I’ve just spent an enjoyable hour or so browsing on-line the Post Office Directories for Scotland back in the 1820s!
As some of you, that have been reading my blog for a while, may recall I have a line in my family tree that is from East Lothian in Scotland. One of my ancestors, a Charles Hay, moved to the Scottish capital city from Dunbar, where he had been a merchant and later the Provost.
In his will, which I downloaded from the Scotlandspeople.gov.uk website, he lived until his death in Great King Street, Edinburgh and became a merchant in that city. So it was interesting to me to find that The National Library of Scotland has made available on line 287 historic Scottish Post Office Directories with the promise of many more to come.
The books cover most of Scotland from 1774 until 1911 with particular emphasis on Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh and Glasgow.
The project is ongoing, with an expected completion in the summer of 2011 when over 600 directories will be available for us to browse.
The books, being made available with the co-operation of Scottish libraries, are being scanned in conjunction with the Internet Archive (www.archive.org) and you can search the books on-line or even download a pdf from the National Library of Scotland website:
http://www.nls.uk/family-history/directories/post-office
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Thanks for the tip – that’s a really useful resource
A very intriguing write up! The thing these days is tough has it become to spot the right business directory.