16/02/2026
Researching family history with the census
Birth, marriage and death records on Scotland’s People are the most useful resources for researching your family history, but they are not the only ones available.
Census records can help you to fill out information about family members that you’ve already traced. They might also lead you to ancestors and family members you haven’t yet discovered.
Scotland’s People allows you to search indexes of tens of millions of names of people enumerated between 1841 and 1921. To get started searching, you’ll need to find enough information to identify the person or family that you’re looking for, including their town or parish of residence.
The decennial census of the population of Scotland was taken for 1841 and then every tenth year thereafter, except for the wartime year of 1941. No census was taken during World War II. The content of the censuses taken after 1921 are still confidential, and each census is closed to the public for 100 years.
Census books give details including
· name
· age
· s*x
· marital status
· relationship to the head of the household
· occupation
· birthplace of everyone present at that address on census night, including servants, lodgers and visitors.
Details vary from year to year. Nineteenth century households in particular can include people who were not part of the family, such as servants and apprentices.
Hotels and lodging houses are counted as households in the census. People you are searching for who were not at home on census night may have been recorded in a hotel, rather than at their own residence. This can be particularly true for censuses taken in the summer months.
At the front of each enumeration book you will find a short description of the area it covers. This can be accessed free online by clicking “View Header”. This will take you to the introductory pages, free of charge.
Find more guidance on searching the census here at the Scotland’s People website 👉bit.ly/CensusSP
