A few months ago it became possible to access the Scottish GRO indices online. A charge is made for each 24 hours of access during which a user can search either Civil Registration or Old Parochial Register indices and order, again at a price, copies of entries or certificates to be sent by post.
Initially this service has been very busy and quite a few people complained that they were unable to get reasonable access during their 24-hour period owing to the competition for the available lines at busy periods e.g. evenings.
Once things have settled down I'll pay the fee for a day and see what I can acquire for the money. I must admit that it will probably work out cheaper than a trip to Edinburgh to look at the actual registers.
Recently, whilst browsing on the Internet - looking for Crabb/Crabbe entries in any files anywhere, I found an index to a huge, over 4,000 person tree for a family with a single connection to a Crabbe mentioned therein.
It proved impossible to find the solitary Crabbe's link to any other members of the family as only the index had been published, not the tree itself.
However, while searching I noticed several astounding entries, dating from periods well before any significant genealogical documentation that might be available to the modern researcher. As one example from the many, amongst a list of dozens of ABELL family members from 1700 or so onwards there was an entry that read as follows :-
Abel of Adam After 3866 B.C. East of Eden
Needless to say, I left the site without bothering to bookmark it. This is not genealogy as I understand it.
This page last updated on 6th October 1998.