be searched through the Wayback Machine.
• The Peerage | This site by Darryl Lundy should not be confused with Burke’s Peerage, but draws heavily from it among other sources. While it is based on sources that can be considered trustworthy, approach with caution.
• Arbuthnot Genealogical overview | The Arbuthnot family originated in Arbuthnott, Kincardineshire, Scotland. By Sir William Arbuthnot.
• Clan Macfarlane Descendants and associated families | By Andrew Macfarlane, a well-researched, sourced database.
• Family Tree | By Bernard Casimir, funny format but entries contain research notes and sources, so fairly trustworthy.
• Jamie Allen’s Family Tree & Ancient Genealogical Allegations | AKA the “Fabulous” Pedigree by Jamie Allen. Awful interface and a clumsy expression of data in a pedigree format using an idiosyncratic ASCII-like graphic sensibility… nevertheless, I trust this guy a little because he warns you not to use his site as a primary source. Use this site as a cross-reference to help confirm hypotheses.
• Our Royal, Titled, Noble, and Commoner Ancestors & Cousins | Better-than-average personal genealogy site honoring Dennis Lundahl, by Marlyn Lewis.
• www.mathematical.com | Peruse Our Family Tree by Charles Dean Pruitt with very ancient records, unfortunately with no indexing or search mechanism except for an alphabetical listing. Best bet is to seek it out with a hypothetical name in a search engine: e.g. “charlemagne” plus “mathematical.com” will yield this result.
• The Center for the Study of Ancient Wales | Researched and cited. However, many of the pedigrees are legendary. On the assumption that there is an echo of reality in legend and myth, I include data from this source.
• Early British Kingdoms | This site is as well-researched as it is poorly designed, so it’s worth the trouble of a bad UI. Some pedigrees reach into legend and myth, but as with Ancient Wales Studies, I include data as a source for ancient material.
• Medieval Lands | Medieval Lands Project of the Foundation for Medieval Genealogy. Good source, but hard to read.
• Genalogy.com | An odd site, now read-only, that does contain some useful bits.
• Rootsweb | Absorbed weirdly by Ancestry, it is somewhat useful from time to time.

“Caveat Indagator” research sites

Let the researcher beware: these sites generally lead to wormholes of aspirational, mythological, unsourced or crowdsourced claims. I don’t count these entirely out as places to seek leads, but do not trust them or treat them as sources! These are the usual suspects:

• Ancestry | Free level account. Gated for pay level info.
• Geneanet | Reasonably accessible family trees. Free level account. Gated for pay level info.
• Geni | Reasonably accessible family trees. Free level account. Gated for pay level info.
• WikiTree | Reasonably accessible data. Free level account. Gated for pay level info.
• MyHeritage | Difficult, non-intuitive access to family trees or data for free level account.