These are the registers of births, baptisms, marriage banns, marriages, deaths and burials up to the end of 1854, that were kept by the Church of Scotland in each parish. These registers only include records of members of the established Church of Scotland and, even for them, are incomplete. The earliest such records are for the 16th century, but for many parishes, particularly in the highlands & islands, there are no records until the late 18th or 19th century. Baptisms & marriages are recorded in Errol in Perthshire from 1553, while a few parishes (e.g. Aberdeen, Canongate, Dunfermline & Perth) have records that begin shortly after the reformation of 1560. There are many parishes without any records of deaths or burials.
Depending on the diligence of the person keeping the register (usually the Session Clerk of the parish or his deputy), the entries may be quite informative or very brief. The best baptismal entries will include both parents' names, the father's occupation & address, and the names & occupations of two or more witnesses, whose relationship to the family may also be recorded. The best entries for banns include the man's occupation and address, the identity of the woman's father, and the names, occupations & relationship of two cautioners, who act as guarantors of the marriage. Very occasionally, the man's father is also named.
These records are held in New Register House in Edinburgh, where they can be seen on payment of a fee. They are also widely available on microfilm in libraries. The baptisms & marriages have been fully indexed by county by the Mormons; this Old Parish Register Index (OPR index) is an accurate index of actual events, in contrast to the Mormons' own International Genealogical Index (IGI), much of which is unreliable.
Few of the extant death/burial records have yet been indexed, but a project is under way to prepare a National Burial Index, deaths and burials in Fife having already been published on CD-ROM.
These are the records of all births, marriages & deaths since 1 January 1855, held in New Register House in Edinburgh, where they can be seen on payment of a fee.
These records usually provide the following information:
- Births: Child's name; date & place of birth; father's name & occupation; mother's name & maiden surname; date & place of the parents' marriage if the child is legitimate; name, relationship to child (& address if different) of informant of the birth.
- Marriages: Names, occupations & addresses of both parties; date & place; nature of banns or warrant; officiating minister or official; names, occupations & whether living for both fathers; names, maiden names & whether living for both mothers; names of witnesses (usually 2, occasionally more, more recently with their addresses)
- Deaths: Deceased's name, age & occupation; marital state (& name of spouse); date & place of death (& usual address if different); father's name, occupation & whether living; mother's name, maiden surname & whether living; cause of death & name of certifying physician; name, relationship (& address) of informant of death. More recent death certificates also give date of birth.
The records for 1855 are more informative, giving for births, for example, the ages and birthplaces of the child's parents and the number of previous children. Those for 1856-1860 are slightly less detailed. Names of parents in death certificates - and even in marriage certificates - are not necessarily correct.
Unfortunately, the indexes to the births, marriages and deaths do contain errors, and that can make it impossible to find some events. Inevitably, notwithstanding the fact that registration has been compulsory since 1855, there must also be a small percentage of events that went unrecorded.
There have been censuses that give the names of everyone in Scotland every 10 years since 1841, except 1941, but only those up to 1901 are currently open to public inspection. Every census provides names, addresses, ages, occupations and birthplaces of family members and any visitors (who may themselves be relatives) or boarders. Since 1851, relationships to the head of the household have been included, and since 1861, the number of rooms occupied. In 1841, ages of adults are only approximate and birthplaces are just the counties of birth. In other years, ages can be quite inaccurate and birthplaces are also often incorrect.
Records of the censuses of 1841, 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, 1891 and 1901 are held in the New Register House in Edinburgh and are open to the public on payment of a fee. However, microfilm copies are widely available in libraries, as are microfiche indexes for the censuses of 1881 and 1891. The 1881 census is also available as 2 CD-ROMs.
For a few parishes, there are surviving censuses from before 1841, naming only the heads of households.
This is the record of land transactions outside of the royal burghs from 1617 (from 1599 in some parts of Scotland), the early sasines being mostly in Latin. They can include significant detail about inheritance over several generations, often repeating information from earlier documents.
Searching is simplified by the existence of printed summaries of every sasine since 1781. Between 1617 and 1780, some counties have been fully indexed, some partially, some not at all.
There are separate registers, some up to 1963, for property within royal burghs, few of which are indexed.
These are the records that confirm the right to inherit property, dating from 1530 and mostly in Latin until 1847. These records only exist where there was a need or obligation for an heir or heiress to establish the right to inherit, and most, though not all, retours relate to the better off. The very purpose of these records, however, ensures that they almost always contain useful genealogical information.
These are the documents drawn up after a person's death by an executor or executors, the persons appointed to record the possessions and any sums of money owed to or by the deceased, and to carry out the will, if any, of the deceased as to who should receive his or her moveable property. Early testaments seldom include wills, and for only a small percentage of the population was a testament necessary. (Property that was not moveable but heritable, i.e. land and houses, passed automatically to the nearest male heir, usually the eldest son of the deceased. He, as a result, was always excluded from any share in the moveable property when there was no will. Heritable property owned by the deceased is only ever mentioned in a testament in relation to any rents owing to the deceased.)
Testaments can be extremely informative. The executor is frequently the widow or son, or else a creditor, while the cautioners, who guarantee payment of any debts owed by the deceased, may also be relatives. For establishing relationships before about 1780, testaments are one of the few useful sources of information. But they do not all name relatives; even when they do, it is descendants one already knows about, rather than ancestors, who are named in most cases. However, especially where the deceased died without issue but had numerous nephews and nieces, the amount of information can be considerable, e.g. the will of Francis Garden Mitchell, recorded at Edinburgh in 1865, identifies his father as having been a farmer at Maryton by Montrose, names his mother, 2 of his sisters and his maternal grandfather, and about 20 further relatives - nephews, nieces and some of their wives and children.
The standard format lists first the goods in the possession of the deceased, including items associated with his occupation, the furnishing of his house, his clothes and cash in hand, with estimated values for each item. This is followed by the debts owing to, and then the debts owed by the deceased. In the case of a brewer, for example, one would expect to find mention of the farmers from whom he bought malt, and of the customers who bought his beer.
These list the boys (aged 10 to 20) who were indentured to serve as apprentices to craftsmen and merchants who were burgesses of the burgh. Frequently, an apprentice was related to his master, or later married his master's daughter.
There are rolls for Aberdeen, Canongate, Edinburgh and Glasgow and several smaller towns, including Banff, Cupar, Dunfermline, Elgin, Kirkcudbright, Musselburgh, St Andrews and Stirling.
These list the men who were admitted to the right to pursue their trade, as craftsmen or merchants, within the limits of the burgh. Many were admitted at reduced rates as sons or sons-in-law of burgesses.
Most people were buried in unmarked graves. Also, many early monuments have inevitably been defaced, lost, broken or re-used. However, in recent times, many people have been engaged in recording the surviving inscriptions, and there are also some collections made by antiquaries in the past. So there is now a large database of inscriptions for many of the parish churchyards and town cemeteries, though for many places inscriptions have only been recorded up to 1855, when the statutory death records begin.
Early examples are a recent reconstructed directory of Edinburgh in 1752 & Peter Williamson's Edinburgh Directories from 1773.
King's College, Aberdeen (founded 1496); Marischal College, Aberdeen (1593); Edinburgh (1582); Glasgow (1451); St Andrews (1410).
There are also published rolls of pupils of some of the more famous Scottish schools, e.g. the Edinburgh Academy and Loretto School, Musselburgh.
- Doctors
There are rolls of Fellows of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh and of the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
- Lawyers
There are rolls of those admitted as Writers to H.M. Signet (solicitors) and to the Faculty of Advocates (barristers)
- Ministers
The Church of Scotland began to undergo schism in the 18th century. In addition to the 'Fasti' detailing the ministers of the established church, there are also records of ministers of the Free Church of Scotland, the Original Secession Church, the United Presbyterian Church, &c.
Among the early tax records are the following:
- Poll tax
This was a tax on all adults imposed in the 1690s. Unfortunately, not all the records have survived. There is no uniform format, but the records can name wives, children & servants as well as indicating the amount of tax, a useful measure of the family's status.
- Hearth tax
Like the poll tax, this dates from the 1690s, and is also incomplete. It was a tax on every hearth in Scotland, and the records usually merely state the number of hearths belonging to the head of the household. Useful, however, in confirming the presence of a family in a parish.
- Window tax
A tax of the period 1748-98, imposed on houses having more than 7 separate panes of glass as windows, often avoided by blocking up the windows. The tax affected only a fairly small proportion of the population.
- Farm Horse tax
A tax introduced in 1797, and abandoned soon after, but valuable as a source of information about the many tenant farmers throughout Scotland.
Records of Scots in the British army & navy after the union with England in 1707 are in the Public Record Office, London, though there are published records of those killed in the 1914-18 war, for example.
In Scotland, there are militia records, mainly relating to 1795-1815, and also numerous muster rolls of the Scots army before 1707.
Towns that were granted charters by the king - royal burghs - were entitled to keep their own registers of sasines (land transactions). For these towns, and for others that were originally the property of nobles or abbeys, there are often extensive records relating to matters such as their councils, courts & land holdings.
In addition to the parish registers of baptisms, etc., there are also the records of the Kirk Sessions of the parishes of the Church of Scotland, detailing almost exclusively the various misdeeds of the parishioners. These can be a useful source for information about illegitimate children for the 17th & 18th centuries, when the Kirk Sessions were able to exercise authority over their parishioners and compel miscreants to appear before them to admit and do penance for their sins.
There are also various records of churches other than the established Church of Scotland, such as the Relief Church, the Associate Session (Burghers and Antiburghers) and the Episcopal Church. In some cases, these records include registers of baptisms and marriages.
After 1845, the responsibility for looking after the poor passed from the Church of Scotland to Parochial Boards. There are surviving records for some of the boards and of some individual poor-houses, and these records can provide much genealogical information: ages, birthplaces, previous addresses, names of parents, names of dependants, marital history and religious denomination, as well as the reason for application for relief. Places for which good records survive include Ardrossan in Ayrshire, Clydebank, Glasgow (including the Barony and Govan), Kilmarnock, Motherwell and Paisley.
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