Kirk session records to be added to ScotlandsPeople in 2021

The seventh Scottish Indexes (www.scottishindexes.com) conference has proved to be just as much fun and as of much interest as the previous six events - but the BIG piece of news revealed by Emma and Graham Maxwell during the event is that ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk) intends to release the first tranche of Scottish kirk session records online in 'early 2021'. 

The kirk session records are the records that detail the disciplinary proceedings of the session as the court of first instance within the Church of Scotland, and which also note the session's everyday dealings with parishioners. Brace yourselves for antenuptial fornication, paternity claims, promiscuous dancing and considerably more! 

Here's the juicy bit - access to the reading of the records is to be made available for free on ScotlandsPeople for Church of Scotland parishes prior to 1855, and within a new feature on the website called Virtual Volumes. (Regular visitors to the National Records of Scotland, ScotlandsPeople's parent body, will know Virtual Volumes as the name of the computer system offering access to digitised records within the Historic Search Room). If you wish to save an image from the kirk session records on ScotlandsPeople, that's the point when you will be asked to pay. 

The records will almost certainly not be keyword searchable, but 'waypointed' by year, meaning we will likely have to browse our way through them a page at a time. That in itself has its own challenges, particularly with earlier records where the handwriting can be a challenge, so there may be a learning curve for some aspects of this (the Scottish Handwriting site at https://scottishhandwriting.com might be worth investing some time in just now!). Nevertheless, the promise of these records coming online has been around for many years, and the fact that we are almost there is superb news. Note that the Church of Scotland is the main presbyterian church in Scotland, but there were many other presbyterian denominations in the country, and the kirk session records for all continue long after 1855, but this is certainly a very useful start.

For more on the history of the Kirk and its various splits, you can read my brief history at http://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/p/kirk-history.html, whilst the usefulness of kirk session records themselves is covered in my book Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records (www.pen-and-sword.co.uk/Tracing-Your-Scottish-Ancestry-through-Church-and-State-Records-Paperback/p/16848).

During the conference, Emma also gave an excellent talk on kirk session records at the event, and you will find this for a short period on the Scottish Indexes Group Facebook page at www.facebook.com/groups/scottishindexes.

(With thanks to Emma and Graham)

Chris

Pre-order my next book, Sharing Your Family History Online, at https://bit.ly/SharingFamHist. My book Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scottish2 is also out, as are Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed) at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Irish1 and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records at http://bit.ly/ChrisPaton-Scotland1. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page, and on Twitter @genesblog.