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  1. #1

    Default The Basics - Church records

    Old Parochial Registers (OPR). These are the registers of the Church of Scotland and show baptisms and banns/marriages from before 1855. There was no standard format for recording - you may find a lot of information, but you may also find that even the mother of a baby isn’t mentioned. I’ve seen a couple of entries where the Bride’s name wasn’t given on her marriage entry! Some Ministers also included non-conformist baptisms and marriages in their parishes, but many did not. When you consider that "non-conformist" includes the Roman Catholics, Episcopalians and all the Churches that split off from the Church of Scotland (Church splitting was almost a national sport in the 19th century), this means that substantial numbers of people will not appear in the OPR. For example, one 19th century Minister in Berwickshire estimated that about a third of the people in his parish were non-conformists.

    Another oddity in the OPR is that sometime it looks as though a Minister or Parish Clerk has been playing catch-up. A whole family of baptisms, with dates going back years, can appear on one page, generally when the youngest has been brought for baptism. In the registers for my OPS, it occurred where a new Minister took over from one who'd been too old and infirm to take his own services for years - there were quite a few families who, presumably, could produce all the baptismal certificates and get their children registered.

    Families didn't always use their local Parish Church - they might use a nearer one, just over the Parish boundary, or return to the Church they were married in, or used as a child. Look around if they're not where you expect them to be.

    For searches before 1875, you can do a preliminary search in the International Genealogical Index (IGI) on the LDS Family Search site because the LDS were, at one time, given access to Scottish parish registers and BMDs before 1875. HOWEVER, treat the IGI with caution and make sure that the records you harvest were extracted from the originals rather than member-researched trees. You can then use that information to target your search on SP if you want images of the actual entries, the IGI is an index.. Note that techniques for reading old documents have improved since the LDS made their extraction, and there are records on SP that do not appear in the IGI.

    Note that damp, war, acid ink and human negligence do not contribute to the survival of records. Many registers are missing or too damaged to read.

    Catholic Registers from 1703-1958 are available. Like the OPR, the amount of information is variable.

    Some registers from the non-conformist Churches have survived. Look for them in the catalogue of the National Archives of Scotland (soon to become the National Records of Scotland) – see the sticky on Archives.

  2. #2

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    Note that the LDS have updated and expanded their website HERE. There is a lot more information there, and it is now possible to search on parents names, and get a list of children recorded as have parents with those names.

    However, it's still mostly just an index. If you find a likely entry, check the original text on Scotlands People.

  3. #3

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    I see that Scotlands People now has some Church Registers from other Presbyterian Churches as well as the Church of Scotland and Catholic Churches.

    This includes (copied from their site):

    The Reformed Presbyterian Church
    The Original Secession (or First Secession) Church
    The Associate Synods (Burghers and Antiburghers, and the Auld Licht Burghers, New Licht Burghers, Auld Licht Antiburghers and New Licht Antiburghers)
    The Relief Church
    The United Secession Church
    The United Presbyterian Church
    The Free Church

    (splitting and counter-splitting Church denominations was a national sport in the 19th century!)

    Not all of the registers have survived, so a negative search does not mean that the people were not there. I check by looking for other people seen on a census page, or checking GENUKI, where surviving records are often mentioned.

  4. #4

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    Scotlands People now have scans of the Kirk Sessions and Church Courts online. They make up part of a new section called Virtual Volumes. There's explanations HERE and HERE..

    They are not indexed, but are free to browse. Saving or downloading a copy will cost 2 credits per image.

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