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.

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 

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.

Scottish GENES articles - Researching Marriages in Scotland

Here's another article from the past, this time published two years ago in Discover Your Ancestors 2024 Bookazine - enjoy! (Some links have been updated)

Researching Marriages in Scotland 

For centuries the institution of marriage had a different legal standing in Scotland than its equivalents in England, Wales and Ireland. In Scotland, the major requirement for two people seeking to marry was that they both consented to the arrangement, and that this consent was understood by both the church and the state, it having been expressed in the presence of witnesses. Under Scots Law, parental permission was not a requirement, whilst no celebrant was formally required until July 1940. 

There were, however, other restrictions that could prevent a marriage in Scotland. The prospective spouses had to be beyond puberty and thus old enough to marry, with the minimum age for marriage fixed at 14 for boys and 12 for girls until 1929, at which point it was then raised to 16 (still the situation today). Another restriction was how closely the couple were related to each other, as defined by the rules of consanguinity laid out in the Old Testament book of Leviticus, Chapter 18, sometimes referred to as 'Leviticial Law' – for example, you could not marry a parent, your child, an aunt or uncle, although marriage between first cousins was often entertained. You also could not marry if already married, with bigamy a crime, historically punishable by imprisonment and even transportation. Under Scots Law, from 1567 onwards, marriages could also be annulled as a consequence of idiocy, insanity or impotency. 

In the aftermath of the Reformation in 1560, the Presbyterian Kirk (Church of Scotland) did not consider marriage to be a sacrament, but still demanded it to be carried out under its auspices – the First Book of Discipline, written by reformer John Knox, noted "that marriages ought not to be secretly used, but in open face and public audience of the kirk". Banns had to be called on three successive Sundays prior to the wedding in the parish church of the intending parties (or churches, if from separate parishes), to facilitate public objections, with the money going to the parish poor roll. The minister had to perform the ceremony before witnesses, and often the congregation, although in time many weddings did not take place in the church building itself. 

In many cases, the festivities surrounding marriage were a cause for concern with the Kirk, particularly with regards to so-called 'penny weddings', where labourers would abscond from their work for a day or longer, and throw a penny in the pot to pay for the festivities. The Reverend Alexander Johnston, minister of Monquhitter in Aberdeenshire, in a supplement to the parish’s Old Statistical Account, described how such an event occurred as follows: “When a pair were contracted they, for a stipulated consideration, bespoke the wedding dinner at a certain tavern, and then ranged the country in every direction to solicit guests. One, two, and even three hundred would convene on these occasions to make merry at their own expense for two or more days. This scene of feasting, drinking, dancing, wooing, fighting, was always enjoyed with the highest relish, and until obliterated by a similar scene, furnished ample materials for rural mirth and rural scandal.” 

Kirk session registers, the records of the lowest of the church courts, document many instances of people being prosecuted for such activities, including such heinous acts as 'promiscuous dancing' or 'promissory dancing', sure to get many an elder hot under the collar. In many cases the Kirk demanded that a 'cautioner' (pronounced 'kayshoner') be appointed, effectively a guarantor who would stump up a small surety which could be forfeit if such activities occurred.  

There were several regional customs around the country surrounding marriage. When Samuel Johnson visited the Hebridean island of Ulva in 1773, he noted an ancient custom carried out prior to the wedding of a virgin, whereby a tribute known as the ‘mercheta mulierum’ was paid to the chief of the MacQuarrie clan, in the form of a payment of a crown. Other island based wedding traditions include the drinking of ale on Orkney from wooden vessels known as ‘cogs’, still carried out to this day. With regards to planning a wedding, the months of April and November were deemed to be ‘lucky months’, whilst the month of May was considered by many to be deeply unlucky, particularly on May 14th, the old May Day. The tying and untying of knots before an after a marriage was also popular in some parishes, whilst the 'scramble' is another tradition still adhered to today, where coins are thrown into the air for children by the bride's party as it departs for the venue, or after the couple emerges from a venue as newly weds. 

Whilst the state encouraged people to marry through the Kirk to make a marriage truly 'regular', it also tolerated other forms of 'irregular' marriage not sanctioned by the Kirk, well into the 20th and 21st century. The most common form of irregular marriage, which occurred without a celebrant, was described as a 'marriage by declaration', or by 'declaration de præsenti'. This simply involved a couple exchanging their consent before a witness or witnesses. In some parts of the country, such as in the taverns of Edinburgh's Canongate or Leith, 'celebrants' would offer to carry out a service for a fee and provide written lines to confirm that they had officiated at such an exchange – but in legal terms, they were not celebrants at all, they were simply witnesses. After Hardwicke's Act banned irregular marriage in England and Wales from 1754, many eloping couples from south of the border would cross into Scotland and similarly exchange their consent before the first willing witness they found. Most famously, such marriages happened at Gretna Green before a blacksmith performing an 'anvil wedding' to add a bit of pageantry to the proceedings, whereby the anvil would be struck as the couple were declared man and wife. Despite such ceremony, the blacksmith was only a witness in a legal sense. Other popular cross-border marriage spots included Coldstream and Lamberton Toll. Declaration de præsenti was abandoned as a legal form of marriage following the Marriage (Scotland) Act of 1939, which was enacted from July 1940.

Another form of irregular marriage was 'promise subsequente copula', also known to the Kirk as 'matrimonia praesumpta'. This was a marriage constituted on the basis of an exchange of a promise to marry, followed by sexual intercourse. The Kirk long considered this to be a betrothal, rather than marriage, but the state's courts did not agree. One ancient form occurred in the Western Isles, where a custom of 'handfasting' existed prior to the 16th century, allowing a couple to become betrothed for a year and a day. If in this period a child was born, then the couple were automatically deemed to have become married by promise subsequente copula. In Eskdalemuir in the Borders, a form of handfasting was culturally embedded until the late 17th century; at an annual fair there, single men and women could meet and take each other as betrothed spouses, to cohabitate for a year and a day. The practice emerged prior to the Reformation due to a lack of clergy in the area, but those who were so betrothed still had to be married by the priest to convert the betrothal into a valid marriage. Again, promise subsequente copula disappeared from statute in July 1940.

A further form of irregular marriage was that constituted 'by habit and repute'. In this, a couple living together as if they were married for more than twenty days, and considered to be married by those around them, were married in the eyes of the state. If anybody had a problem with the validity of such a union it was up to them to prove in the courts why they were not married, rather than the couple to prove that they were. This actually survived as a legal form of marriage in Scotland until its abolition by the Family Law (Scotland) Act 2006. Children born to couples married by habit and repute, as with all other forms of irregular marriage, were entirely legitimate. It is also worth noting that for many centuries any child born illegitimately in Scotland was legitimated by the subsequent marriage of their parents, if they had been free to conceive the child at the time (i.e. not in an adulterous relationship), something not permitted in England and Wales until 1929. 

Even within the Kirk, some marriages could be irregular. Portpatrick Kirk in Wigtownshire, for example, regularly entertained marriages from eloping Irish couples, who sailed over from Donaghadee in County Down. The banns would be called in one day, and the marriage then performed irregularly, the banns not having been called on three successive Sundays, although this breach was often overlooked by the church hierarchy. 

The Kirk had a real problem with irregular marriage, as it lost out on the fees paid for banns to be proclaimed, and the registers of the parishes' sessions are full of prosecutions of those who availed of them. Sanctions included fines, rebukes, and the loss of church benefits, such as the right to have any subsequent children baptised. As time progressed, other denominations emerged, who were prohibited from carrying out regular church weddings; if they did so, the ministers responsible could be prosecuted. If this happened, the marriage itself was again deemed to be 'irregular', but remained valid in the eyes of the state, as consent had still been exchanged between a couple before witnesses, the dissenting church minister being one of them.

The first exception to the status quo was the Toleration Act of 1712 (shortly after the 1707 Act of Union with England and Wales), which granted Scottish Episcopal Church ministers permission to carry out a marriage if prayers were also said for the Royal Family – the reason for this being that many Episcopalians were strongly Jacobite, with loyalties to the 'King over the water'. From The Marriage (Scotland) Act 1834 (Act 4 and 5 William IV c.28) other church denominations were given the right to carry out a regular marriage, as long as the banns were first proclaimed in the Church of Scotland parish church (although you will see examples of this even prior to 1834). It was not until 1879 that non-Church of Scotland denominations could call the banns in their own buildings for the same ends.  

The civil registration of marriage by the state commenced in January 1855; a year later, a three week residency criteria was introduced to try to stop the cross-border irregular marriage trade. Regular marriages were recorded with the denomination noted and the banns called, or from 1879, with the issue of a 'marriage notice' as an alternative form of pre-publication to the banns. The names, ages, occupations, residences, and the marital status of both spouses, as well as details of their mothers and fathers, witnesses and the celebrant, were also recorded. Following the Marriage (Scotland) Act 1977, effective from January 1st 1978, banns were no longer accepted as a form of pre-publication, with marriage notices remaining the only requirement.  

For the registration of an irregular marriage prior to 1940, couples and witnesses had to first appear before a local sheriff substitute within three months to obtain a warrant, upon examination and payment of a fine, to allow them permission to register it with the local registrar. The date of the warrant's issue will be recorded in the marriage record, and the fact that it was carried out by declaration in most cases. Following the abolition of most forms of irregular marriage from 1940, a registrar was now permitted to carry out civil marriage ceremonies, a provision first provided for in England and Wales over a century earlier, in July 1837. The most recent change to Scottish marriage law was introduced in 2014, permitting same sex marriage in the country.

Most church records of regular marriages are available on ScotlandsPeople (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk), as are kirk session registers and civil marriage records (with an online closure period of 75 years to access images of more recent records). A guide to sources for irregular marriages is at www.nrscotland.gov.uk/learning-and-events/research-guides/irregular-border-marriage-registers/, with many marriages at Gretna Green documented in the 'Gretna Green, Scotland, Marriage Registers, 1794-1895' collection on Ancestry (www.ancestry.co.uk). Church marriage registers for some dissenting Presbyterian or nonconformist denominations may be held also at local county archives, or at the National Records of Scotland (www.nrscotland.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.

Scottish GENES articles - Language Skills for Family Historians

As I prepare to train for a new full-time career, I am going to start occasionally reprinting some genealogy articles that I have written over the years, which I hope may be of some help! They will not follow the layout of the original publications, which are copyright, but the text is my copyright. The first is my article on 'Language Skills for Family Historians', first published in Family Tree magazine's Family History Handbook in 2004 - a couple of web links have been updated since its first publication:

Language Skills for Family Historians   

Imagine your descendants making a visit to the British Library in 400 years time to look at this particular back issue of Family Tree. Perhaps the first comment they will make is, “I think that I understand some of what Chris Paton was discussing in his article, but isn't the language he used just bizarre?!” The English language, both in terms of its content and pronunciation, constantly evolves by the day, and four hundred years ago, the version used by our ancestors was very different to that used by us today, as anyone who studied Shakespeare's plays at school can confirm. 

Every day we witness shifts in how the language is used. 'Received Pronunciation' or 'RP', for example, also known as 'BBC English', was adopted widely prior to the Second World War in radio broadcasts, and after the war in television. Whilst conveying an air of middle class authority and education, its 19th century origins were from the East Midlands of England, with it soon adopted as a very middle class accent, particularly in London and the south-east. Yet despite being once considered worldwide as the definitive 'British' accent, in recent years there has been a widespread rejection of RP in the broadcast media, which now favours accents portraying regional diversity. With technological advances the way that we use the language online or in our phones is equally changing, as witnessed through the abbreviated forms used for texting and social media.

There are many English dialects in the UK and worldwide, detailed at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_dialects_of_English. One of the oldest still in use today in Britain is the Geordie dialect of the north-east, aka Tyneside English, which contains traces of the old Anglo-Saxon language, Old English, which lasted until the middle of the 12th century, before the post-conquest intrusions of both Latin and Norman French transformed it into the Middle English tongue. Whilst England moved on from Anglo-Saxon, many of its features were preserved for centuries in older dialects, some of which were carried beyond the country. A fascinating article by Damian Shiels at https://tinyurl.com/Yoladialect describes the medieval English dialects of Yola and Fingalian taken to Ireland in the aftermath of the Anglo-Norman invasion of the 12th century. Yola was the dialect taken to Wexford, and used there until the 19th century (a song sung in Yola can be heard at https://youtu.be/RFl9ptuxd8s), whilst Fingalian was a similar dialect in use near Dublin. Both are now sadly long extinct. 

Amongst the lost tongues of England is the Cumbric language, a close Celtic cousin of the Welsh language in Cumbria. Although extinct by the 12th century, aspects of the language were preserved in use, such as the Yan-Tan-Tethera counting system (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yan_tan_tethera), employed in various parts of England, particularly the north, for counting sheep and stitches. Further north, a separate language that once existed in Scotland, but which has been functionally extinct since the 19th century, was Norn. A North Germanic language spoken in Orkney, Shetland, and parts of Caithness, the language was related to Norse, with the areas in question part of Norway until the 15th century, when they were ceded to Scotland.   

I live in Scotland, which has had a plethora of other languages in use over the years. The Scots language, for example, is often crudely parodied as some kind of English dialect with an accent. It is in fact a separate West Germanic cousin language of modern English, which evolved from the Northumbrian version of Old English, but which had undergone a very different evolution by the 15th century. Referred to as both 'Inglis' and 'Scottis', it continued as the language of court in Scotland until the Union of the Crowns in 1603. However, by this time it was already battling against the English language, thanks to the introduction of the Geneva Bible to the country, written in English and published in 1560, the year of Scotland's Reformation. In the early 17th century Plantations of Ulster, thousands of Scots colonists took the language with them to the north of Ireland, where it became known as Ulster Scots or 'Ullans' ('Ulster Lallans' – the Lowlands Scots of Ulster). The Ulster word 'crack', which at its simplest means 'conversation', came from 'crak' in Scots, and was adopted into Irish as 'craic'. 

Many Scots and Ulster Scots happily continue to use words and pronunciations today that their ancestors would have understood, for example, as a child in County Antrim, I was often referred to as a 'cheeky wee hallion', with 'hallion' meaning a clown or rascal! Even today I occasionally use Scots words when writing articles and books, such as 'outwith', meaning 'beyond', which are often excised at the proof stage by English speaking editors (outwith this article I rarely get away with it, but I am optimistic this time!). If you travel back three centuries in the written record, you will soon realise how separate the undiluted Scots language really was, and thank your lucky stars for resources such as the online Dictionaries of the Scots Languages (https://dsl.ac.uk), whilst in Ulster, The Hamely Tongue by James Fenton is also an invaluable dictionary.    

The Celtic languages that are still extant in the UK – Irish, Scottish Gaelic, Manx, Welsh and Cornish – have similarly evolved over the years. Here in Scotland I have recently achieved a Higher in Gaelic (Gàidhlig), and am currently studying for the Advanced Higher. I first started to learn the language thirty years ago, and a huge difference between then and now is the shift from a 'vigesimal' counting system to a new decimal system, which our ancestors would simply not have recognised. In the past, the vigesimal system – counting in twenties – meant that when describing a number such as 'sixty three', Gaels would instead say 'three twenties and three' (trì fichead 's a trì, in the language). In today's decimal system, you now say 'sixty three' (seasgad 's a trì), and although many older speakers will frown when you do so, it will become the norm for future generations. This vigesimal style of counting also occurred in the English language – when Abraham Lincoln opened the Gettysburg Address with “Four score years and seven”, he was using a similar form of counting as employed by the early 17th century King James Bible. 

From a family history perspective, we can engage with these older languages and dialects for many reasons. For starters, we can do so out of simple curiosity. As someone with a lot of ancestry from Perthshire, for example, I was delighted to find a book published in 1915 entitled 'Lowland Scotch as Spoken in the Lower Strathearn District of Perthshire' (https://archive.org/details/lowlandscotchass00wilsuoft). This detailed the Scots language dialect as spoken in the region where my ancestors lived, providing a 'flavour' of how my forebears were likely to have sounded on their patch. Similar offerings for other areas of interest are sometimes found in local libraries, as well as through online repositories such as Google Books (https://books.google.co.uk) and the Internet Archive (https://archive.org). 

Learning our ancestral languages can be important also to help us understand older documentary sources. My understanding of Gaelic, for example, occasionally helps me in my work as a genealogist, not just in reading older Gaelic texts, but also when somebody has tried to write down a phrase or name from the language phonetically in an English document. There is also the hurdle of the Latin language which pops up regularly, used for centuries across Britain and Ireland within the theological, educational, medical and legal worlds. Initially brought here by the Christian church for ecclesiastical use, it not only influenced the Celtic and Anglo-Saxon languages (e.g. the Gaelic word 'eaglais', for 'church', comes from the Latin word 'ecclesia'), but was in turn also influenced in return by those languages (see www.dmlbs.ox.ac.uk/web/latin-in-medieval-britain.html). 

Perhaps the most commonly encountered use of Latin will be in church registers, particularly those of the Roman Catholic Church. Useful starting points to help get to grips with Latin words can be found via FamilySearch at www.familysearch.org/en/wiki/Latin_Genealogical_Word_List and FindmyPast at www.findmypast.co.uk/blog/help/genealogists-guide-to-latin. No matter which language you are using, tools such as Google Translate (https://translate.google.co.uk) might help, but often miss the idiomatic use of a language which only learning it properly through a course can reveal.    

Beyond the actual function of a language, however, another challenge to overcome can be the evolving styles of alphabet used. When you read 'Ye olde shoppe' on a tourist shop display today, for example, the word 'ye' is deceiving, for historically 'ye' was pronounced as 'the'. The initial letter 'y' used here was never a 'y' at all, but an older, non-Latin derived letter called a 'thorn', written as 'Þ' – in other words, 'ye' was in fact 'Þe'. When the print era arrived, European printing presses in use at the time did not carry the letter, so the easiest solution was to substitute a 'y' instead. Similarly, when you see names such as Menzies, the 'z' in the middle replaces another obsolete letter, a 'yogh', written as 'ȝ' (similar to a number 3), commonly found in both Middle English and Scots. The letter actually had a slenderised 'g' sound, so that Menzies was historically pronounced as 'Mingis' – hence the reason why former politician Menzies Campbell was referred to as 'Ming' Campbell. For other long-abandoned alphabet letters, see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_alphabet.

Older styles of handwriting can also be challenging. Today, it is not uncommon to find younger folk struggling with the cursive forms of writing that we may have used at school, with children today living in an era where the keyboard and touch screens are rapidly replacing the pen. In the past there are similar challenges that we will need to overcome, no matter which language a document may be written in. In Ireland, the style of alphabet used in older Irish texts bears some resemblance to that in use in English, but requires a bit of 'tuning in' to read it, quite apart from the need to understand the Irish language itself. In older German documents you will see a very Gothic form of script which can be incredibly difficult to read. 

But even within English and Scots documents there are issues to be found. A major hurdle for genealogists can be how to read an older form of writing such as 'Secretary Hand'. The written letters often bear little resemblance to their modern forms, even though the handwriting is actually using those letters, and spelling out words in English or Scots. Fortunately there are are courses and groups available to help genealogists learn how to understand such older forms of 'palaeography', as the science of understanding older handwriting forms is known. The National Archives at Kew, for example, offers a series of tutorials at www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/palaeography/tutorial/default.htm, with another handy guide on learning Secretary Hand basics available at https://beinecke.library.yale.edu/article/quarantine-reading-learn-read-secretary-hand. The Society of Genealogists (www.sog.org.uk) has a 'palaeography club' for members, whilst the National Records of Scotland offers a free training site called Scottish Handwriting (www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/scottish-handwriting), as well as a free-to-access self-help guide at www.nrscotland.gov.uk/publications/scottish-handwriting-1500-1700-a-self-help-pack/. A free course is also available at www.futurelearn.com/courses/ems-palaeography.

Training to read Secretary Hand can help, but issues will still arise with abbreviations and contractions once commonly used. An issue often found in Scottish documents, for example, is what are known as 'jaj dates', where a year as written out used a stylistic abbreviation of the Roman numerals 'i' (for 1) and 'm' (1000), which looked a bit like 'jaj' – e.g. “jajvijC  and seventy five years”. In this example, 'jaj' (im) means 1000, 'vij' (vii) is used for 7, and 'C' for 100, with the remainder written in English. This is just one such issue that Artificial Intelligence platforms are having to deal with as they learn to read older forms of writing, through new Handwriting Text Recognition (HTR) technologies such as Transkribus (www.transkribus.org).       

In time the machines may crack it completely, but where is the fun in that?! Learning such languages and styles of writing can be immensely fulfilling, and may well be the key to finally unlocking your earlier ancestral stories!

(c) Chris Paton

June 6 Gaelic and Outlander Day, Dean Castle, Ayrshire, Kilmarnock: https://ayrshire360.com/events/gaelic-and-outlander-daylive-at-dean-castle/ . Order Researching Ancestral Crisis in Ireland in the UK at https://bit.ly/4jJWSEh. For my other Scottish and Irish genealogy books 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.