Embedded Files
The Title Deeds for your property may provide information on previous owners. However, as it was not uncommon for a property to be owned by someone different from the person(s) who resided in it, further research is required.
Note that confusion can arise about exactly who the resident is given many names were common, and, in the 19th century, the first son/daughter was often given the same forename as their father/mother (and thus the same name as their grandfather/ grandmother), and sons often followed their father’s career. Thus it can sometimes require cross-checking and detective work to be certain the individual is the one who lived in the property.While some of the general principles contained here are applicable to researching residents in other parts of Edinburgh and elsewhere in Scotland,
The most effective place to start tracking who lived in a New Town property in the nineteenth century are the Edinburgh Post Office Street Directories. Edinburgh was the first city to publish street directories from 1773 and were the invention of the extraordinary Peter (Indian) Williamson. (To read about this amazing individual click here)
The Directories from 1773 to 1911 are available on-line via the National Library of Scotland (the years 1777 to 1784 are missing and for some early the directories were bi-annual).
http://www.nls.uk/family-history/directories/post-office/index.cfm?place=Edinburgh
Street Directories from 1912 to 1954 (they were then replaced with Telephone Directories) are available to consult in person at the Central Library Edinburgh Room.
Up to 1833, the directories simply were an A-Z list of all residents, their addresses and, for most men and a few women, their occupation. Some streets in Leith, which is included as a separate section, had similar names to New Town streets so take care it is the right street's address you are checking against. You can search digitally for a specific street name and those will be highlighted and you can then look on those pages. However, occasionally the search facility may miss an entry due to the low quality of the digitised or original copy, so if the address you are seeking is not found by that method, you may have to look through the directory to find if it exists.
Hopefully having looked at the maps you will know if your street name was changed and, if so, when this took place.
Note that in some streets there can be confusion over property numbering. In the early years building plots often were developed at different times, sometimes with long gaps between house building. In such cases, properties listed in early Directories may have no number or the number have been changed when other properties were built. For example, Professor Playfair in Albany Street was one of the first residents on the North Side and in the early years he is simply listed as living in Albany Row. A few years later, his address became 2 Albany Row. However, by 1818, as houses had by then been built to the east of Playfair’s house, his address became 10 Albany Street. Another confusion (for my initial searching) was that the first few houses built in Abercromby Place were given Albany Row addresses.
Fortunately for research purposes, from 1833 onwards, the Directories include a section listing each street in A-Z order with all the street's residents noted, as well as the usual A-Z order of all city residents. This makes it much easier to track who lived in a property. Here part of the listing in the 1836-37 Street Directory for Abercromby Place. If, as you are working your way through the years, you find a new resident from the street section, it can be worth looking at that individual's entry in the A-Z section as this may contain some additional useful information, such as a Christian name or the firm the person worked for.
Where a number of residents with different surnames are recorded against one address (as here at Number 1) this will either be because that property was separate flats entered by a common door or, if it is a property known to have been built as a single residence, an indication that the house may have been a Lodging House (see below).
In the nineteenth century, few upper- or middle-class women had any public role, and often all that appears in the Directories is simply Miss X or Mrs X. See Tracing Female Residents
It is important to note that in the 19th century the first son/daughter was often given the same Christian name as their father/mother (and thus the same name as their grandfather/ grandmother), and that sons often followed their father’s career. So, further work may be required to work out which specific family member is the one shown as resident.
If no resident is recorded at an address for a year or more, this will often indicate that the property was empty and on the market for sale or to let.
Where a house functioned as lodgings, the person running the Lodging House usually will be listed; here both James Farquharson and John Farquharson are listed as the lodging keepers at different addresses. The term Lodgings or Lodging House covered a range of accommodation, from a suite of rooms, perhaps even a floor of the house, to single rooms, and some lodgers stayed for years and others for brief periods. Longer-term lodgers may be listed as resident at the property, but many other lodgers will not. However, people who lodged at an address may be discovered from other research. For example, if a search brings up the name of someone recorded as living at a property but that individual has not appeared at that address in the Street Directories, it is very likely they were lodging at the address.
Census returns are particularly helpful in respect of properties functioning as lodgings as these can give a picture of the type of lodger, and information on who was resident there at that time.
Family members living in the property usually will be listed individually if each had a profession, as in the case of the three McKenzies at 6 Heriot Row shown here. In this instance Henry was the father and J.H. (Joshua Henry - later Lord Mackenzie) and James were his two sons.
Servants were never recorded in the Street Directories, but were listed in the census returns.
See also Valuation Rolls and Census Returns
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