Sometimes when you are tracing your Scottish family history you will hit brickwalls and deadends with your research where for one reason or another you cannot find any information on an ancestor to allow you to trace your family tree back any further. This might be because you cannot read the handwriting on an old document, or you are having problems finding a document in the first place or even because the ancestor appears to have simply vanished.

At times like these it is sometimes good to share your problems with other Scottish genealogists such as through online forums or chatrooms as some of the members may have came across similar problems and be able to help you knock down those pesky brickwalls. I have therefore listed below three of my favourite online Scottish genealogy forums.

Rootschat is probably my all time favourite forum and it has message boards dedicated to Scotland as a whole as well as to individial Scottish counties which makes getting local information and advice a lot easier. Other boards available on Rootschat are numerous but include technical help and information on deciphering old handwriting to name but two. Rootschat is not restricted to Scotland and it has as boards covering England, Ireland, Wales and numerous other countries as well.

The Rootschat members are extremely helpful and full of useful tips and tricks to get your genealogical research back on track and allow you to continue tracing your Scottish family history. Rootschat is free to join and any queries asked in the forums are normally quickly answered and if the members there cannot help you themselves they will normally point you in the right direction of someone who can.

British Genealogy contains a Scotland page full of different genealogy queries and answers. The forums here are quieter than Rootschat but never the less the members there are vary helpful and happy to assist anyone who posts a genealogy question on the forums.



As well as the Scotland board on British Genealogy forums as the name suggests there are also others covering England, Wales and Ireland. In addition there are other boards covering a wide range of topics including emigration, Catholic records, occupations, adoptions and genealogy software to name a few.

Genforum is another useful forum that is free to join. Genforum allows you to post your genealogy query using the surname rather than by the Scottish county. The Genforum members will try to help you out by providing any relevant information that they can discover about the individual on your family tree that you are having difficulties researching.

There are lots of other genealogy forums available online such as Ancestry and Genesrunited to name but two but I just feel that the above three are the best in my personal opinion.

Remember that when posting a query on any forum it is best to give as much information as you can in terms of names, dates and locations so that the other forum members to give them something to work with and they in turn might be able to provide you with some very specific answers.

Do not forget that genealogy forums only work if there are people willing to answer queries posted on the sites and whilst it is great to use them to ask your own questions you should also try to help others by answering their queries if you can.

 

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