Help with Scottish Census and the same name for every generation please.

Question

Hi My great great grandmother Isabella Scougall madien name was Veitch.  Isabella was born  24 09 1864 • Traquair, Peeblesshire  Died 05 10 1933 • Peebles, Scottish Borders, Scotland.  I have found that her parents are Robert Veitch about 1830 died August 20,1900.  Mary Calder Veitch about 1836 have not fund death date.  I am having trouble with cenus matchin becuase it seems all Vetich families were very traditional with the naming of the children in the traditional Scottish way. For Robert, John, Mary, Isabella etc are very common.  Plus the spelling of some name for example In one decsendant there is an Ann yet I find Anne Veitch living with what I assume is her father at 44 he is John Veitch yet I have found census for that same year and the John Veitch is also living with his son Robert.  Yet in the records there is only one year age difference between the two Johns.  Any help to figure this out would be great thanks in advanced.  So far I have being using Ancestry,ca but when my 3 months are up I hope to be able to have enough knowledge to just use the free sites like this one for the most part. Ohh almost forgot to make the research a little more diffcult they seem to all have stayed with in the Peebleshire Scotland area.  For all the places I have found on records are from that Scottish Borders area and all connect.

Comments

Three issues with what your are trying to do.
1. Scottish women traditionally did not change their name after marriage. The further you go back the more common it is. The key is to look at the middle name of the children . It is often the mothers maiden name.
2. Scottish were not good at recording deaths. ( try looking for wills. ). If not good luck finding any death records, excepting the most wealthy. Undertakers records, etc???
.
3. Try looking in neighbouring parishes. Often the minister was missing . I have found place name errors due to wrong entries from bad hand writing in census records. Also  Parish records sometimes were distroyed . Remember Scotland has had a violent past WWII bombing, fires, floods, etc. look for other clues such as tax records, land tax, clock tax, voter rolls, etc. there was even a carriage tax and window tax once in Scotland! Oh another though, post office directories came in about 1790. Try those . Widows address' came up after their partners died.

Have fund!!!

Answer 1

If you are working with Scottish ancestors then the best source is https://Scotlandspeople.gov.uk where you also have the option to pay to view images of the records, that often give more identifying information than you would find in a transcript. With respect to your two Johns who are close in age it would be worth looking to see if they might be cousins. 

Answer 2

Civil Registration in Scotland began in 1855. There was a fine if you did not comply so virtually everyone complied. The first 5 years had exceptional detail on all birth death and marriage certificates and this was streamlined a bit from 1860. If your family were born married and died in Scotland you should be able to locate them here (even if they were born before 1855, depending upon when their marriages and deaths should be here). Try Scotland's People website for this. You have to pay but that's life. They also have the censuses plus Old Parish Registers (including some non-conformists, Episcopalian and Catholic - but not all). Most Church of Scotland registers from 1700 on have survived. I saw someone said we'd lost a lot through bombing in WWII. This is untrue. Remember too that Roman Catholicism was proscribed before 1829.

Please don't read anything much into name spellings. They varied often. Also before, say, 1850, generally speaking only the upper middle and landed classes had middle names (and often not even then) although you will find that some time after birth/baptism people have used a middle name. This is called assuming an additional name. We often get North Americans over here researching their families and they insist that the person they're looking for had  *exact* spellings and/or a middle name. Don't rely on this. You might get a shock when you actually find them. If your family were just in Peeblesshire you should not be in such difficulties.

Answer 3

In my Scottish line while the woman are often listed with their married names at times they show up as an example Annie wife of Charles and no maiden name.  So it is a mixed bag.  It seems like the earlier records are more true to people keeping their maiden names but then in the earlier records when a child was born often only the name of the father was listed in the Kirk record.  

For clarity I use the LNAB for the birth name and in the current last name I enter the husband's name because while she may use her maiden name she also shows up as wife of so in effect has 2 last names she can be known as.  

The reason I don't use other last names is because sometimes these women married more than once as life was tenuous for these folks.  

Then to keep everyone straight I use an excel spreadsheet that gives me name, surname and a sortable surname since spellings were a mess and widely variable.  I settle on one and use it for sorting because that way I can find duplicates easier.  I have birth date and birth year, parents and mother maiden name.  spouse and spouse surname, marriage date and year, death date and year and for locations for each I have city, county, state or region, and country.  Number of marriages, number of children and notes.