Dunbartonshire, Scotland Genealogy

Guide to Dunbartonshire (or Dumbartonshire) County ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records. Scotland Online Genealogy Records Ask the Community

History
Dumbartonshire (or Dunbartonshire) is a county in the west of Scotland, bounded on the north by Perthshire, on the east by the counties of Perth and Stirling, on the south by the Firth of Clyde, and on the west by Argyllshire. Including the detached parishes of Kirkintilloch and Cumbernauld, it extends towards the east for 12 miles between the counties of Stirling and Lanark and is about 57 miles in length. It varies from 24 to 2 miles in breadth and contains 261 square miles or 167,040 acres.

The county consists of twelve parishes. Dumbarton is the county town and the only royal burgh. There are four burghs of barony and several villages.

ScotlandsPeople: An Important Online Source
ScotlandsPeople is one of the largest online sources of original genealogical information. If you are researching UK genealogy, your Scottish ancestry or building your Scottish family tree, they have more than 100 million records to look through.

The comprehensive choice of Scottish records includes: For more detail on record availability, see Guides. For the content guide to what records are on the site, see Guides A-Z. More information on the site, its contents, and instructions for using it can be found in the ScotlandsPeople Wiki article. Indexes may be searched for free, and there is a pay per view fee to see the digitized record.

Census
Many census records have been indexed by surname. Some indexes cover one parish (and will be listed in the Wiki on the parish page) and some indexes are for the county as a whole. The Family History Library has county-wide census placename indexes for Dunbartonshire for. Click here for other census indexes available at the library.


 * ScotlandsPeople, index, images, free index, pay per view ($)
 * Scotland Census, 1841, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1851, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1861, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1871, no images. Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1881, no images. Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1891, no images. Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * at FamilySearch — index.
 * Scotland Census, 1901, index and images, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1911, index and images, ($).

Church Records

 * 1658 - 1919 - at FamilySearch — index

Parishes
Some of the Dunbartonshire parish records are indexed in Dunbartonshire, Scotland, Extracted Parish Records. This database is a collection of historical parish registers from the county of Dunbarton in the country of Scotland. The records in this collection can range in date from the early 1500s to the mid- to late-1800s. The records include baptisms/christenings, burials, marriages, tombstone inscriptions, obituaries, tax lists, wills, and other miscellaneous types of records. Also included are some records from non-conformist churches. You will find interesting phonetic spelling. Some of the records may be in Latin or even a Welsh or Scottish dialect. Due to the nature of the records and because the records were originally compiled by a third party, it is difficult to absolutely verify the completeness and validity of the data.

Here is a list of the historic parishes of Dunbartonshire with their parish numbers. Click on a parish name to see information about records. Click on this link to see an outline map of Dunbartonshire.

Maps

 * National Library of Scotland map collection


 * Click here to see detailed town plans, c. 1847-1895

Poorhouse Records
NOTE: Workhouses in Scotland were commonly known as poorhouses. For more information on Scottish poorhouses, go to the Scotland Poorhouses, Poor Law, Etc page.

There were two workhouses in this county:


 * Dumbarton Combination
 * Kirkintilloch Combination

A description with drawings and photos of the workhouses today along with databases of those living there from the 1881 Census are provided on the links above located on the site entitled The Workhouse: The story of an institution... which is owned and operated by Peter Higginbotham.

Societies
Glasgow & West of Scotland Family History Society Unit 13, 32 Mansfield Street Glasgow G11 5QP Scotlan Tel. +44 (0) 141 339 8303

Scottish Genealogy Society 15 Victoria Terrace Edinburgh EH1 2JL Scotland Phone-0131 220 3677 Email enquiries@scotsgenealogy.com

Websites

 * Dumbartonshire Resources and help pages on RootsChat Dunbartonshire Resources and help pages. (Free).