Place:Bute, Scotland

Watchers
NameBute
Alt namesButeshiresource: Wikipedia
Siorrachd Bhòidsource: Wikipedia
TypeTraditional county
Located inScotland     ( - 1975)
See alsoStrathclyde, Scotlandregion covering the County of Bute 1975-1996
Argyll and Bute, Scotlandunitary council covering Island of Bute since 1996
North Ayrshire, Scotlandunitary council covering Arran and Cumbrae since 1996
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog


the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia

The County of Bute, also known as Buteshire, is a historic county and registration county of Scotland.

The county comprises a number of islands in the Firth of Clyde, between the counties of Argyll and Ayrshire, the principal islands being Bute, Arran, Great Cumbrae and Little Cumbrae. The county town is Rothesay, located on the Isle of Bute. Buteshire had its own elected county council from 1890 to 1975.

The County of Bute, or Buteshire (used, but not as common) is made up of three islands in the Firth of Clyde: Arran, Bute, the island, and Great Cumbrae. Arran has two parishes, Bute has three, and Great Cumbrae is one parish.

There is very little transport between the three islands, but each has a ferry service for both passengers and motor vehicles (Bute has two) to different ports on the mainland and connections to Glasgow by train and road.

Today there is not much industry other than farming and tourism on any of the islands, but commuting to the mainland on a daily basis is quite possible from Bute and Cumbrae. The Arran ferry journey is longer than that to the other two islands.

Government since 1975

the text in this section is copied from an article in Wikipedia


History

The article in Genuki describes Bute, which it calls Buteshire, from a 19th century perspective.

Buteshire Scotland Genealogy, the Scotland GenWeb site, is a series of links to other sites, most of which are more specific to one of the three islands.

Research Tips

  • official civil (from 1855) and parish registers (from when first produced) for births, marriages and deaths for all of Scotland
  • original census images for all years available (1841-1911).
  • collections of wills and testaments and
  • property tax listings
  • an extensive collection of local maps
  • kirk session records for individual parishes (added in 2021 and not yet complete).

This site is extremely easy to use. There are charges for parish register entries, collections of wills, and census listings (the 1881 census is free to view, also on Ancestry and FindMyPast). The charges are reasonable and payable by online transfer. Viewing the kirk session records is free, but a charge will be made for a copy.

  • The National Library of Scotland have an online map collection of historic and modern day maps which can zoom in on a specific farmhouse or street in a town. Their collection also includes London and some counties of southeast England.
  • Gazetteer for Scotland contains an article for each parish from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland by F. H. Groome, (published 1882-4) and short details about each parish today including names of small settlements within a parish.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki explains a great many legal terms only found in Scotland and provides a gazetteer for genealogists for each parish across the county. It reviews the availablility of parish registers.
  • GENUKI Scotland which provides for each Scottish parish (indexed by county), amongst other data, complete quotations from A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1851) by Samuel Lewis, John Bartholomew's A Gazetteer of the British Isles (1877), and possibly other gazetteers from individual counties and regions. It is worth reviewing one of its county pages to see what is available online or in print from local archive providers. Each county page has a "Where in ---shire is .... ? section--very helpful in pinpointing the small places below parish level.
  • A list of Burial Grounds in Scotland is now available on the website of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.
  • The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online provides access to digitised and fully searchable versions of both the Old Statistical Account (1791-99) and the New Statistical Account (1834-45). These uniquely rich and detailed parish reports, usually written by local Church of Scotland ministers, detail social conditions in Scotland and are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Scottish history.
  • Transcriptions of all the 19th century censuses are available on FreeCen.
  • ScotlandsPeople holds indexes and images for all civil births, marriages and deaths, censuses 1841-1911, and for all Old Parish Registers throughout Scotland. It is a pay-per-view site. ScotlandsPeople also holds records of Wills and Testaments and Coats of Arms. Access to this latter part of their website is free.
  • Vision of Britain provides both the topographical Ordnance Survey of Scotland First Series (1856-1887) in black and white, and the Ordnance Survey of Scotland Popular Edition (1928-1945) in colour at a scale of 1:63360, as well as other series of maps covering the whole of the United Kingdom. These maps are wonderful for finding places that have diminished in size over the past 150 years.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at County of Bute. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.