Hello!

I was just curious if anyone had any suggestions on companies or websites that are good to trace family history in Ireland and Scotland? I've tried ancestry.co.uk but I am not having any luck!

Thank you!

Scotlands People is an excellent site.

https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/?...FXHJtAodYUEABA

Thank you! I will give them a try í ½í¸Š

Have you looked at findmypast.co.uk ? It has similar offerings to ancestry, but with a primarily United Kingdom emphasis.

In general, family history research in the UK is much easier than in the USA, since the UK introduced civil registration of BMD in the early 19th century.

Do you know when certain known ancestors came over from the British Isles, or was it in the remote past?

I have used RootsIreland with a little success, however tracing Irish ancestors is notoriously difficult.

I have never heard of findmypast.co.uk but I will definitely look into them
It was my parents who left Ireland and Scotland to move to Canada but they only remember back to their grandparents so I'm hoping to look past them

Good luck with Ireland. Destroyed documents in a 1922 fire makes it a very hard one.

I have a subscription for FindMyPast and am happy to have a quick look if you wish before you pay anything to them.

This will be depending on dates but you can search Ireland 1901 and 1911 census for free

Family Search is the old IGI by the mormons. It's free to use and contains millions of worldwide records.

I concur that Scotlands People is a good site.

I found Scotland's People good for my husband's ancestry, but I'm surprised you are not getting anything from Ancestry.co.uk. In my experience they have the biggest databank of British records.

I was surprised as well I thought they would be really good...I started my search looking up the people in my family that I know (for example my parents,aunts and uncles and grandparents) and nothing was coming up

If your parents and grandparents had lifespans that started in the twentieth century, you are not going to get much from Ancestry.co.uk. You'd do best to get information about recent generations from the people themselves and family records. You use sources like Ancestry.co.uk for earlier generations.

For the twentieth century, they have the birth death and marriage registers, but you'll have to order the actual certificates from the General Register Office. You can do that online without using Ancestry.co.uk.

The other important source is the censuses, but the latest published is 1911. Ancestry do have a complete set from 1841 to 1911. Do a search for your great grandmother and you'll probably get better results.

Another good source for people who have traveled between UK and North America (or anywhere outside Europe) are the passenger liner records of voyages to and from the UK that were maintained by the British Board of Trade from 1890 to 1960. Those dates from my memory, they may go back earlier.

Part of these records are on findmypast, part on ancestry.

I've got further insights on at least three family "mysteries" from these records. While the records can almost always be found, they sometimes only consist of names (not very useful,) but sometimes have age, address in UK, profession, destination and other useful info.

Ireland is indeed tough.

If you can get a "hit" in one of the censuses (censi?) mentioned above, you might then have to try contacting parishes directly, or local history societies to track down further info.

Do you know the family religion at the time? If COI/not Catholic, & you're looking at Northern Ireland, some lodges of the Orange Order have records which can help.

Also, for N. Ireland, https://www.nidirect.gov.uk/proni

I got absolutely nowhere with OH's Ulster born grandmother. The first record in which she appears is the passenger list of the ship to Canada.

"census" in Latin is a IVth declension noun. The Latin plural is "census", but pronounced with a long "u".