I recently discovered that Edinburgh City Archives holds a set of passport records issued by the Edinburgh Lord Provosts between 1845 and 1916 (ECA reference GB236/SL165). Helpfully these have recently been made available online through Ancestry.co.uk and are available with digital images and partial indexes with a paid Ancestry subscription.

I discovered them because I was doing another occasional online Ancestry search for my ggg-grandfather John Usher Somner (1829-1879) from the Scottish Borders. And was stunned to find him show up in these records, which were new to me. On 14th August 1851 John Usher Somner obtained a passport along with his cousin Richard Somner Frier. Both were heading off to Paris of all places! I have included a portion from the relevant record page, to show the kinds of details recorded in these records.

Obviously this raises lots of questions to me as a family historian. Were the two young men off on a holiday together? Both were still unmarried. Also fortunately for any travel plans both came from relatively wealthy families. What was the prompt for their trip at that particular time? And what might they have seen and done when they were in Paris? Did they travel anywhere else?

For genealogists the records tend towards the wealthier members of society. You needed to have a certain amount of disposable income to travel overseas for personal reasons at this time. The Ancestry indexing/transcripts are also somewhat unreliable, so you may have to be creative. The keyword search does allow for some searches by home address, but again with that proviso re transcription quality, and also that places could be written down in many varied ways, and there is no standardised indexed version.

The records also open up possibilities for academic researchers. Though I suspect that poring page by page might be more appropriate here. Which is also available through Ancestry, where you can step through images. What sort of people were applying for Edinburgh passports at this time, and from where in Scotland (it looks from first glance to be much of Lowland Scotland at least)? Where were they off to, and are there patterns that develop over time? What sort of groups look to have been travelling together, with multiple passport applications at the same time? What does this tell us about this sector of Scottish society and their experiences of elsewhere in the world at this time? So many questions.

I have already found more relatives in these records. But am now musing the academic research possibilities. And even with the indexing issues they are a compelling data source.

Note the date ranges of browseable Edinburgh passport record images available in Ancestry are as follows:

• 1845 July 30 to 1851 December 30
• 1851 November 7 to 1855 August 10
• 1857 May 1 to 1857 December 30
• 1858 January 1 to 1862 May 2
• 1862 May 5 to 1866 December 19 
• 1867 January 7 to 1879 June 18
• 1879 June 19 to 1892 March 24
• 1892 March 28 to 1903 July 4
• 1903 July 7 to 1914 October 5