Lanarkshire, Scotland Genealogy

Guide to Lanarkshire ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records. 

Background
Lanarkshire is an extensive inland county in the south of Scotland, bounded on the north by the counties of Dumbarton and Stirling, on the east by the counties of Linlithgow, Edinburgh and Peebles, on the south by Dumfriesshire, and on the west by the counties of Renfrew, Ayr and Dumfries. It is about 52 miles in length and 33 miles in extreme breadth, comprising an area of 926 square miles or 592,640 acres.

The county, also called Clydesdale (or Strathclyde), from the valley of the river Clyde, was--after the departure of the Romans--part of an extensive independent kingdom which consisted of nearly all of Scotland south of the river Forth. The inhabitants were ancient British tribes who lost their independence after their metropolis of Dumbarton was taken by the combined forces of the Picts and Saxons in the eighth century. After the subjugation of the Picts by Kenneth II in about the year 971, the whole area came under the authority of the Scottish kings.

Lanarkshire consists of 50 parishes and, for civil purposes, is divided into the Upper, Middle and Lower wards, each under a sub-sheriff based at Lanark, Hamilton, and Glasgow. The county includes the royal burghs of Glasgow, Rutherglen, and Lanark, and eight towns and numerous villages.

The population of the county in 1851 was 426,972.

(Source: Samuel Lewis' Topographical Dictionary of Scotland, 2nd ed., 1851.  Family History Library book )

Scotlands People: 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 exact record availability, see Availability. For examples of the records available, see Record Types and Examples. 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 small pay per view fee to see the actual 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 Lanarkshire 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
 * 1642 - 1855 - Scotland, Lanarkshire Death & Burial Index 1642-1855 - index ($)
 * 1736 - 1990 - at FamilySearch — index

Parishes
Some of the Lanarkshire parish records are indexed in *Lanark, Scotland, Extracted Parish Records.
 * This database is a collection of historical parish registers from the county of Lanark 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 historic parishes for the county of Lanark with their parish numbers. Click on a parish name to see information about records.

Maps

 * National Library of Scotland map collection
 * Click here to see an outline map of the parishes of Lanarkshire.

Poorhouse Records

 * 1849-1917: North Lanarkshire, Scotland, Poor Law Applications and Registers, 1849-1917 at Ancestry ($)

There are ten poorhouses in Lanarkshire:


 * Barony


 * Cambusnethan


 * Dalziel


 * Glasgow
 * Govan


 * Hamilton


 * Lanark


 * NewMonkland


 * OldMonkland


 * Cambusnethan

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

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

Lanarkshire Family History Society High Road MOTHERWELL North Lanarkshire Scotland ML1 3HU Scotland e-mail: members-lanarkshirefhs@hotmail.co.uk

Websites
Return to county list.
 * Lanarkshire Resources and help pages on RootsChat Lanarkshire Resources and help pages. (Free).