Discover your Scottish ancestor through this unique collection of records from the industrial town New Lanark. The collection includes court appearances, employee transfers, poor relief applications, warrants for arrears of poor rates, work records, rent books and more. You might find out that your ancestor was a teacher in the New Lanark School, died in a fatal mill accident or was one of 55 people who owed money to William Gibson, the New Lanark surgeon, at the time of his death in 1831. Search for your ancestor or select the different record types to explore this unique collection.
Discover your Scottish ancestor through this unique collection of records from the industrial town New Lanark. The collection includes court appearances, employee transfers, poor relief applications, warrants for arrears of poor rates, work records, rent books and more. You might find out that your ancestor was a teacher in the New Lanark School, died in a fatal mill accident or was one of 55 people who owed money to William Gibson, the New Lanark surgeon, at the time of his death in 1831. Search for your ancestor or select the different record types to explore this unique collection.
Each record includes a transcript created from the information found in the original New Lanark records. The transcripts are from a variety of record sources so the details found in each will vary. In each transcript you will find a combination of the following information:
Record types
The Lanarkshire, The People of New Lanark 1785-1935 includes 245 different publications/documents from the village’s history, which are separated into 24 record types. These include:
New Lanark
New Lanark, the former cotton spinning village in South Lanarkshire, Scotland, was founded by David Dale in 1785 and was continued by mill manager, social pioneer and reformer Robert Owen.
In 1785 Richard Arkwright, in partnership with David Dale, opened a new cotton mill on the River Clyde in New Lanark. Dale started to create an industrial village for his workforce, but it was not until 1799 that Dale went into partnership with Robert Owen, a Welsh cotton spinner, that the village started to become an example for other growing industrial communities. Within the records we can find the marriage announcement of Robert Owen to Catherine Dale, David Dale’s daughter.
By 1809 Owen started to remodel New Lanark. He believed that industry depended on the well being of the workforce. He wanted to create a Utopian society without crime, poverty or misery. Construction was started on new housing and public buildings for both the village’s physically and spiritual needs. Central to Owen’s vision for social reform was education. He built schools for the community’s children, including an infant school, and did not allow children to work before the age of ten. A prominent part of the school curriculum was Geography, but there was also time allotted for military exercise, dancing and music.
New Lanark reflects the ideals of the Age of Enlightenment. Robert Owen left New Lanark in 1824 to develop New Harmony, Indiana in the United States. Today, New Lanark is a World Heritage site, through a process of conservation and rehabilitation the town has been preserved as an early example of industrial planned settlement.
The People of New Lanark 1785-1935
This collection has been created by Alan E Laurie and Nicholas Young. They describe their efforts as an ‘attempt to bring together in one place all the surviving details on the life events of the mill workforce, starting with the list of men and boys who went to Cromford in 1785 & the list of orphan boarders of 1802 to the village rent books of 1901-1921.’
Alan E Laurie and Nicholas Young have consulted all surviving church records (baptisms, marriages, communion lists, irregular marriages and cases of fornication), Sheriff Court and High Court records (small debt and minor and major crime) as well as the Lanark prison register, which provides a physical description of each prisoner and personal details.
All properties in Scotland have an annual valuation giving details of owners and tenants. A selection of these has been included up to 1935. They provide a head of household census for years when the census was not taken or has not yet been released. Rent books, wage books and letters books at the University of Glasgow have been consulted and details added to the index.
The list of children that David Dale recruited from the West Kirk Charity Workhouse in the 1790s and the petition from New Lanark to the House of Lords in 1818 bearing the signatures of over 500 men are among the more interesting discoveries included.
The poor are always with us and the records of those who applied for parish help provide a vast amount of family detail from people, who because of their circumstances, usually leave little or no documentation.
Alan E Laurie and Nicholas Young located and transcribed the school registers of 1850, 1851 and 1852 from 3 separate archives, the New Lanark school log of 1870 -1901 and the Admission Registers 1871-1927. They also consulted historical newspapers including the local paper, the Hamilton Advertiser (1890-1918). No stone has been left unturned. The greatest treasure is the Mill register of Births deaths and Marriages 1818-1853, fully transcribed.
Stolen wine
Lanark Prison Register 1848-81
In September 1877, Matthew Whitefield was sentenced to prison for the theft of 4 bottles of wine by housebreaking. Whitefield was married and spent most of his life in Lanarkshire and worked as a painter. On entering the prison he was described as having ‘Fresh hair and fair eyes blue.’ He was released from prison after 14 days.
150 pounds of stolen cotton
Historical Newspapers
Lanark Sheriff Court Criminal libels/indictments 1862-1870
Jane Todd, aged 17, and Marion Todd, aged 15, were tried in 1865 for the theft of 150lbs of cotton. They stole the cotton in small quantities over the period of two years while employed with Walker & Co. Cotton Mills. The girls’ stepmother, Rebecca Kerr (or Todd) was later charged with the resale of the stolen cotton. The girls admitted to pilfering the cotton from the mills regularly and selling it twice a week to various brokers in Lanark at the cost of 2d a pound. The young girls were sentenced to three months in prison. The stepmother was sentenced to five month in prison. The judge remarked that he believed the conduct of the stepmother far worse than that of the girls.
Excellent school reports
New Lanark School Log 1870-1902
On 3 September 1883, H M Inspector report, "This school is most faithfully conducted, and is in very good condition. Considering that the majority of the pupils in the higher standards were half-timers, the pass rate was very creditable. Composition, however, should receive more attention. Grammar in the fourth and sixth was very intelligently done. History and Geography were fairly good. Sewing and singing are receiving satisfactory attention. [Headmaster] J. Anderson has passed fairly.” Six years later another inspector’s report found. “This school continues to be faithfully and satisfactorily conducted. The pass and quality of the Standard Subjects were beyond the usual and the proficiency of the Class Subjects showed that intelligent means had been employed in teaching them. The junior classes made an extremely satisfactory appearance. The singing and sewing are both very well attended too."
Desertion of wife and children
Record of Applications for Poor Relief 1901-1905
Elizabeth Dickson, 28 years old, and her one year old son George were deserted by her husband George Dickson, a miner, on 12 March 1902. George told her wife that he was going to Shotts, a town in North Lanarkshire, but then on the 15th Elizabeth received a letter from him saying that by the time she received it he would be far from New Lanark. George Dickson was 31 years old, from Kirkfieldbank, and had been previously married. On 22 March 1904, Elizabeth entered the poor house and then left by 13 August. She gave birth to her son Robert on 30 August 1904.