Bute Sons and Daughters Services

Membership & Services

Join Bute Sons & Daughters Family History Society!

The Family History Society was launched in March 2007 as a means of generating some income since the original funding for the Bute Sons & Daughters project has long finished. Those who join will be immediately entitled to the following:

Receipt of our quarterly Newsletter 'The Islander', full of fascinating information about the history and people of Bute.
Access to ALL movie clips from the digital archive.
Access to online census data. This service was launched in May 2007.

Membership of the Family History Society is £12 per annum, payable by cheque made out to Bute Sons and Daughters and sent to our address at The Discovery Centre (see below), or by PayPal, a secure method of payment via the Internet. To join, click on the 'Subscribe' button below.

Bute Migrant Directory

We are pleased to announce the publication of the first 100 copies of the Directory. Printed in A4 size for easy reading, the Directory contains over 100 potted histories of Brandanes who left their native shore to seek fame and fortune in far off lands in the 19th & 20th centuries. Contact has been made with the majority of the descendents of those early migrants, and through them, each story tells of the imprint left by these sons and daughters of Bute in their adopted country.

Surnames found in the Directory include Barr, Blair, Boyd, Currie, Curran, Chalmers, Campbell, Crawford, Duncan, Friel, Ferguson, Fyfe, Farmer,Gillies, Greig, Hill, Haig, Harvie, Jamieson, Keith, Kelly, Leitch, Linton, Miller, Millar, McKirdy, McKellar, McArthur, McTaggart, McIntyre, McDonald, McCallum, McKinlay, McNaughton, Morrison, McConachy, McInnes, McQuilkan, McFie, McLean, Milloy, Marshall, Munn, McIndoe, Napier, Orkney, Perston, Palmer, Paton, Steel, Shaw, Stewart, Scott, Taylor, Thorburn, and Thom.

The total cost of the Directory, which will include packaging and delivery by airmail to Australia, The United States of America, Canada and New Zealand is £15.00 sterling, & for UK, £10.00 sterling. Also included is a CD containing, in PDF format, over 250 photographs of Rothesay and the Isle of Bute.

We advise you to order quickly as these will be snapped up!
Payment should be made by PayPal, no account required, simply use the button below:
Family History Research

People who ask us to carry out Family History Research for them often ask if it is possible to pay online rather than send a cheque, especially if it is in a different currency. Until now we haven't been able to accommodate this, but we're pleased to say that we have now set up a secure online payment method for those who wish to pay this way. Simply click the button and follow the instructions.

For those who are wondering what the Family History Research service is all about, it's for those who have the interest but don't really have the time or inclination to spend lots of hours researching their family background. For our very modest fee of £25 we will trace one line of your family back 3 or 4 generations (more, of course, if we can). Should you decide to have your family tree researched and are a member of the Family History Society then your membership fee will be deducted from our normal fee of £25, leaving a modest balance of £13 payable, to cover research costs. On completion of the research, you will receive an iinformation pack' with absolutely as much information about your ancestors as our researchers have been able to find. This will include a family tree (with all names cross-referenced by number to a family group sheet included in the pack), copies of census returns and of course copies of all certificates ie. birth, marriage, death. We are sure you know that Bute Sons and Daughters is run by volunteers but we have to make a charge for this service to cover the cost of access to various records, possible travel costs for our researchers to check records on the mainland, and of course photocopying and postage charges. In the very unlikely event that we cannot find sufficient family information, the charge is of course modified. Our researchers are normally able to compile a fairly extensive family tree within 2-3 weeks, but of course this may vary depending on availability of information and their own commitments. If you would like more information please drop us an email.

Mailing List

We run a mailing list for those who want to be kept up to date with developments at the Bute Sons & Daughters project. It's free and we promise we will never give your email address to anybody else. We will only use the mailing list to send you our own news and not for any other purpose.

We expect that we might send you some news once a month, and it's unlikely to be more often than once a month, so we won't be filling your mailbox with rubbish, either. If you'd like to join our mailing list then use this link to sign up...

Join the News Mailing List

The Bute Sons & Daughters Project is housed in the Bute Discovery Centre, the premier Tourist Information Centre for Argyll and Bute. Come along and have a chat with local people about your family history and heritage.

Please let us know you are coming by sending us a message or phoning - see the contact page for ways to get in touch with us.