Findmypast adds vast collection of Scottish Monumental Inscriptions

 

Findmypast.com, the leading UK genealogy website, has added a huge collection of Scottish Monumental Inscriptions. Here is a summary from an email notice.

•  Over one million Scottish epitaphs, monuments, and memorial inscriptions now fully searchable online at Findmypast.
•  Spanning 1000 years of Scottish history, the new collection covers over 800 burial grounds across the country and includes monuments that have long been lost to time
• Published online for the first time thanks to new technology and a grassroots project between Findmypast and local volunteers
• Contains some of the most interesting figures for Scottish history including Kings, Queens, the Maid of Norway, Flora MacDonald and Adam Smith.

This revolutionary new resource is the result of a collaborative grassroots project between Findmypast and 10 Scottish local and national family history societies including:

• Aberdeen & North East Scotland FHS
• Caithness FHS
• Dumfries & Galloway FHS
• East Ayrshire FHS
• Highland FHS
• Lanarkshire FHS
• Moray Burial Ground Research Group
• Scottish Genealogy Society
• Tay Valley FHS
• Troon@Ayrshire FHS

This work of hundreds of passionate volunteers to transcribe memorials and gravestones from all over Scotland has now been made fully searchable online for the very first time.

Here is a description of the process of compiling this huge collection.

Names, dates, locations and other biographical details such as additional family members, occupations, causes of death and more were transcribed and then digitally converted thanks to new, proprietary technology to create a national index that unlocks the long-forgotten secrets of Scotland’s dead.

Chronicling the lives and deaths of almost 1.1 million deceased, the collection has been created by merging almost 600,000 newly created records with existing documents already available on Findmypast, to create the largest single collection of its kind.

This collection also includes records of inscriptions found on buried stones, uncovered through archaeological survey with their details recorded for the first time in centuries. In addition, old books and local histories were used to document memorials that have long since been lost due lost to erosion, weathering or simply time itself, allowing researchers to gain unique new insights into to the lives of those who lived and died many centuries ago.

Some of Scotland’s most renowned sons and daughters can be found within the collection, including monarchs and their favored courtiers, Covenanters, Jacobites and revolutionaries, not to mention many thousands of poets, artists, musicians, artisans, tradespeople, laborers and more.

Findmypast.com is continually adding important new genealogically significant record collections.