How to Research
Originally, all the records were paper-based and obviously not up to the job of constant handling. Consequently the authorities were forward-looking and transferred the information to microfilm to save storage space and allow the public to access the records second-hand. Indexes were created and the whole system allowed the researcher to access the information efficiently without necessarily having to touch the originals. The growth of the personal computer and the associated software applications found a perfect application in helping the researcher to quickly search and access the appropriate records. The Internet and the World-Wide Web were obvious carriers for this new approach.
Whether using the old systems of microfiche or the new Web-based methodology the same basic principles apply. Let's start with your own birth certificate. Assuming your family has followed the norms of the day and everyone has married before having children your birth certificate will give your date and place of birth and also the names of your parents and where and when they married. Using this information your parents' marriage record should be easily located and it gives your parents' ages, addresses at the time of the wedding, their occupations and also their parents' names and whether or not they are still alive. It should be obvious that this allows your parents' birth certificates to be located and we repeat the process as often as we can.
The official records only go back to 1855 in Scotland before which we have to use the Scottish Church Records, the Old Parish Records. These are, in general, in pretty good order and allow the research to go further back but unfortunately not with so much certainty. For example, some records are missing through damage or never existed for a whole host of reasons. Assuming they do exist though, if you know an ancestor's name and his/her parents' names then there are online resources which help search for the record. However, there can be snags. You might not know the names of the parents and there could be more than one candidate to be the birth you are looking for. This is where the Scottish naming conventions come into play. Taking Allan Old (born 1875) as an example, his first son was named Allan and his second daughter was named Mary. His parents were indeed Allan and Mary. You can't always trust this and this is seen with his second son being named John and his first daughter being named Rachel. This would suggest that his wife Mary's parents should be John and Rachel. In fact they were Walter and Rachel but this isn't too bad as Allan's third son was a Walter. This should still help in backward searching as seeing a birth to Walter and Rachel fits much better than a similar birth of an Allan Old to a Robert and Helen if neither of these names occur in the list of sons and daughters. This naming convention can still be a source of confusion though since a father who has five sons could see five first-born sons named after him, all in the same locality.
There is a very valuable cross-check to be had in the census returns which lists all children, their ages and birthplaces. We have these from 1841 to 1911 and they are also a source of sociological data with family sizes, house sizes, occupations and neighbours all coming into view. The birthplaces of children also provide a routemap as to where the family had lived.
Death records in the period back to 1855 give place and cause of death and also the parents, where known. Of course when an old person died it was possible that whoever registered the death didn't know who the old person's parents were or just guessed from what was said once. Consequently they shouldn't be trusted as much as the other records. Before 1855 few deaths were recorded with any useful information.
When all this information is gathered it has to be stored in an organised fashion and various software packages and websites are designed to help. I use Rootsmagic for historic reasons but don't necessarily believe it's the best. However, since my data is in there it's easier to leave it there. The program does allow some rudimentary charting and summarising and these have been included under the Resources menu for anyone who wants to see the raw data and all my extra notes to myself.