Geneapedia
Scottish deeds and sasines
See list of Scottish deed and sasine indexes in Genhound database.
For those with Scottish ancestry Scottish deeds and sasines can be a useful avenue of family history research. Specific to Scotland, the sasine (pronouned "sayzin") is a document that records the transfer of ownership of a piece of land or of a building, similar to a deed. Information on a record includes description of the property, names of the persons involved, price, type of transaction, date, time, and witnesses. Often sasines include family history facts if, for example, property passed from one family member to another or siblings shared in ownership.
The registers
From the 17th century to the current day a register has been kept of these property transfers. One purposes of the register was to prevent the repeated use of a piece of property for securing loans. This meant that all deeds that secured debts on land (e.g. mortgages) had to be recorded. The register therefore provides a wealth of information about the more well to do sectors of Scottish society of the time such as land owners, merchants and businessmen.
There is in fact a series of registers that were kept at different times and places. The first register, called the "Secretary's Register" was kept between 1599 and 1616 and was very patchy in its coverage. A separate section was kept for each county.
From 1617 a more comprehensive series of registers was kept:
- The general register of sasines which covered all of Scotland, except the three Lothian counties. The general register was also used to record details of properties that were spread over more than one county.
- A particular register of sasines for each of the individual counties.
From 1869 a single register was kept for the whole of Scotland, arranged in county divisions.
It was a legal requirement to record a sasine or an equivalent title deed within a few days of its being made up. In practice, the registers are fairly complete from 1617 and comprehensive from about 1660 onwards. The law required that once made out, a sasine had to be recorded, but there were some cases in which a sasine might not be thought necessary. Most commonly this was when someone inherited a property where they already resided, such as a son inheriting from the father. If his possession was undisputed, he might not go to the expense of having a sasine executed for some considerable time, perhaps only if his possession was disputed or he wished to sell the property to a third party.
All of the sasine registers are now kept by the National Archives of Scotland except for three of the burgh registers, those for Glasgow and the Aberdeen and Dundee pre-1809 registers, which are kept in the respective city archives. The registers are open for public access and there is no charge for those viewing them for family history research. For those unable to visti the archives in person, copies can be requested for a fee, but you will need to know the location - eg which register, date, volume and page number. Be aware that you may have to get to grips with old Scottish legal terminology to comprehend the document fully, and that some sasines were in Latin. However, the genealogical information in the document should be more easily understood such as family relationships, where they lived and possibly occupations. Genhound has published a glossary which should help you with some of the terminology.
Searching the registers
A series of indexes of the registers have been produced to help researchers locate a sasine in the register for a particular person. For the general register there is an index for each year from 1616 to 1696.
Ordered alphabetically by surname the indexes themselves are a goldmine of useful genealogical information without even having to access the sasine itself. They give the full name, and almost always the location of the person the sasine or deed relates to, the volume number (Roman numerals) and page number in the register. All main parties named in the sasine (not witnesses) will be indexed. Occupation is nearly always also included in the index entry and some listings are even more informative, giving relationships such as 'son of' 'brother of' etc and may also give the relative's occupation and location. Entries for women are particularly informative, usually giving their maiden name and name, location and occupation of their spouse and/or father.
The indexes to the particular register of sasines were produced seperately for each county. Most run from 1617 to 1780, divided into a number of different volumes to cover different periods, though some also include earlier registers and a few only run up to 1660. There are no indexes at all for some counties, namely Stirling, Renfrew and Glasgow, Roxburgh, Perth and Wigtown. The indexes contain the same sort of information as the index for the general register of deeds, and are sometimes even more detailed, giving for example the regiment of army officers, and sometimes giving former as well as current residences.
The indexes in printed format can be found in a number of good reference and family history libraries and now for the first time, are being made available online via the Genhound website. As with all Genhound records, the search is free and you only need to buy the record that is relevant to you. Getting the indexes into the Genhound searchable database is a major project and the indexes will be added gradually over the coming year. A number of them have already been added which you can see listed at the bottom of this page.
For the period 1780 to the present day a series of abridgements of the sasines in printed format have been produced that summarise the content of the sasine. The abridgements are arranged in county volumes and cover both the general and the particular registers. These volumes are indexed, and you use the index to identify particular individuals or properties. The abridgements are available at the National Archives of Scotland and the indexes to the abridgements can be viewed on microfilm at some family history libraries including the LDS libraries.
