Wonder if anyone can help me locate a property. My G G grandfather's great uncle left him "the property belonging to me in Hillhousefield in Leith" in 1886. How can I track this property down with such slim details and find out when my G G grandfather sold it?
Should be dead easy.
If he owned land with buildings on it, there should be a record of the change of ownership in the Registers of Sasines. These are indexed by the names of the former and new owners, and the indexes are arranged annually by county. The indexes contain an Abridgment of each sasine, which tells you briefly who owned the property before, who now owns it, where and what it was, and the nature of the change, i.e.sale, inheritance, excambion etc. You can get a copy of the full sasine, but for genealogical purposes the Abridgments usually suffice.
You need to go to the National Archives Records of Scotland in General Register House, Edinburgh (or get someone to go on your behalf, or hire a professional searcher) and look up your GGF in the Abridgments for Midlothian for 1886 and possibly the next few years to find out where and what the property is.
To find out when and to whom he sold it, I gather that if you know the name and description of a property, you can get a complete history of it, but I have never done this myself so I can't tell how how to. I am, however, quite sure that the staff at the NAS will be able to tell you how to go about it.
Otherwise, of course, you could just plough through the annual calendars of Abridgments until you find your ggf listed as the seller of the property in question.
