Place:Inverness-shire, Scotland

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia The County of Inverness or Inverness-shire was a general purpose county of Scotland, with the burgh of Inverness as the county town. end of Wikipedia contribution "Inverness was the largest and in some respects the most varied county in Scotland. Extending across Scotland from the east coast along the upper shores of the Moray Firth to the Atlantic Ocean on the west, it included actually the whole of the Outer Hebrides with the exception of the Island of Lewis. In addition, the Small Isles - Canna, Rum, Eigg, and Muck - and the Isle of Skye are included in this county. "Only a small portion of the vast area of over four thousand miles is cultivated, or indeed inhabitable. The rest is occupied largely by mountains, rough hill grazing, heath, natural woodlands, plantations, deep valleys, and stony wildernesses." (From British Towns and Villages Network)

the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Geography

The county of Inverness covered a large mainland area and various island areas off the west coast. The mainland area had a short coastline on the east as well as a long west coastline and included the burgh of Inverness, the towns of Kingussie, Fort William, and Mallaig.

The island areas included North Uist, South Uist and Harris in the Outer Hebrides and Skye and the Small Isles in the Inner Hebrides.

The neighbouring counties were: Ross and Cromarty to the north, Nairnshire, Moray, Banffshire and Aberdeenshire to the east and Perthshire and Argyll to the south.

Burghs

• The burgh of Inverness was the county town of Inverness-shire. It was established as a royal burgh in the mid 12th century.
• Fort William, was originally a fort of that name built by the British government to keep the Highlanders in their place. Around it grew up a village which became in turn Gordonsburgh, Maryburgh, Duncansburgh and latterly the town/burgh of Fort William (established as a burgh of barony in 1618.
• Kingussie was established as a burgh of barony in 1464.

Local Government

In the 1890s two pieces of legislation defined Inverness-shire as a county and set up how it was to be governed on a local basis. The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889 established county councils in Scotland, and the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1894 established parish councils for every parish.

Thus Invernessshire acquired a county council in 1890 and boundaries were altered to make the county a single contiguous area (except, of course, for island areas). These obliged some transfers with the neigbouring counties of Nairnshire, Argyll and Ross and Cromarty.

The burghs of Inverness, Fort William, and Kingussie, which had previously had their own town councils, retained autonomous status and were generally beyond the writ of the new county council.

In 1930 the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929 abolished the Scottish poor law system with institutions passing to the local authorities; and reorganised local government in Scotland, introducing joint county councils (for some counties), large burghs, small burghs and landward districts. The landward districts in Inverness-shire were Aird, Badenoch, Inverness, Lochaber, Skye, North Uist, South Uist, Barra and Harris (only the first four were on the mainland; the last five being islands).

The landward districts introduced by this act were the predecessors of the lower tier of local government employed when "regions" were introduced in 1975. With the further introduction of unitary authority areas made in 1996, these districts have been replaced by wards, but not on a one-for-one basis.

Civil Parishes

Civil parishes as established 1891-1975 are as follows:

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.

Notes for the Highland Council Area and the Western Isles Council Area

The local archives are held by The Highland Archive Service which is based in Inverness with branches in Stornoway, Fort William and Caithness. It is "responsible for locating, preserving and making accessible archives relating to all aspects of the history of the geographical area of the Highlands."

Family history societies and historical associations covering the Highland Council Area and the Western Isles Council Area are:

• The Highland Family History Society based in Inverness.
• Lochaber and North Argyll Family History Group based in Fort William.

These associations publish their aims on their websites as well as a list of publications. In many cases the publications are also available through the Scottish Genealogy Society (see below).

• The FreeCen Project--Scotland has a searchable (not browsable) transcription for each of the counties in the area. Nairnshire and Caithness have the 1841, 1851, 1861 and 1871 complete. Inverness-shire and Ross and Cromarty have 1841 complete with some work on 1851 and Sutherland has not completed 1841.

Transcriptions of Gravestone Inscriptions

• The Scottish Genealogy Society provides a series of monumental inscriptions either in print in booklet form or on CD for each of the counties in the area (Caithness, Inverness-shire, Nairnshire, Ross and Cromarty, and Sutherland). Some of the booklets cover only one graveyard, others cover a group. Prices vary. In many cases the coverage is of pre-1855 stones only--this is because gravestone inscriptions are often used by family historians as death registration equivalents in the era of the Old Parish Registers (when deaths were not universally recorded).
• The Fearn Peninsula Graveyards Project has a paid website which allows browsing in ten graveyards in Easter Ross. They charge £2.50 for 24 hours of usage with unlimited searches.
• An index of monumental inscriptions from Caithness compiled by D J Ryrie might prove to be a useful start for searching gravestones in that county. GENUKI states "All (?) of the monumental inscriptions (MIs) in Caithness have been collected and are in print currently from Books From Scotland amongst other places." The Scottish Genealogy Society also has a list of their holdings.
• Sutherland cemeteries are covered in Pre-1855 tombstone inscriptions in Sutherland burial grounds by A S Cowper & I Ross, published at Edinburgh in 1989 by the Scottish Genealogy Society.
• There are no specific notes for gravestone transcriptions for either Inverness-shire or Nairnshire in GENUKI. However, the Scottish Genealogy Society lists booklets for both counties.

Sources for Emigration Records

• Hebrides People have a database containing lists of people who emigrated to North America from a number of parishes in the Western Isles.

Overviews of the county

• The Encyclopaedia Britannica for a brief history
• British Towns and Villages Network for physical geography