Place:East Lothian, Scotland

East Lothian (officially Haddingtonshire until 1921) was a former county of east central Scotland. It was fairly small with an area of 271 sq. miles (701 sq. km) and was bounded on the north by the Firth of Forth, on the northeast by the North Sea, on the west by the County of Midlothian and on the south by Berwickshire and the Lammermuir Hills. Its principal rivers were the Esk and Tyne.

The county town was Haddington, with coastal settlements including Prestonpans, Cockenzie and Port Seton, Aberlady, Gullane, North Berwick and Dunbar, while inland are East Linton, Gifford and Tranent.

The principal industry was agriculture, with coal-mining having importance in the west. In early times a number of towns had a weaving industry with the reputation of making "fine cloth".

In 1974 the county was incorporated into Lothian Region, before being re-established as a separate entity called a "council area" in 1996. The new council area included the parish of Inveresk that had formerly been in Midlothian.

Wikipedia does not supply a history of East Lothian, but that is not to say the county is without history. The Battle of Prestonpans occurred in 1745 during the second Jacobite Rising (led by "Bonnie Prince Charlie", a grandson of James II of England). The harbour of North Berwick was built in the 12th century. The administrative centre of Haddington can trace its history back to the 6th or 7th century.

Research Tips

• Scotlands People, the website of the Scottish Register Office provides

• 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.