Your society concluded the summer with our annual picnic at the home of Al and Merrilu Ablowich. The enjoyable afternoon was marred only by overeating. Randy Bruce introduced the new line of shirts with the Society logo embroidered on them.

Our regular monthly meetings resumed on the first Monday of October at Vivo’s at Hilltop. Wil Phillips discussed the need for additional volunteers to keep the Williamsburg Scottish Festival going. Any interested volunteers can contact me or Wil.

Skip Hunter and the Tidewater Scottish Gaelic Society presented a very interesting program on the Gaelic language. Their study group strives to expand knowledge of Scottish Gaelic and offers lessons free of charge. Anyone interested may contact Skip at jwhunter2@cox.

There has been a change in the schedule for the Saint Andrews Day Dinner. The event will be held on November 20th at the Broad Bay Country Club. Burns Nicht will still be on January 29, 2005, but will now be held at the Broad Bay Country Club. Additional details for both events will be provided in the near future.

All Society members are reminded that nominations for “Scot of the Year” should be received by the Board by December 1, 2004.

Yours aye,
     Joe Hood

Several new or redesigned web sites are available to help in research about Scotland or Scottish heritage.

SCAN—the Scottish Archives Network (www.scan.org.uk) that provides search access to over 20,000 separate collections of records from all over Scotland. Researchers can locate specific locations, determine their contents, and find conditions for use. In addition to an online catalog from 52 archives, the site offers a glossary of Scottish terms, a Scots currency converter, and a section on family history specifically for Scottish Americans. SCAN has also indexed and digitized all testaments registered in Scotland between 1500 and 1910. The index to these testaments may be viewed free-of-charge at www.ScottishDocuments.com. SCAN is a site well worth exploring for its wealth of information.

This website focuses on Scotland’s written legacy and provides access to SCAN’s digitized wills and testaments as mentioned above. The database contains about 520,000 names. A sample search for Robert Barclay (you’ll need to narrow your search as 500 hits is the maximum supported) yielded 73 hits including a shoe merchant in Linlithgow in 1867, a crofter in 1883, and a shipbuilder in Glasgow in 1863. The latter provided the name of the spouse, Agnes Blackwood Barclay, in the index. In addition, the site provides wills from some of Scotland’s more famous personages, including Robert Burns (1796), David Livingstone (1873), and Rob Roy (1734). In addition, a handwriting guide helps with difficult-to-decipher words or handwriting. Digitized color images of records may be ordered online for £5 (about $9.15).

The Scottish History site developed by the BBC (www.bbc.co.uk/scotland/history) is a great site offering a wide selection of information including timelines, a film clip archive on Scotland on Film, and “on this day” samplings. An extensive page on Burns Night includes links to key poems, recipes, and all the information you might need to plan an event. A quiz provides an opportunity to test your knowledge of Scottish history, but before you scoff, please note that the first question is: "Who threw a stool at the Bishop of Edinburgh in 1637?"

These and other sites are well worth checking-out to see what’s available and what new information you might find valuable to satisfy your curiosity or to further your research.