The Scotland Parish Atlas

The Scotland Parish Atlas is a Google Earth research tool which brings together finding aids for  Scottish Geneaology.  • There are two sets of Boundary files, county(32), and parish(891) • Over 2,000 links to external web pages relating to Scottish Genealogy are included. The boundary sets have been created in a Geographic Information System and are scalable in Google Earth. The Google Interface: The main file is called GeoGeneaology Atlas Scotland.kmz.  Click on the Plus + sign beside the file in the left panel and the file will open and appear like the image to the right. (Click on the thumbnails to view). There are four sub folders. County names If you click on the check mark in the left window beside the County name folder, a red square and the county name will appear on the map.  Click on the red square, for example in Moray, and a pop-up menu will appear. Up to 7 fields are listed which link to external files. For example if we select Genuki the Moray Genuki file will appear in the Google Earth interface. It it turn provides a wide range of links relating to Moray Genealogy, for example; Archives & Libraries Bibliography Cemeteries Census Church Records Civil Registration Court Records Each of the above  links can in turn be viewed in the Google Earth  window. Most of the Counties also have links to either Rumsey Historic, or Family Search maps. These maps can be viewed in the Google Earth window but are not linked to the Google Earth interface. If you wish to view a link outside of Google Earth right click on a link in the drop down menu, copy and paste the link into your browser. To return to Google Earth click the “back to Google Earth” link in the upper left hand corner. County Boundaries If the Parish Name and Boundary files are unchecked, clicking anywhere within a county will bring up the same menu as the red square. Parish Boundaries 891 individual parish boundaries are provided in the Atlas. Checking the Parish Boundary file in the left panel will display the parish boundaries within each county. Clicking your mouse anywhere within a parish boundary will open the drop down menu for that parish. The menu provides the name of the parish, the 1890 county, and links to the LDS Wiki and Genuki sites. Selecting a link from the parish drop-down menu will display that web page within the Google Earth viewer. For example Clicking with the Cromdale Morayshire boundary, will call up the drop down menu for Cromdale . If we then select the Cromdale LDS link that web page will appear in the Google Earth window. To return to Google Earth, select the Back to Google Earth link in the upper left hand corner. Parish names Use the parish names file when you zoom in on a county or area. Checking the parish names file will display all the parish names. It is best to use this feature when zoomed in as the names will be crowded if viewed at the national scale.