Statistical Accounts of Scotland

I’m not sure how long this has been up, but the Old Statistical Accounts of Scotland have been posted up as free pdfs on the electricscotland.com website here. The Statistical Accounts are also available in searchable form at edina, but you need a university log-in to access them.

The electricscotland website has other excellent resources, and I’d recommend checking them out here.

If you don’t know already, the statistical accounts are accounts of every parish in Scotland by the current church minister, done in the 1790s and 1830s. They provide a wealth of interesting material, and in some cases mention valuable forms for place-names. A word of warning, however: the derivations given by the ministers for the parish names tend to be seriously off the mark, although they are fascinating in their own right, they are best avoided as evidence in themselves.