Here are some examples of documents from all across the Highlands. Clicking on the images will allow you to see them in more detail. The images supplied are for educational purposes so please don’t use them for other reasons or share them online – thank you!
Family Trees
Some of the collections in the Archive Centres come from families, and they can be really useful for research. If you’re really lucky, some of them even have family trees that have been done in the past. Below we have trees for the male line of the Sage family from Sutherland, the MacColl family from Lochaber and the Gunn family from Caithness. They are all done in different styles and the Gunn tree also includes their family crest.
Family Photographs
You can also find photographs in family collections.
Other Records
You can find information on people and families in lots of different types of records. Here we’ve got a records from poor relief, a valuation roll and a school admission register.
The Poor Relief system existed to help people who couldn’t work, usually because of illness or disability. For this reason, you find a lot of elderly people in the records when they are not able to work any more. You can also find children in the records, if they were orphaned or not living with their parents. The records can be sad to read, but they can give lots of information about people and their lives.
Valuation Rolls give information about houses and buildings so you can find addresses and find out who owned them and lived in them.
School Admission Registers can help you to find information about any children in families, where they lived and who they were living with.
Some of these records have personal information in them so you can only see them when they are over 100 years old. This is to protect the privacy of people in the records.
Poor Relief
Valuation Roll
Admission Register
Using these records, you can sometimes even form a complete story or find out more about Clans or names. You can read our stories about the Dunbar children, the Lion Tamer and Clan Chattan.
