General Register Office of Scotland  on line.

The official Governmental source of genealogical data for Scotland is at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. It is an online "pay-per-view" database of indexes from the genealogical records of the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS). It costs £6 (sterling) for 30 "page credits". Each page consists of a maximum of 15 search results. The initial 30 page credits are valid for 24 hours from the time of payment (ie the clock starts when you pay). Further credits can be bought in 30 page increments for a further £6 charge each time. Each further purchase restarts your 24 hour user period from the time of payment.

About the index
The database contains fully searchable indexes of the Old Parish Registers of births/baptisms and banns/marriages dating from 1553 to 1854, indexes to the Statutory Registers of births and marriages from 1855 to 1901, indexes to the Statutory Registers of deaths for 1855 to 1926. Recently Origins has been updated and the in
dex to census records for  1881,1891 and now 1901 are on line. 

Changes since February 2002: It is now possible to search across the entire date range of the whole site at one go, so  you can get the birth, marriage  and death records for an individual in one go. You can also search for siblings of a family group at one go. 

One additional year of births/deaths/marriage index data is added per annum (1900, 1901 etc.). The restriction to data over 100 years old is GROS policy, to protect the privacy of living persons.

The on line facility is at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
Searching is possible on the following fields:

  • Surname 

  • Event type (birth/christening, marriage, death, census) 

  • Sex 

  • Forename (or first initial) 

  • Year of registration (or range of years) 

  • Age (or age range) - deaths and 1891 census only 

  • Parish or Registration District 

  • County (Old Parish Registers only) 

Searching is also possible on other names which are mentioned within a particular record. This includes spouse's name, father's name, mother's name and mother's maiden surname, depending on the entry.

Before using the facility you are advised to read the GRO guidance on interrogation and the fields that can be searched. This will help you to make the most of your on line time.

Extract Ordering
An extract is an official copy of all the information in an entry in the original registers held by GROS. Entries themselves often contain additional information that is not held within the indexes and can be of historical interest. Extracts of the original entries in the GROS records can be ordered directly from the database. Extract orders are processed by GROS and sent via ordinary mail as paper documents. For details of what extracts are and what they look like there is a preview facility. The cost of each extract is £10. 

Extracts of entries not accessible via the online database (that is those which are less than one hundred years old) can be ordered directly from the GROS website http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/.

There is a free search facility which gives global details of the location of the name in the GRO files.

The free search facility is on the home page and can help narrow down searches,

The search results shows, for example,  the number of records for ORR between 1553 and 1899 in each dataset as follows:

Old Parish Record Births/Christenings (1553-1854)

6261

Old Parish Record Marriages (1553-1854)

4210

Old Parish Record Unknown (1553-1854)

2

Statutory Index Births (1855-1899)

5811

Statutory Index Marriages (1855-1899)

2455

Statutory Index Deaths (1855-1924)

4284

1891 Census

4133

Total

27154

The latest number of records with surname ORR between 1553 and 1951 in each dataset are:

OPRI & SRI Birth & Christenings (1553 - 1901)        12357

OPRI & SRI Marriages (1553 - 1926)                         4643

SRI Deaths (1855 - 1951)                                           9334

1891 Census                                                              4133

1901 Census                                                               4429

Total                                                                         34896

 

Sorry, but I have NOT downloaded the individual information !

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Orr Name Study Ulster Scots Reference material