We tend to trace family trees backwards in time, a process that sometimes gives a distorted historical view of matters, and forget that the lives and events we are tracing were lived forwards, so to speak.
Looking forwards from, say, medieval times, the fate of most ordinary people and families was, until comparatively recently, not to have been recorded at all. Since late medieval times, when surnames in these islands began to come into general use, and increasingly through the centuries as the church and state began to introduce requirements for more and more matters to be written down, more documents mentioning (or even about ordinary people) are available to genealogists.
It is important to remember, however, that practically all of these documents were initiated by church, court or state authorities for reasons which had nothing to do with possible future genealogical research.
It can be advantageous, therefore, to know something about the original purposes of the documents - who collected the information, how it was collected, and so on - as those factors might indicate how accurate they are likely to be, and whether or not there may have been some resistance to supplying information. Even today, for example, there are people who are inclined to consider the supplying of personal details (census forms is an obvious instance) to be a breach of privacy.
Generally speaking, the closer you come to the present day, the better and more abundant is the information available to family history researchers, and the more people have become used to the concept of form-filling and the need for accuracy.
You cannot get much closer to home than your living relatives, and it is always a good idea to ask them about the family background. Elderly relatives have memories and knowledge that can be invaluable and may not be recorded elsewhere.
Be aware, however, that not all elderly relatives will be co-operative. In fact you might find some who are downright obstructive. There will probably be reasons for this that will emerge after quizzing more helpful relations.
However, there is no point in arguing with those who are unhelpful. Try to find out if there is a communicative relative who has taken a particular interest in collecting family memorabilia.
Perhaps your "Great Aunt Agatha" is the best bet. She has been living on her own for many years, and one of her hobbies is to collect photographs, cuttings etc., and instead of watching reality TV programmes, she has been turning over in her mind memories of her own parents and grandparents.
If you are lucky your "Great Aunt Agatha" will also have become the custodian of family papers including birth marriage and death certificates, baptismal certificates, funeral cards, as well as sepia-tinted photographs of forebears in Victorian and Edwardian garb.
She, or "Uncle Larry" (Agatha's nephew) may have an old family Bible in which the birth dates of great-great grandparents and their siblings have been written in now faded ink.
You will be unlikely to come across all these resources by contacting relatives, however, and you might not even have an "Aunt Agatha". Do not despair; all this means is that you are finding out more quickly than otherwise that you, yourself, will be the next Agatha or Larry.
The difference is that you will be carrying out proper research and documenting the results in a way that can usefully be passed on to future generations.
So how is this done? Let's get down to the nitty-gritty. Click on the link called Scottish Civil Registration Birth Certificates to proceed.
