08/31/2024
When your ancestors don't appear in the Church of Scotland pre-1855 birth, marriage and death records!
As we have mentioned in recent posts, civil registration began in Scotland in 1855. For the period before 1855 we rely on records of other churches as well as other records. Today we are going to look at how to access some of these records.
Our ancestors may have attended the Free Church or another Protestant church. By the mid-1840s there was a huge variety of denominations people could choose from. In some parishes, the majority of the population may have started attending the newly formed Free Church in 1843. This is a crucial time for us as researchers and missing links here can prevent us from finding older generations.
Many birth and marriage registers for these ‘Other Churches’ have now been indexed and added to ScotlandsPeople. As you will have done already to search the Church of Scotland registers, navigate to the Church records page but this time select ‘Other churches’. Sometimes you will find entries that correspond to those you have already found in the Church of Scotland records. This is because, in theory, the Church of Scotland was supposed to record every birth, marriage and death in the parish. In reality, however, this did not always happen. You may see this though so it's good to understand why.
In most parishes the only burial ground in this period was the Church of Scotland kirkyard so don't be surprised if baptisms are recorded by one church and burials by another.
As with Church of Scotland registers, many records have been lost over time so don't be surprised if you don't find everyone.
The Scottish Catholic Archives generally hold Catholic records and the original records have not been deposited with the National Records of Scotland. Some of these records are available on Findmypast and some are also available on ScotlandsPeople. There is a considerable overlap so if you have a Findmypast subscription it's worth searching their website first so that you can save those ScotlandsPeople credits!
Catholicism was outlawed in Scotland for many years, which greatly impacted record keeping. You can learn more about this at our next conference in September. Margaret Fox, Archivist at Traquair House will present, ‘Catholicism at Traquair House – from locked doors to open doors’. In this presentation Margaret will give a brief history of the Stuart family of Traquair House in the Scottish Borders, focusing on its loyalty to the Roman Catholic religion, often in the face of unrelenting persecution. She will go on to speak about a wonderful little leather-bound manuscript volume which came back to Traquair in July 2022 having mysteriously strayed from the house at some point. It contains detailed records of Catholic baptisms, marriages and confirmations conducted by William Wallace, Traquair’s resident chaplain, in the first half of the 19th century, recording families which made arduous journeys across the length and breadth of the country to have their children baptised at Traquair. To illustrate the volume’s usefulness as a Catholic genealogical resource Margaret will draw up some family groupings from it.