I hope that
you manage to find the details that you are looking for amongst the hundreds
of pages available to you in this site. The site is totally free to use and
in return I hope that you can contribute some data that may be of use to
other genealogists searching for their roots in Ayrshire
If
you are looking for information past and present on Ayrshire Towns then you
will find historical details, maps, and many views old and new for Ayrshire
towns or parishes by clicking on Towns. Our ancestors in Ayrshire
lived and worked in the various towns and parishes throughout the County.
Researching our roots is not complete without seeing where they lived and
the history of the area. Under Towns it is hoped to have old and new views
of all the Ayrshire towns together with details of their past industries and
history. Links will take you to any local websites where they exist.
If
you are looking for details on how to search for your Ayrshire Ancestors or
what resources are available to you then click on Genealogy. This
site has been constructed to help those searching for their Ayrshire
Scottish roots. There is help for those starting out in Genealogy (and even
the more experienced) with details on how to go about it and where to look
for the information which will help you construct your Family Tree. Links to
all the relevant archives and libraries, A great historical section to help
understand the environment our ancestors had.
If
you are looking for details on specific Surnames you will find descendant
trees, IGI, OPR, Census details on an ever growing list of names by clicking
on Surnames.
You will
also have search links to search the site for that surname, and links to
subscribe to that surnames Rootsweb Mailing List and Message Board.
As research
in particular family names proceeds it is useful to make contact with others
researching the same family name. Already many have made contact with
'family members' through the Surnames listing of Descendant Trees etc.
Please e-mail your Ayrshire connections for uploading to the site. A
database of over 80,000 Ayrshire related people has already been built up.
The search facility allows you to do a quick search of
this site for the
name, place, or date you might be looking for, using several search
engines. There is also an inbuilt
search link on each Town and Surname page. There is now a vast
amount of information on the site and it is being added almost daily.
The search tools are now the most valuable part of the site. There are
three search tools and it is worth using all three as they are indexed
at different times and work over slightly different content.
As new material is added to the site an ongoing dated list of these will be
maintained in
the what's new section. This will help you find anything that has been added
since your last visit to the site.
Forum
There is a Forum in the
site for you to use to contact others about all your genealogy interests
Search throughout the whole site for that surname, place
etc. or use as search box for the whole web
Web
www.ayrshireroots.com
Concise information in one click
This is THE site for finding your
Post 1855 ancestors
The Official
Scottish Site - Scotlandspeople
Access costs £6 - for 30 'page credits' valid
for 90 consecutive days.
Access to statutory, OPR and census indexes costs £6. For this
fee, you will receive 30 "page credits" which are valid for 90
consecutive days. Viewing a page of index results costs 1 credit
and each page will contain up to 25 search results. Viewing an
image costs 5 credits (equivalent to 1GBP). Your session begins
when payment has been authorised and additional credits may be
purchased in 6GBP increments. The session will restart with each
new credit purchase.
You will not lose your
existing credits when your 90-day session is expired; when you buy
more credits they will simply be added to your existing credits.
Containing
over 80 million records, the ScotlandsPeople database is
one of the world’s largest resources of genealogical
information and one of the largest single information
resources on the Web. They provide a fully searchable
index of
images of records from the Statutory
Register of
Scottish
births from
1538-1909,
marriages from
1538 to 1934
and deaths from
1538
to 1959.
In addition, indexed census data is available from 1841
to 1901. Birth and Death indexes up to 2006 now
released [Jan 2008] Marriages released up to 2006
[Sep 2009]
From the
results of an index search made on the site you may view,
save and print images of many of the original documents,
and order extracts of any register entries of interest.
Such requests are forwarded automatically to New Register
House, and the requested extracts are mailed to you
(airmail in the case of overseas orders).
The
following new features now available online
The addition
of search filters offers customers the ability to
search through and filter their Previous Searches, Viewed
Images and Timeline. A Mother’s Maiden Surname
field has been added to the statutory deaths search form.
This should, however, be used with caution. A reference
has now been added to each image for ease of recognition.
Images of Old Parish Register (OPR) records are now
publicly available online for the very first time. These
comprise the records of births & baptisms and banns &
marriages kept by individual parishes of the Established
Church of Scotland, before the introduction of civil
registration in 1855. The earliest records available date
from 1553. In addition, a major OPR index update has been
deployed with over nine million entries updated and linked
to the associated images. Customers can now search the Old
Parish Register records by county as well as parish,
offering greater search flexibility.
The
GROS are in the process of adding mother's maiden surname
to the pre-1974 index, starting with the earlier entries.
(Occasionally you may find it recorded in later index
entries, but this is due to individual record updates).
Important:
The availability and treatment of the mothers maiden
surname is dependant on the year(s) searched:
New marriage
records now available at ScotlandsPeople -
September 2009
The
following records have been added to the site.
Indexes (NOT IMAGES) to modern marriage records from
1934-2006 have now been added to the site. This now
gives the range of statutory records as Indexes of
Scottish births and deaths (1855-2006) marriages
(1855-2006) and images of births(1855-1908), marriages
(1855-1933) and deaths (1855-1958). The index does not
include the full date of the event, because only the year
was captured when the indexes were compiled, although the
full date is present on register entries themselves.
New Catholic Archives added - October 2009
The
additional data, including information from hundreds of
volumes of births and baptisms from the Scottish Catholic
Archives, was announced today (Tuesday, October 6) by
Scotland’s First Minister, Alex Salmond, and Cardinal
Keith O’Brien, Archbishop of St Andrews and Edinburgh. The
records, dating from 1703 to 1908, are the latest key
historical documents to be added to the ScotlandsPeople
site. The two year project adds an extra 143,000 pages and
two million new names to the 80 million already on the
database.
A major new
website resource has gone online, Scotlands Places a
partnership site created by the National Archives of
Scotland, the Royal Commission for the Ancient and
Historical Records for Scotland, and the GIS department at
the University of Edinburgh, with assistance from the
Scottish Government.
Scotlands
Places is essentially a geographical companion site to
Scotlands People and allows users to search for records
concerning a location across various different national
databases. The site offers information about Scottish
places past and present, in the form of many useful
digital collections, such as maps, photographs,
archaeological reports, and more. Particularly exciting
for family historians is the digitisation of several new
and free to access collections, such as the 1797 Farm
Horse tax returns for the country, the 1872-1873 Royal
Commission on the Owners of Lands and Heritages, and 1891
Medical Officer of Health reports, with the promise of
more records to come.
International
Genealogical Index (IGI)
The
1881 British Census,
1880 United States Census and the 1881 Canadian
Census ,searchable databases of
more than 85 million people, are now on the Internet. Note the
search will not find anyone who is resident in SCOTLAND at the
census, as this is excluded - instead use the 1881 Census CD-Rom or
Scotlandspeople website above.
FamilySearch.org's International
Genealogical Index (IGI) is now better than ever. The new, updated version
of this online database has more names and displays the information source
for an individual's records. Also, as new information is gathered, it will
be added to the online index, (but no updates are planned for IGI on
compact disc). A small number of individuals are now linked into families
and can be viewed on pedigree charts. Family group records and pedigree
charts are downloadable, and the number of individuals linked into
families is expected to increase over time. Check out the IGI at:
Best view in Internet Explorer 4.0 or
above at 800x600 resolution. If you find that some grey boxes appear
where there should be images or navigation buttons this may be due to
you not having JAVA installed on your computer. Due to a dispute with
Sun Microsystems Microsoft have had to drop the inclusion of JAVA in the
latest Windows . If you wish to install JAVA and be able to view this
website and many others correctly then use this
link.
Online since Aug. 2000
Note: - Ayrshire is also a city in
Palo Alto County, Iowa, USA - population 202 in 2000 census
