Here are some links you may find useful if your ancestors came from the Scottish Highlands. The Highlands is a big area, for this page I’m including Caithness, Inverness-shire, Nairn, the Outer Hebrides, Ross and Cromarty, Sutherland and parts of Argyll. All links open in a new window.
I’ve split the page into Archives and museums, family history, maps and places, people and photos, everything else (well not quite!).
Archives and Museums
- Highland Folk Museum – “we give our visitors a flavour of how Highland people lived and worked from the 1700s up until the 1950s”. At Newtonmore, between Perth and Inveness.
- Highland Museum of Childhood – in Strathpeffer, about 20 miles west of Inverness.
- Other museums in the Highlands. Examples:
- Applecross Heritage – includes online catalogue of documents in the Heritage Centre
- Gairloch Museum (has a small archives section)
- Highland Archive Centre – in Inverness. With ScotlandsPeople and Family History Centre.
- The Nuclear and Caithness Archive – in Wick.
- Lochaber Archive Centre – Fort William.
Maps and places
- Get your bearings with outline maps of the historical counties and parishes in each county, and links to the relevant Statistical account. Another set here too.
- Try the Gazetteer for Scotland for place names, historical and more modern information. Or Groome’s Gazetteer from the 1880s.
- Use the online maps at National Library of Scotland to find where your forebears lived. The Boundaries viewer is very useful for seeing areas in relation to each other.
Family history
- Caithness Family History Society
- Clan Gunn Heritage Centre, Latheron, Caithness
- County Sutherland Family History – with sections for each parish
- The Genuki pages for each county
- Hebridean Connections – Lewis, Berneray, North Uist
- Hebrides People – genealogy of the outer Hebrides (Lewis, Harris, North Uist, Benbecula, South Uist and Barra mainly).
- Highland Family History Society – includes a burials index and lots of links.
- Highland Memorial Inscriptions – includes some graveyards in Moray and Nairn too.
- Ross & Cromarty Roots – family and local history, includes a database of gravestone photographs.
- Skye Gravestones
- The Statistical Accounts, one for each parish, in the 1790s and 1830s/40s. Don’t let the title put you off, useful for background and more. What they contain.
People and photos
- Am Baile – Highland History and Culture – photographs, newspaper index, interviews and lots more.
- Caithness.org – huge range of information including family history (don’t be put off by the not very recent dates on the main page), a forum and a Caithness A-Z.
- The Johnston Collection – over 40,000 photographs online showing life in Caithness 1863-1975
- The Scottish Highlander Photo Archive – a searchable database of photographic portraits, mainly the work of Andrew Paterson and Hector G.N. Paterson who operated their Inverness studio https://www.ambaile.org.uk/1895-1980.
- Ross & Cromarty Heritage, with sections for communities (eg Alness, Torridon & Kinlochewe)
- Thurso Heritage Society’s Thurso Interactive
Everything else
- Many communities have their own website, often with sections for family or local history, accommodation, what’s on etc. Some examples: Alness Ross & Cromarty; Assynt, Sutherland; Drumnadrochit, Inverness-shire. Try a Google search and check Facebook too.
- Am Faclair Beag – Gaelic/English and English/Gaelic dictionary
- Accommodation, travel etc eg Undiscovered Scotland; VisitScotland;
- Last but not least Culloden – National Trust for Scotland
I am not responsible for the content of these links and inclusion does not mean endorsement.
