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The layout of the principal data is as follows:
Search name: entered as submitted by the member
Scots Parish or non-Scots place: the vast majority of Members' interests were in Scotland and were also OPR Parishes, hence the description used for
this column. These Scots OPR Parishes are given in capital letters and have
been checked against published lists of old Scots Parishes. Standard
modern spelling has been used. This resulted in a few changes to the entries submitted and, when these changes were marked, the submitted
spelling is shown in the "Scots Place" column, but in brackets. Occasionally, a Scottish place name that was not also
an OPR Parish was submitted, usually a "modern" town. These places generally have been
allocated to an OPR Parish. The place name actually submitted is shown the
next column, "Scots Place".
However, there are place names given in this column that are not OPR Parishes. These can be readily distinguished, as they are not given in
capital letters. The obvious examples of this, such as "Any" or "Several",
are used when an entire county or an area that cannot be described by using
parish names is being researched. In addition, all place names out with Scotland are given in mixed case. This not only distinguishes them from
OPR Parishes in Scotland, it also reflects the fact that it was not possible
or practicable to accurately check such place names. They have therefore
been recorded in this column as submitted. One example of the difficulty
of checking non-Scottish places is the submitted place name of "Newcastle",
no county given, England". There are at least three places named Newcastle
in England, each in a different county.
Scots Place: this column is used for recording places within Scottish OPR
Parishes, standard modern spelling has been used. The only exceptions to
this are place names given in brackets; as mentioned earlier, these represent parish spellings as submitted where these are markedly different
to the Scottish OPR Parish entered in the previous column.
County and Country: the British Isles Chapman county codes are listed elsewhere in the website or document. Counties in the United Kingdom are
basically those pre-existing the major boundary changes of 1974 and 5. You
will find a few differences between the counties you submitted and the ones
entered on the fiche, this is often a result of boundary changes that took
place over the previous hundred years or so. The description of Logie parish in the 1890s gives an idea of how boundary changes affected that
parish and some of the adjoining ones. It commences by describing Logie as
'a parish situated in the county of Stirling'. While this was perfectly true after the changes, before 1891 it consisted of portions of
Perthshire, Stirlingshire and Clackmannanshire, and was considered a Perthshire parish.
Similarly, the Stirlingshire town of Bridge of Allan was a Perthshire parish until 1891, when the parish was effectively transferred to the county
of Stirling! Meanwhile Menstrie, which was within the boundaries of
Clackmannanshire, was part of the Perthshire parish of Logie. At least it
was until 1891, when it was transferred to the Clackmannanshire parish of
Alva, which had itself been part of the county of Stirling from about 1600
to the mid-19th century!! So, for example, you may find Menstrie in the "place" column against OPR
Parishes of both Logie (PER) and Alva (CLK), depending on the search dates, but you will not find it in a Stirlingshire
(STI) parish.
Dates: this column needs no explanation except to say that date ranges such
as "1710s" and "19th century" have been entered as numerical ranges: "1710-1719" and "1800-1899"
respectively, although ranges such as "1700s"
have been transcribed as "1700-1799", not as "1700-1709".
Single year entries, whether submitted as, for example, "1850", or as
" "circa 1850", have all been transcribed using the same format of " -1850-
" and should be taken to indicate an interest in the years about the one actually given. |
