Inverness NB

[Skoosh]

 Scots did consider themselves also British in those days, I did myself at one time. The Empire went, and British, for most Scots nowadays, went with it!   Skoosh.

[IMBER]

Here's an example of the use of NB on the sort of buttercrock you might find in a grocers or dairy in the early part of the twentieth century.  This particular one was manufactured at Port Dundas pottery, Glasgow.

[GR2]

I think you have to remember that this is from a census. The enumerator was supposed to enter the county and the parish of birth. If it is from a Scottish census, you would have the parish or N. K. for not known. Sometimes, a town or village, even a farm name appears instead of the parish, if the enumerator was given this and did not realise it was not the parish. Occasionally there is a blank left, but you would not get N.B. for North Britain in a Scottish census. Firstly it was not what was supposed to be written and also there would be no point in wasting space and ink on the obvious. If this is an English census, I can't see why they did not just write "Inverness(shire) Inverness" as they were supposed to.

Graham.

[IMBER]

Graham

Sorry to be so definitive here but you are wrong. All genealogists know that what is meant to happen frequently doesn't.  The use of NB by Scots was deeply rooted and its use quite clearly meaning North Britain appears in English, Welsh and Scots census records and in legal documents. I've even seen it used in the official Soldiers Died in the Great War (SDGW).

Imber

[PrueM]

If this is an English census, I can't see why they did not just write "Inverness(shire) Inverness" as they were supposed to.

As already stated:

a quick search of "NB" as birthplace on the 1911 census gives 77 returns.  I checked one such family and all 5 members were shown as being born in "Edinburgh, NB".

Those entries were in the householder's own handwriting so obviously they thought of their own birthplace as being in "North Britain".

[J11]

I have a reference in the Knockando Kirk Session Records of the 1780s to someone who had moved from Morayshire to the "City of Durham, South Britain".

Jenny

[Skoosh]

Is this anywhere near the North British Academy of Arts in Newcastle.       Skoosh NB.

[J11]

Skoosh,

I think it depends on who describes it.  My husband is West Country English and, until I took him to Scotland outside Edinburgh, it never occurred to him to regard Scotland as a separate country.  To him Newcastle and Scotland were equally just "up north".  When he went to the Highlands he realised for the first time that it was ( to him ) as foreign as Germany!

Jenny

[J11]

An addition to the above.  Apparently, in Mediaeval and Tudor times, North Britain was used by the government in London to describe the territories that they believed owed fealty to the English Crown but were disputed by the Scots, i.e. Northumbria, Cumbria and the Borders, though sometimes the claim went as far north as Edinburgh.  These territories were regarded as rebellious and ungovernable.  The term became far more elastic after unification.

Jenny