Scottish GENES

Friday, 18 September 2026

Scottish GENES Articles: Scottish Maps

Whilst I have stopped blogging for a bit, due to my teacher training course at Strathclyde, I haven't forgotten about you! Here's a free article for you, one that I wrote for British Connections, the journal of the International Society for British Genealogy and Family History (https://isbgfh.com) in 2023 - enjoy!

Scottish Maps (Chris Paton)

When looking at key documents for Scottish history research, such as the vital records or the censuses, we can connect families to specific locations within the country. Our primary focus is often the stories of our ancestors, but the place names and addresses at which they resided have tales of their own, equally worthy of investigation. Getting to grips with the environments within which they lived can not only shed further context on the family narrative, but on the history of Scotland itself.

Every placename in Scotland has an origin, derived from lived experience, geological features and ancient languages such as Gaelic, Scots, and even Pictish. For example, the name of Pittenweem in Fife is believed to derive from the Pictish word 'pett' meaning 'a place', and Gaelic 'na h-Uaimh', meaning 'the caves', thus signifying the 'place of the caves', whilst the city of 'Perth' is belived to derive from a Pictish word for a 'wood' or 'grove'. The documents that can really help us to gain a fascinating insight into how the landscape has changed over the years are maps, particularly when considered in a chronological order. Maps can identify when and where certain settlements appeared, offering clues as to why they were created, and also how others disappeared, only to be commemorated many years later through street names and folk memory.

Perhaps the single most useful mapping resource available for research is the Maps Reading Room of the National Library of Scotland (www.nls.uk/collections/maps), based at Causewayside Building, 33 Salisbury Place, Edinburgh, which can be visited via a pre-booked appointment from Tuesdays to Thursdays each week. The library has over two million printed items, including four thousand manuscript maps and fifteen thousand worldwide atlases. In addition, it has an extensive collection of material from the Ordnance Survey, formally established from 1791, but going back to the aftermath of second Jacobite rebellion in Scotland, when The Duke of Cumberland’s Map was created by William Roy to help the British Army to take control of the Highlands. Even as this exercise was underway, the Advocates Library, the forerunner to the modern NLS, was already building up the collection that we can now so effectively use today for our research. Details on how to visit the NLS Maps Reading Room are available at https://www.nls.uk/using-the-library/reading-rooms/maps/.

The good news for those unable to get to Edinburgh, is that the NLS mapping team also hosts one of the single most impressive websites available for Scottish ancestral research. Located at https://maps.nls.uk/, the 'Map Images' platform hosts over a quarter of a million free to access digitised documents from the library's holdings, with records available to consult including the following:

Maps of Scotland the whole of Scotland, 1560-1928
A series of maps from 1560-1928 showing the whole island, from the Scotia: Regno di Scotia map (approx 1558-66) to the Ordnance Survey one inch maps of Scotland from 1921-28. Also available is a separate collection of thematically based maps, showing administrative boundaries, clan territories, geology, railways and roads.

County Maps maps of Scotland, 1580-1928
Maps for each county from 1580-1928 presented in chronological order, including Pont’s Maps of Scotland (1580s-1590s), the Blaeu Atlas of Scotland (1654), Herman Moll’s County Maps of Scotland (1745), John Thomson’s Atlas of Scotland (1832) and J. G. Bartholomew’s Survey Atlas of Scotland (1912).

Town Plans and Views plans/views, 1580-1919
Various maps and surveys of Scottish towns from 1580-1919, as well as maps and reports drawn up for 75 towns as prior to the introduction of the Scottish Reform Act of 1832, and large scale Ordnance Survey maps of 62 towns from 1847-1895.

Series maps of Scotland, 1795-1961
Ordnance Survey maps from 1843-1991, as well as John Bartholomew and Son’s half inch to the mile maps for Scotland (1926-35), Admiralty Charts (1795-1904), Charles Goad's Fire Insurance Maps (1880s-1940s), and the post-Second World War Ordnance Survey Air Photo Mosaics of Scotland (1944-1950) collection.

Ordnance Survey maps
Scottish maps at various scales published by the Ordnance Survey and the War Office from the 1840s-1960s. The maps are geo-referenced, with geographic co-ordinates attached to key points on each, which means that once you identify an area of interest on one map, you can easily locate it across time on others, with all of them 'pegged' at the same co-ordinates.

Bartholomew maps
Various Scottish maps as produced by Bartholomew & Co., J.G. Bartholomew, and John Bartholomew & Son Ltd, from the late 19th century to 1940.

Air photo mosaics
Aerial photographs of Scotland taken by the Ordnance Survey between 1944-1950, which can be overlaid by Google Maps and Virtual Earth satellite and map layers for modern comparisons.

Coastal charts Coasts of Scotland on marine charts, 1580-1850
Various marine charts showing the Scottish coast, from Nicolas de Nicolay’s 1580 chart 'Vraye & exacte description hydrographique des costes maritimes d’ Ecosse', to John Knox’s 'Map of the Basin of the Tay' from 1850. A separate page lists a series of Admiralty Charts drawn up from 1795-1963.

Bathymetrical Survey
This contains a comprehensive examination of 562 inland Scottish lochs, including some 60,000 depths soundings on 223 coloured maps.

Military maps of Scotland (18th century)
This particular section includes a detailed series of maps drawn up by the Board of Ordnance during the Jacobite periods of the 18th century, as well as William Roy’s Military Survey of Scotland (1747-1755), the immediate forerunner to the Ordnance Survey. The section also hosts and Roy’s equally detailed map from 1793, Military Antiquities of the Romans in North Britain.

Estate Maps maps of Scotland, 1772-1878
This small section contains 19th century maps for various estates in Edinburgh, Dumfriesshire, Kirkcudbrightshire, Lanarkshire, Sutherland and Wigtownshire. Edinburgh and a couple in Sutherland from the 18th century, for Golspie and Loth (1772) and Assynt (1774).

There are several other tools permitting access to all of these collections from the home page. The 'MapFinder with Marker Pin' option allows users to place a marker pin on a point of interest, and to then call up other maps that will show the exact same location at different points of time. The 'MapFinder with Outlines' tool allows users to call up historic maps and to see where the boundaries of those printed maps lie in relation to a modern map of Britain. Through the 'Explore Georeferenced Maps' tool a historic map image appears laid against a satellite image of the country as a backdrop; a 'change the transparency of overlay slider' permits users to slide between a historic map image and the modern image embedded beneath it. The 'Side by Side Viewer' tool further permits a comparison of historic map images beside each other.

Other tools on the home page allow users to browse series by the map maker, to view the astonishing maps of the Roy Military Survey from 1747-1755, compiled immediately after the Battle of Culloden in 1746. One of my personal favorite tools on this page is the 'Boundaries viewer', a simple tool which allows you to identify the ancient boundaries of Scotland's parishes, counties and unitary authorities (which replaced counties in 1975), projected against a selected Ordnance Survey map.

It will take hours of merciless plundering to truly appreciate the sheer range of content available, but if I had to select a personal favorite collection, it would probably be the Charles Goad Fire Insurance Maps from the 1880s-1940s for Campbeltown, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Greenock, Leith, and Paisley, created to assess the fire risk of urban buildings. The maps are accessible at https://maps.nls.uk/towns/goad/.

The National Library is, of course, not the only platform online with useful maps available for research. The Google Maps platform at https://www.google.co.uk/maps can be especially useful in not only providing a satellite overview image, but also its Street View service, showing ground level panoramic photographs, which can be of use if you wish to see what a surviving building looks like today, particularly if a visit is not possible in person. (On the same day that I am writing this, Ayrshire Archives has just posted an image on Twitter of an unidentified historic street photograph from its collection; using an equivalent modern Street View perspective I was able to prove to them categorically that it depicted Bank Street in Irvine).

Elsewhere, the National Records of Scotland holds over 150,000 maps and plans as part of its Register House Plans (RHP) collection, comprised primarily of government based materials, but also collections from churches, private organisations, landed estates and families.Many of the items have been digitised and can be consulted at the facility’s General Register House premises on Prince’s Street, with some also free to view on ScotlandsPeople via its Maps and Plans section at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/help-and-support/guides/maps-and-plans. For items that could not be digitised, or which have copyright restrictions, an appointment can be made to visit the organisation’s Thomas Thomson House facility to consult them; a guide is available at https://nrscotland.gov.uk/learning-and-events/research-guides/maps-and-plans/.

Finally, the National Records of Scotland also has a collection of Ordnance Survey Name Books, catalogued under RH4/23, which were recorded during the creation of the 6 inch and 25 inch scale maps between 1845 and 1878, although not all of the books have survived. Several entries contain additional information on the properties and inhabitants which may be of interest for research. The books have been digitised and can be freely consulted on the ScotlandsPlaces website at www.scotlandsplaces.gov.uk.

Chris

Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. Also available -Tracing Your Belfast Ancestors, Tracing Your Irish Ancestors Through Land Records, Sharing Your Family History Online, Tracing Your Scottish Family History on the Internet, Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet (2nd ed), and Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records - to purchase, please visit https://bit.ly/ChrisPatonPSbooks. To purchase in the USA visit https://www.penandswordbooks.com. Further news published daily on The Scottish GENES Facebook page.

Friday, 31 July 2026

Ancestry adds Midlothian burials from 1834-2025

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) has added a new burials database for Scotland:

Midlothian, Scotland, Burials, 1834-2025
https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/63107
Source: Midlothian Burials. Midlothian, Scotland: Midlothian Council Archives.

About Midlothian, Scotland, Burials, 1834-2025

This collection contains records from cemeteries in the county of Midlothian, Scotland, dated between 1834 and 2025. Most of the records are registers and lair books with burial information for several people on one page. Lair is the Scottish word for a burial plot in a cemetery, and there are some records of lair purchases and lair-holders. The collection has a series of cemetery maps and plans that show the location of sections and lairs. There are also minute books that record the creation and maintenance of individual cemeteries. The collection is not comprehensive. Some local cemeteries and burial places are not covered.

Using this collection

Records in this collection may include the following information:

Name
Marital status
Age
Death date and place
Burial date
Burial city and parish
Cemetery name
Cemetery section
Burial registration number
Lair number

The information in these records may allow you to confirm your ancestor’s date and place of death and burial. You could use this information to search for your ancestor’s obituary, which may include additional details about employment, education, volunteer activities, and military service.

For further details visit the link.

Note that this database includes records for Midlothian grounds outwith Edinburgh.

Chris

Tuesday, 28 July 2026

British Newspaper Archive launches new platform

The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.com) has been updated with a brand new platform and look - and it is perhaps going to take some getting used to.

From the home page there are options to perform a basic search - now with two separate boxes, one for a name, the other for optional keywords - and an advanced search. On a first attempt to make a search using the advanced search my heart nearly sank, as it is seemingly much more unwieldy than the previous version. Where before you could type in some keywords into a basic box, and very quickly filter down the results from a series of boxes on the left side of the screen, in this new version you have to do a quick search, then click the Filters button at the top, at which point a sub menu glides in from the right side of the screen; however, every option on this is a drop-down menu, vastly increasing the number of clicks previously required to select the options that are needed. Fortunately, the returns made available do seem to be focussed on the criteria specified, which is something of a relief.

There seem to be some new features available (if they existed before I never used them!), such as free access to any article that appears on today's date in history, and a 'workspace' area and 'my records' area, but also some losses. For example, the site now has a Hot off the Press blog area that shows that will seemingly show what has been added on a weekly basis, but there is no easy way to see what has been updated in the last 30 days - which means I will likely no longer provide updates on what is available for Scotland and Ireland, as I have done since the site first launched fifteen years ago, which is a pity, it's just going to be too much hard work to sift through everything for the required info.

Under the Newspapers menu link is a button marked 'Collections' where both the British Newspaper Archive and FindmyPast have curated collections of articles on particular topics, but there is no way to view the collections titles in a list, just by big panels for each collection, although you can do a keyword search for a topic, eg 'Titanic'.

My initial panic about messed up functionality has passed, the site does work, but it does feel that it is going to involve more work to achieve anything, which seems to be the mantra of most developers updating well-loved websites these days. Time will tell whether I will be get used to it, or just frustrated with it!

Chris

Monday, 27 July 2026

Book Review: A History of Parish Registers in England and Wales, by John Wintrip

A huge thanks to publisher The Lutterworth Press for a review copy of John Wintrip's new book, A History of Parish Registers in England and Wales: From the Restoration to Civil Registration.

The following is the listed description of the book at https://www.lutterworth.com/product/history-of-parish-registers-in-england-and-wales-from-the-restoration-to-civil-registration-a/:

A comprehensive account of the history of parish registers from 1660 to 1837, Wintrip’s exposition focuses on the changes in format and content of parish registers between the Restoration and the introduction of civil registration, offering an insight into the evolution of official record-keeping in England and Wales during a period of significant change.

Following a short preface and a useful introduction on the history of the Anglican based Church of England, as well as an introduction to the history of parish register keeping, the book is then structured across fourteen chapters. In the first chapter the author looks at the evolution of parish registers from 1538, just shortly after the Reformation, to 1660, the year of the Restoration of Charles II, discussing the various statutes passed requring them to be kept, and the interruption of the Commonwealth period following the English Civil War. Chapter 2 then offers a general introductory overview of the keeping of registers from 1660-1754, covering the requirements of Canon 70 of the church for the registration of baptisms, marriages and burials, and detailing the subsequent efforts of individuals to improve the level of detail to be recorded, as well as attempted legislation by the state.

Chapter 3 moves on to examine the evolution of parish baptism and burial registers in the period from 1754-1812, which includes discussion on interesting topics such as the introduction of the Stamp Duty Act of 1783, with Chapter 4 covering marriages in the same period, and the huge impact of Hardwicke's Act, with discussion on how the registers of marriages and banns were kept.

Chapter 5 then diverts to the Diocese of Carlisle in the north of England, examining the first diocesan intervention to try to improve the quality of record keeping there, whilst Chapter 6 covers the detailed registers introduced by William Dade (1740-1790) within the dioceses of York and Chester, the envy of many of us with ancestors from other parts of Britain and Ireland! Chapter 7 is a short chapter which looks at the record keeping of the Diocese of St. Asaph in north-east to mid-Wales, which similarly reported exceptional details, with similarly brief looks at the Diocese of Norwich in Chapter 8, and Barrington and the dioceses of Salisbury and Durham in Chapter 9.

Chapters 10 and 11 advances the story to the period 1813-1837, discussing the important introduction of Rose's Act in 1812, and its standardisation of record keeping across all parishes in England and Wales, prior to the introduction of civil registration in July 1837, with each chapter focussing on baptisms and burials, and marriages respectively.

Following a brief look in Chapter 12 at the custody and storage of records, and the changes implemented following Rose's Act, there is then a perhaps suprisingly brief discussion of bishops transcripts in Chapter 13 (I suspect genealogists in Scotland would give their eye teeth for a similar system here - albeit the lack of bishops in the Presbyterian church is something a lot of us are proud of!!), which can act as a useful back-up if the original parish registers have not survived. Chapter 14 then ends with the impact of civil registration from 1837 in the two countries, and how parish records have since been kept and made accessible. The book concludes with thirteen short appendices providing additional details on particular topics raised in the book, followed by a useful glossary and index.

There are many clear differences in how record keeping was done south of the border when compared to Scotland, and it has to be said, they probably did it better than we did! John Wintrip's book is very easy to read, providing an exceptionally useful overview of the various parts of England and Wales in their record-keeping practices and their efforts to make improvements, with many clear examples given of details to be found in various parochial entries. The book has various useful black and white illustrations to accompany the text also. Whilst the final part of the book discusses recent efforts to microfilm and to then digitise records, there is no real attempt to steer people towards the relevant archives or websites where such records can be found, but that is not the point of this book, with such information found in many other publications. This work is very much about the history of the records and the context within which they were created and kept, and as such, is a title that I would heartily recommend as an invaluable addition to every genealogist's bookshelf.

A History of Parish Registers in England and Wales: From the Restoration to Civil Registration is available to purchase at https://www.lutterworth.com/product/history-of-parish-registers-in-england-and-wales-from-the-restoration-to-civil-registration-a/ - the paperback edition is £22.50 +p&p, the hardback edition is £49.50, +p&p, and there is an ePub edition at £18.

Chris

Friday, 24 July 2026

Ayrshire Archives adds new finding aid for records

Ayrshire Archives (https://www.ayrshirearchives.org.uk) has at long last added a new searchable catalogue to its website, called Epexio, after years of hosting PDF documents showing certain catalogued holdings. Here is its announcement from its Facebook page:

After months of hard work, we are delighted to announce that we have a new online catalogue on our website! For the first time, users are able to search across our catalogued collections

The catalogue has over 36,600 descriptions of records held at our repositories in Ayr and Kilmarnock. Keep an eye out as more descriptions will continue to be added. You can now search our collections by text, reference number or browse the catalogues by category. If you find records you would like to view, please contact us on archives@south-ayrshire.gov.uk to arrange an appointment.

Visit the new online catalogue here: https://catalogue.ayrshirearchives.org.uk

(Source: https://www.facebook.com/AyrshireArchive)

Happy hunting!

Chris

FindmyPast adds more military record sets

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has added the following military record sets:

British Royal Navy, Courts Martial
118 records and 119 images, covering 1912 to 1942. These additions are unique to Findmypast.

British Royal Navy, Punishment Books
A collection of 19th-century punishment books, containing a total of 1320 records and 509 unique images.

Naval Charitable Societies Subscription and Grant Books
141,880 subscription and grant book records from a selection of naval charitable societies, spanning 1791 to 1942. There are 5,302 images to discover.

British Armed Forces, Schoolmistresses and Nurses' Pensions
This new set offers insight into the lives of women in the British Armed Forces. These 1,689 unique records tell the story of schoolmistresses and nurses between 1909 and 1928.

For further details and links visit https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/navy-courts-marshall-punishment-books

Chris

What made the National Archives of Ireland take down its genealogy records platform?

Major news this week from Ireland, in that the National Archives in Dublin has taken down its genealogy records platform for the foreseeable future. This is the message as displayed on the main NAI website at https://nationalarchives.ie:

The National Archives’ microsites are offline due to maintenance on the server. We will provide information in the coming days on how to access these collections, including material available in the Reading Room.

Explaining the move in further detail at https://nationalarchives.ie/collections/genealogy-website/, the archive notes

The National Archives’ microsites are currently offline due to essential maintenance and redevelopment. They will remain unavailable for some time while we rebuild and update these resources on a new platform.

All records from the microsites are safely backed up. Over the coming days, we will provide information on how to access these collections, including material that can be viewed in the Reading Room.

Dublin based genealogist Claire Bradley has pointed out where to access alternative copies of most of the datasets on her blog at https://cbgenealogy.ie/nai-collections-offline/, although some collections are not as functional as on the NAI site, for example, the wills calendars on FindmyPast and MyHeritage only have brief indexed descriptions, as they were linked to the original records on the NAI platform (and bizarrely, MyHeritage notes the names of 'beneficiaries' on its platform, rather than 'executors'.)

I have been made aware of a story in Ireland concerning a person who has scraped census records to go beyond the NAI daily access limit for an article about 'religious encoding of names', which you can read at https://believethedata.org/the-secret-code-of-irish-names/. I have no idea if this exercise is a contributory factor to the NAI deciding to pull its site down, but the timing is quite a coincidence.

All of this coincidentally happened a week before my next Pharos course, Progressing Your Irish Research Online, which starts next Monday 27 July. As a consequence, I spent most of Wednesday rewriting substantial parts of the course to cater for the new research environment now online, as I focussed on many of the collections previously available on the NAI records platform. If interested to sign up, please visit https://www.pharostutors.com/progressing-your-irish-research-online - the course lasts 5 weeks, and costs £70.

(With thanks to Claire Bradley and Myko Clelland)

Chris

Friday, 17 July 2026

Ethnic origins of Scottish Travellers communities revealed

The Edinburgh Evening News has an interesting story about a DNA study carried out at the University of Edinburgh about the ethnic background to Scotland's Travellers community, confirming that they are comprised of two indigenous population groups in Scotland, and not connected to European Roma, English or Irish Traveller groups.

Chris

FindmyPast adds two new Royal Navy databases

FindmyPast (www.findmypast.co.uk) has added two new Royal Navy collections:

Hampshire, Portsmouth Dock Medical Books
This brand new collection comprises 150,038 medical records, covering the years 1810 to 1815 and 1850 to 1955.

British Royal Navy, Medical Discharge Books
The 2,792 records within this new collection cover medical discharges from the Royal Navy between 1786 and 1801.

Further details via https://www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/new/royal-navy-medical-records-portsmouth

Chris

British Newspaper Archive announces date of switch to new platform

The British Newspaper Archive has announced the date for its switchover to its new website:

The wait is nearly over. We're delighted to announce that the British Newspaper Archive will officially move to its new site on Tuesday 28th July. You won't need to do anything - discover more here: https://https://blog.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/2026/07/14/the-new-british-newspaper-archive-arrives-on-28-july/

Fingers crossed this isn't a disaster!

Chris

National Records of Scotland prepares to raise ScotlandsPeople fees

The National Records of Scotland has launched a 'consultation' to ask folk if it agrees with its proposed plans to raise fees for seemingly everything connected with ScotlandsPeople. The proposed increases will see records fees go from £1.50 per record (6 credits) to £2.50 per record (10 credits), and to increase the daily research pass from the current £15 to £23. The minimum bundle of ScotlandsPeople credits is also proposed to go from 30 credits (£7.50) to 50 credits (£12.50). The full details of the plans are available at https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/registration-services-fees-consultation-paper/, and you are invited to have your say.

Going on previous consultations, I personally think the decision has already been made, and that this is just an opportunity for folk to express their objections before the plans are implemented, to reduce the shock value. As such, I haven't bothered to fill it in myself, because life is too short, and I know from many years of experience how little the NRS seemingly values its user base. Whilst the fact that the fees have not been raised in ten years may be true, there is a real insensitivity here to the cost of living pressures just now.

Chris

Monday, 6 July 2026

Scottish GENES articles - Researching Church of Scotland records

The following article written by me was first published in the UK's Your Family History magazine in 2011. I've made a few tiny updates, as there have been some developments since then!

Researching Church of Scotland Records

Chris Paton

Prior to the advent of Scottish civil registration in 1855, the most important records to consult are those of the parish churches. The main denomination was, and still is, the Church of Scotland, though there were many other nonconformist churches also in existence. In this article we will look at the history and records of the established ‘Kirk’, as it is known, and turn to the nonconformist and other faiths another time.

The Celtic Church

The Church of Scotland has always differed from its counterpart south of the border. Although the religion had reached Scotland by the 2nd and 3rd centuries, it was the establishment of Iona as a monastic centre by the Irish missionary Colum Cille (Columba) in 563AD that would see a beacon created which would shine a light on Europe for centuries to come. Although an earlier missionary called Ninian had sought in the 5th century to convert the southern Picts, one of the main Celtic peoples within Scotland, it was from Iona that the mission was finally accomplished in all of Pictland. With a common religion, the Picts, and the descendants of the Irish Gaels, who had settled in the west within what they termed ‘Alba’, eventually united to form the basis of what was to become ‘Scotland’ (with the word ‘Scoti’ used by the Romans to denote the Irish colonists who settled in 'Argyll', or ‘the coast of the Gael’).

For centuries Scotland maintained its independence from Rome, holding many theological differences such as the date of Easter, and the right for priests to marry. It would not be until the 11th century that the Celtic Church was finally integrated within the Roman Catholic order, a situation which would continue for the next five centuries.

The Reformation

The Scottish Reformation of 1560 occurred following years of decline within the Catholic Church as it continued to operate within the country. The cause of the revolution was centred firmly on a desire to get back to the older forms of the Celtic Church. The reformers had for decades been unhappy at the corruption of the institution and the evolving use of hierarchies and practices for which they could see no evidence in the early church. A healthy dose of politics was also involved, with at this stage Scotland slowly becoming a puppet state of France and under the rule of a French regent, Mary of Guise, during the minority of Mary Queen of Scots. There were many reformers involved both before and after the Reformation, such as George Wishart and Andrew Melville, but the catalyst for the event itself was a firebrand Roman Catholic priest called John Knox.

Knox had been a protégé of Wishart prior to his being executed for heresy in St. Andrews in 1546, as a martyr to the ‘protestant’ beliefs then in circulation. Following the subsequent murder of Cardinal Beaton, who had authorised his execution, protestant activists had taken refuge within the town’s castle. Although uninvolved, Knox had found himself caught up alongside them, and was subsequently arrested and prosecuted also. After a short period on the French galleys he fled to the city state of Geneva, where he soon fell under the influence of a reformer called John Calvin.

Calvin had created a new protestant order in his city based on the concept of ‘the Godly Commonwealth’, with the church responsible for the moral discipline and education of its flock, working in partnership with the state. Upon his return to Scotland Knox helped the anti-French nobles and protestant reformers to rally and to oust Mary of Guise and her French forces from the country. Along the way statues were torn down as ‘idols’ in abbeys and churches across the land, and out of the flames and rubble a new Church of Scotland was born.

Presbyterianism

In its earliest ‘Calvinist’ form, the new Church was not exactly the happiest of institutions, with ministers instructing people that they were all damned to hell unless they had been predestined to join God in the afterlife as one of the pre-destined, chosen ‘Elect’. Despite a bumpy beginning, however, it was to become a very democratic body. A key criticism of the old order was the idea that there should be a controlling hierarchy with a pope, cardinals, archbishops and bishops. In the English Reformation of the 1530s, despite some reforms Henry VIII had to all extents and purposes just kicked the papacy’s influence out of England and taken the pope’s place as the head of the new Anglican Church. Scotland instead went for a much more thorough re-ordering of its basic institutions.

Under the new concept of ‘Presbyterianism’, the congregations of each parish were invited to choose their own ministers and elders to run their churches. Just for good measure, the landowners on which the churches were built, in the role of ‘heritors’, were required to pay a stipend to the ministers accepting such a ‘calling’ on their patch, being essentially required to break out the cheque book to keep the whole thing financed (with little in return). To the Kirk, it was not the concern of either the nobles or the monarchy’s business who would preach in every parish. The monarchy, however, under the rule of the House of Stuart, begged to differ.

Following the Reformation, Mary Queen of Scots, a Catholic, briefly returned to Scotland from France and clashed with just about everyone, before being deposed in 1567. She was then replaced by her son James VI, and for the rest of the 16th century he and his nobles sparred with the Kirk over its constitution and the role of bishops, which James wished to bring back to allow him direct control over the body. It was not until the Union of the Crowns in 1603, however, that tensions between the two dramatically escalated. As James I of Britain, the Scottish king now had control of the much larger Anglican Church south of the border, and wished to impose its conditions in his northern kingdom. His policies for doing so, such as the introduction of bishops in 1610 and the ‘Five Articles of Perth’ of 1621, which brought in alien practices such as kneeling during communion, confirmation by a bishop, and the observance of holy days such as Christmas, led to Scotland temporarily becoming episcopal i.e. under the rule of bishops.

The attempt to make Scotland Anglican continued under James’ successor, Charles I, and was one of the causes leading to the Civil Wars in Britain, following the Kirk’s rejection of episcopacy in 1637. The Scots were nevertheless appalled when Charles’ head was eventually removed from his body prior to the establishment of Cromwell’s Commonwealth. Although they considered him a pain, he was still their pain, the rightful king of Scotland from a long line of Stuart kings. They therefore immediately pledged allegiance to his son, Charles II, and agreed to help with his restoration to the English throne if he would guarantee Presbyterianism in Scotland. The king agreed, but upon his eventual restoration in 1660 he completely went back on his word, sending the hated bishops north once more. Three hundred ministers of the kirk abandoned their charges in protest, and thus followed one of Scotland’s darkest chapters, when people found secretly found worshipping at illegal Presbyterian based outdoor services called ‘conventicles’ were shot on sight. The period became known as the ‘Killing Times’.

It was not until James VII & II, successor to Charles II, was forced to flee soon after during the events of the so-called ‘Glorious Revolution’ (1688), that Presbyterianism was finally secured as the state church in Scotland.

Parish Records

There were just over 900 Scottish parishes, though the number varied across time as some were occasionally split or merged. Registers for baptisms and marriages were in fact first introduced prior to the Reformation following a decision of the Edinburgh based Provincial Council of the Scottish clergy in the early 1550s, with the earliest surviving register that for Errol in Perthshire, from 1553. Burial records were not compulsory, though some parishes did record burials for accounting purposes, detailing the hire of services such as the use of the parish mortcloth. There is in fact a reference to burials being recorded as early as the 14th century, with the Synod of St Andrews instructing local parishes to list those who had died to help in subsequent probate matters, but these have sadly not survived. It is worth knowing that one key difference between England and Scotland following the Reformation lies in the Scottish equivalent of the probate procedure. Known as ‘confirmation’ in Scotland, this became an entirely civil process through the consistory courts (and later the sheriff courts), and not through various levels of ecclesiastical courts as in the case of the Anglican Church south of the border. The upshot of that is that it considerably easier to source the relevant records in Scotland.

Despite further instructions from the Kirk’s General Assembly in 1616 and 1636, most parishes did not keep registers until the 17th century or after, with some parishes in the Western Isles not recorded until well into the 19th century. The surviving ‘old parochial records’ (OPRs) as they are now known, have all been digitised and made available up to 1854 on the pay-per-view ScotlandsPeople website (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk), but can also be accessed on microfilm at many libraries, or through the FamilySearch family history centres across Britain. To establish which records have survived to the present day, visit the ScotlandsPeople website at https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/help-and-support/guides/church-registers. You can also consult William B. Turnbull’s Scottish Parochial Registers: Memoranda of the State of the Parochial Registers of Scotland, written in 1849, to find what became of many others. The book is available online at http://tinyurl.com/4swm4zx. Some records may not have been recorded until a particular date, some may have been destroyed accidentally, or at times even deliberately – such as in 1802 when parish registers were used to help prove the age of potential conscripts following the Militia Acts, provoking the ire of some in certain parts. Some baptisms and marriages were also not recorded between 1783 and 1794 because a tax of thruppence was required to register them following the Stamp Act.

The records up to 1854 have also been largely indexed by FamilySearch (www.familysearch.org) and made available through the site’s Historic Records collection. Never attempt to research your tree purely from the indexes alone, however, as you may well find additional information in the original entry. An extreme example lies with the christening of Margaretta Sarah Tyrwhill Brown in Perth on December 26th 1807. FamilySearch notes her parents as Jonathan Brown and Julia Anna Craddock, but the original record in fact describes several generations of her family! You may also find that a child was a foundling, illegitimate, and witnesses may be listed or a place of residence.

Bear in mind also that whilst a marriage was completely legal if performed in the Church after the regular proclamation of banns, it was also possible to be wed by other common law means in Scotland. With burials, note also that many people chose not to be buried in the parish where they lived and died, but rather in the parish of their ancestors. If you have a job finding someone’s burial, whilst it may be that a record was not kept, it may also be that you are not thinking laterally enough!

Other records

The day to day business of the parish, such as poor relief (prior to 1845), communicants’ lists, parish discipline (including an obsession with ‘antenuptial fornication’), illegitimacy cases, and more, was kept within the kirk session records. These are essentially the equivalent of vestry records in England, and are mainly held at the National Records of Scotland, with many now digitised and made available on ScotlandsPeople. There was an ecclesiastical court structure, with parishes grouped together in presbyteries, then within synods and ultimately under the General Assembly. Records for presbyteries and synods can also be found indexed in CH2, as can records for parish heritors (sometimes containing payments to local tradesmen or for poor relief), though General Assembly papers are listed under CH1.

If your ancestor was a minister, you will also find data on him within a series of biographical volumes known as ‘Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae’. These can be accessed online in digitised format at www.archive.org or www.ancestry.co.uk.

For more on Scottish kirk session records, please sign up for my Scottish GENES Webinar on Saturday, 25 July 2026, with details on how to sign up available at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/p/webinars.html.

Chris

Friday, 3 July 2026

Historic Environment Scotland chairman resigns from post

The Historic Environment Scotland boss, Sir Mark Jones, has resigned his position just nine months into the job, following a recent probe into alleged corruption and racism at the heritage body. he will remain in his post until a successor is found.

For more on the story visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c8d2l3y1390o

Chris

UK government apologises for historic forced adoptions in England and Wales

The outgoing UK prime minister, Keir Starmer, has apologised in the Westminster parliament for historic forced adoptions in England and Wales from the post-Second World war period up to the 1970s. This apology comes three years after similar apologies were issued by the Scottish and Welsh governments, with a further apology due in the near future from the Northern Irish parliament, following the conclusion of a public inquiry thatis still ongoing there. For more on the story visit https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c20yq332018o

For details of the Scottish apology three years ago, visit https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2023/03/scotlands-first-minister-to-apologise.html, whilst an article about how the UK Government targeted Scotland's Gypsy Travellers community between the 1940s and 1980s, through what was known as the "Tinker Experiment", can be accessed at https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2025/05/scottish-gypsy-travellers-stolen.html.

Chris

Irish Newspaper Archives summer sale

From the Irish Newspaper Archive (https://irishnewsarchive.com)

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐄𝐑 𝐒𝐀𝐋𝐄 𝟒𝟎% 𝐨𝐟𝐟
𝐂𝐨𝐝𝐞: 𝐉𝐔𝐋𝟒𝟎
June 30th - 09th July - Limited Time.

Get an incredible 40% off Irish Newspaper Archives subscriptions. Along with our summer sale options view the #Cork Constitution 1825 - 1879

For existing members don't forget you can buy a Gift subscription which can be activated any time in the future!! Don't miss out.

Chris

Ancestry updates Scottish and Northern Irish death records database

Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk) has updated its Scotland and Northern Ireland, Death Index database, to take in the years from 1989-2025. The collection sources death information from processed life insurance policies.

To search the collection, visit https://www.ancestry.co.uk/search/collections/60631/ (an Ancestry sub is required to view results).

Chris

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland adds 190,000 new records

To mark 104 years since the destruction of the Irish Public Record Office, the Virtual Record Treasury of Ireland platform (https://virtualtreasury.ie) has just uploaded a further 190,000 records. The following is a summary of the releases, as noted on the site:

June 2026 Releases at a glance:

over 190,000 new records bring to 544,000 the total number of records available in the VRTI and 340 million words of searchable Irish history.
Enhanced Knowledge Graph of Irish History: Now with over 15,000 entries, including 5,800 more historical individuals added since last June. More than 3,500 people from the early modern period (1550-1700), over 2,300 of these are women and 2,300 people are from the medieval/Norman period.
Catholic Emancipation, 1825-1829: This curated collection traces the campaign led by Daniel O’Connell and the Catholic Association, through thousands of digital images of letters, petitions, intelligence reports government correspondence.
States of Independence, 1776-1783: Curated collection reveals the close, and sometimes surprising, connections between Ireland and the American Revolution.
The Birth of Local History in Ireland: Curated collection gathers together attempts by early modern local history enthusiasts to document the customs, folklore, history and landscape of their localities.
State Papers Ireland 1660 – 1715: Over 40 more volumes of State Papers and Signet Office records are being released. These have been interconnected with the Knowledge Graph creating a powerful new tool for researching this tumultuous period of Irish history following Cromwell’s death.
Deeds of the Guild of St Anne, 1237 – 1778: Gold Seam containing 800 stories of the lives of ordinary men and women in Dublin, from arranging a funeral procession in 1345, or leaving bequests for prisoners in Dublin Castle in 1380, to mapping a property on Merchants Quay in 1739.
Parchment Conquest (1171-1307): In 8,000 printed summaries of records drawn from a Calendar of Documents Relating to Ireland we encounter Italian tax-collectors in Galway, poachers in Dublin, and women seizing land in Cork
Medieval Irish Exchequer Rolls (1309-10) : A remarkable record, NAI EX 1/1 is one of only two original medieval memoranda rolls of the Irish exchequer to survive in 1922, containing 56 parchment membranes. Beautifully conserved and digitally imaged, these records can be viewed for the first time in over a century.
Registers of the Archbishops of Armagh (1361-1542): four fascinating volumes which capture the workings of church government, its extensive landholding, legal disputes and clerical discipline, as well as the relationships between English and Gaelic communities in medieval Ireland.

For further details, and the relevant links, visit https://virtualtreasury.ie/2026-new-releases

Chris

Free access to MyHeritage Canadian and American records

MyHeritage (www.myheritage.com) has made two collections freely available this week.

For Canada Day, it is making all 15 Canadian census collections, comprising 52.3 million historical records, free to search at https://www.myheritage.com/research/records-catalog/canadian-census/catid-1300.

To commemorate the 250th anniversary of the United States, it is offering free access to the U.S. City Directories collection, featuring 1.3 billion historical records from approximately 26,000 directories published between 1860 and 1960, via https://www.myheritage.com/research/records-catalog/usa/directories/catid-11020.

Both collections are available for free from July 1-5 2026.

(With thanks to Daniel Horowitz)

Chris

Friday, 26 June 2026

5-week Scottish Research Online courses starts 6 July

Hi folks, the next Scottish Research Online course from Pharos Teaching and Tutoring Ltd (https://www.pharostutors.com) returns 6 July 2026. The following is its description:

Scottish Research Online (102)
Tutor: Chris Paton

Scotland was one of the first countries to digitise its major family history records collections for accessibility online, and continues to this day to use such resources to promote a worldwide interest in family history for those with Caledonian connections.

This course describes the major sites and record types that you will encounter in your research, and how to analyse the results. It compares and contrasts many of the key websites available for Scottish research, drilling down to key features within each to help improve a users knowledge of what is contained within the presented records, and equally important, what is not. It explores the key resources for vital records such as births, marriages and deaths, as recorded by the state from 1855 onwards, and the usefulness of the decennial censuses from 1841-1911 in connecting family members and branches together.

Prior to civil registration there are the records created by the Church of Scotland as the state church, with the course exploring access to its Old Parish Registers (OPRs) on ScotlandsPeople and through FamilySearchs various finding aids. In the final lesson, wills and inventories generated by Scotlands confirmation process are explored, with some of the many differences flagged up between the records of Scotland and the rest of the UK, thanks to the distinctly different legal system north of the border.

Most importantly this course will inspire you to actively pursue your interest in Scottish genealogy and take it to the next level.

Lesson Headings:

    * Understanding Scotlands People, FindmyPast, Family Search, Ancestry, and FreeCen
    * Essential Maps and Gazetteers
    * Civil Registration and Census Research
    * Searching in Church of Scotland Registers
    * Scottish Wills and Inventories

Note: it is recommended but not required that students in this course sign up for the basic search option, 30 units/seven days, at ScotlandsPeople (cost is £7.50 for 30 credits)

Each lesson includes exercises and activities; a minimum of 1 one-hour chats See How Courses Work.

STUDENTS SAID:

'I've learnt so much more context around the types of records that really help to understand the value and possible other clues they offer, it's been incredibly useful.'

'Excellent course materials; I learned so much that wouldn't have been easy to do on my own. I also learned more about Family Search than I have in the past, which was helpful.'

'Class material was introduced in an organized manner. Way more information provided than I expected. Many, many leads provided for me to follow up on through learning about specific website holdings.'

'I particularly liked the fact that the course didn't just focus on the well-known BMD resources available, but on a much wider range of websites, including many which give extremely useful background information on the geography and history of the localities where our ancestors lived.'

'Excellent tuition from Chris Paton; very good course materials; well-paced; excellent value for money. I very much liked the opportunity to work at my own pace.'

Relevant Countries: Scotland
Course Length: 5 Weeks
Start Date: 6 July 2026
Cost: £70.00

To register for the course, please visit https://www.pharostutors.com/scottish-research-online

I hope to maybe see you there!

Chris

Friends of Argyll Estates Archive to host 2-day online study event in November

The Friends of Argyll Estate Archives will be hosting a two day event on Tuesday 3 November and Tuesday 10 November, with both sessions starting at 6pm. The following is a brief description:

Finding Your Scottish Family: Argyll Estate Archives and Beyond

Two communities, two stories - Tiree and Kintyre - revealing insights that resonate across Argyll and beyond. Join us for two fascinating case studies that explore how history, estate ownership and migration have shaped the documentary records family historians and researchers rely on today.

Standard tickets £25, Friends of Argyll Estate Archives £20.

Keep an eye out for further details at https://argyllestatesarchives.org/.

Chris

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Monday, 6 July 2026

Friday, 3 July 2026

Wednesday, 1 July 2026

Friday, 26 June 2026