Site History

Our original website "Scottish Family Heritage" was established in Edinburgh during 1999. Its existence was born out of an initial desire to promote our varied selection of historical Scottish reproduction prints that initially began production in 1995. These were created for the gift department of our late business, 'Deveron Cards & Crafts' at Goldenacre.

In July of 2000, a move was made to Elgin and since then our first site was gradually added to and improved; a process that continued up to the spring of 2006.

October 2000 saw the inauguration of our Personal Document Indexes, or (P.D.I.). These offered people researching various aspects of local or family history, the opportunity to source original historical documents, some dating as far back as the 16th century, that were either written by, or received by, an ancestor or relative.

In March 2002, we brought our complete list of Scottish parishes on line, sourced from The Imperial Gazetteer of Scotland, originally published by Rev. John Marius Wilson c1868. We then hoped to provide additional information about every parish when circumstances and time permitted.

By September 2002, we began publishing lists of names from various old books and other published material that researchers might not easily be aware of, or have access to. A little later, as Christmas arrived, we extended our database lists to include entries from our manuscript archive.

We also tried to give our clients and visitors some additional interest by including several small pages devoted to the subjects such as Jacobites, Recipes, Royalty, Unpublished Anecdotes and Poetry, as well as a photographic 'Who Am I?' Section.

Considerable care had been taken to ensure that, as far as possible, our lists contained as much accurate information as possible. This inevitably slowed down the amount of input we managed to achieve and we also recognised that these lists were relatively small by many standards. However, we hoped that what was lacking in quantity, would be found reasonably accurate and informative in quality.

By March of 2005 it became clear that if we were to continue our efforts to promote our website, and make it much more accessible to the public at large, a number of web design issues would have to be sorted out - in reality we realised the need to make it conform to modern standards of web design. During 2005 and early 2006, attempts were made to put these ideas into practice, but we unfortunately met with quite a few unforeseen problems.

Since then, an eclectic mix of new datasets has been added to our All Lists page, which we hope you enjoy searching.

In 2017, a move was made to Livingston, situated in West Lothian, while in 2021 several modifications are in the process of being made which hopefully will improve the overall presentation of the site.

If you have any comments or suggestions about our website, please let us know via our Contact Us page.

Date last modified: Mon 08 Nov 21