Who When Where

It's been a while since I've worked with death certificates in ScotlandsPeople and I suspect that I'd forgotten the tricks I used when tracing my Bruce relatives. I was looking for the death certificate of an Isabella Brown nee Low. I'd know the DC when I saw it because I knew her parents (both of whom appear on Scots DCs - thanks guys!), but no surprise, there were lots of Isabella Browns in the qualifying years and even though ScotlandsPeople certificates are cheap compared to GRO (England & Wales) I really didn't fancy burning through loads of credits to check the parents.

Eventually I remembered, or worked out again, the trick to use: The image shows the enquiry input - the Surname item is her married name (at least on these examples!) The Mother's Maiden Surname is present on the DCs but not on the indexes until 1974 or so, so wasn't much use to me. The important bit is the Other Surname which, in these cases, is her maiden name, which was Low.

Weirdly, although it's "obvious" now, I missed Other Surname - perhaps I was fixated on Low being her maiden name and not seeing a slot described as that. But also, if you look at the index results of this enquiry: ... you will see that there is no mention of her maiden name as being part of the index. So I think I missed that her maiden name would be on the index, indexed under Other Surname.

So there you have it - you can search on married surname plus maiden surname on ScotlandsPeople DCs. You just have to read the instructions carefully!