Contact us |
 |
RESEARCHING HISTORICAL RECORDS
The Church of Scotland offices does not have an archives
department. However, on this page you can find information
on how to trace:
Birth, marriage and death certificates
Baptism certificates
Burial records
Historical ministers' details
Records of kirk sessions, presbyteries
and the General Assembly
Please note that all external links on this page will
take you out of the Church of Scotland website and open
a new browser window.
Birth, marriage and death certificates
ScotlandsPeople is the official online source of parish
registers, civil registration, census records and wills
and testaments for Scotland. The website is a partnership
between the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS),
the National Archives of Scotland (NAS), the Court of
the Lord Lyon and Scotland On Line.
|
ScotlandsPeople is one of the world’s
largest resources of genealogical information and
one of the largest single information resources
on the web. |
With almost 50 million records to access it provides:
- a fully searchable index of Scottish births
from 1553 to 1905;
- marriages from
1553 to 1930;
- deaths from
1855 to 1955;
- indexed census data from
1841 to 1901; and
- a free index search of wills
and testaments from 1513
to 1901.
To respect privacy of living people, internet access
has been limited to birth records over 100 years old,
marriage records over 75 years, and death records over
50 years.
The ScotlandsPeople website also hosts full colour
images of the registered testaments of Scots up to 1901
are available there. Among the testaments free to view
in the ‘Famous Scots’ section of the website
are those of John Knox, David Livingstone and Thomas
Guthrie.
Visit the website now at: www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk
[top of page]
Baptism certificates
If you are looking for a copy of a baptism certificate,
the first place to try is the parish where the baptism
took place: the more recent baptismal records are usually
held by the minister. Click
here to visit our online map to locate the parish,
or if you only know the name of the parish or minister
and not its location, use our general search
facility here and search by text. For records of baptisms
earlier than those held by the minister in each parish,
the records are divided into two types:
- baptismal records before
1885, which are
held by the General Register Office for Scotland;
and
- baptismal registers among
kirk session records, which are held
by the National Archives of Scotland.
|
 |
All records which exist should be available on the ScotlandsPeople
website.
[top of page]
Burial records
Historically, the Church of Scotland - in the form of
kirk sessions and heritors in each parish - was responsible
for the maintenance of burial grounds within churchyards
and kept records of burials. In 1925 responsibility for
the maintenance of Church graveyards was also transferred
to local authorities (or councils) in Scotland and from
then burial records were no longer the responsibility
of the Church.
 |
The location of
burial records is not as clear cut as that for
baptismal and marriage records, but in most cases
any surviving burial registers will be among kirk
session records at the National Ariches of Scotland
(NAS) or at the General Register Office for Scotland
(GROS). |
Pre-1855 burial records
held by the GROS are currently not
available on the ScotlandsPeople website. You can
visit the GROS online at
www.gro-scotland.gov.uk
Over the last 20 years the inscriptions on gravestones
and monuments in many Scottish burial grounds - or at
least those which are legible - have been surveyed and
indexed by local history, family history and antiquarian
societies, and the results published. Usually these
can be consulted at local studies libraries and archive
services of the relevant local authorities in Scotland.
[top of page]
Historical ministers' details
A comprehensive account of the register of ministers of
the Church of Scotland since the Reformation of the 16th
century is provided in the volume of books entitle Fasti
Ecclesiae Scoticanae. Historically published by
Saint Andrew Press, this series provides an invaluable
guide to genealogists as it records in detail the family,
career and writings of the lives of ministers, chaplains,
secretaries, clerks and university staff associated with
the Church of Scotland. The first volume was originally
completed in 1866 by editor Hew Scott. This book was later
published in a new edition over seven volumes between
1915 and 1928, edited by the Rev W. S. Crockett, and later
editions have followed. These publications should be available
through your local library or archive service.
[top of page]
Records of kirk sessions,
presbyteries and the General Assembly
The National Archives of Scotland (NAS) is also the place
of legal deposit for the records of the Church of Scotland's
kirk sessions and presbyteries which are earlier than
those in current use. The NAS also holds the historical
records of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland
and the records of synods, which were abolished in 1993.
In some cases, the NAS re-transmits the records to local
authority archives under special conditions laid down
by the Keeper of the Records of Scotland.
Priceless historical documents are held by
the National Archives of Scotland
The records of kirk sessions, presbyteries, synods
and the General Assembly together make up a major part
of Scotland's written history, and they are used by
a wide range of academic, professional and amateur researchers,
especially genealogists and ecclesiastical historians.
To preserve the records and make access to them much easier
for future generations, the Church of Scotland and the
NAS has reached agreement to make digital surrogates of
surviving church records from 1500 to 1901 for public
use.
| The fantastic digitisation project
will finish in 2007 and will involved the digital
capture of more than five million pages of information.
|
 |
For more information about the historical records of kirk
sessions, presbyteries, synods and the General Assembly,
visit the Scottish Documents website on www.scottishdocuments.com
[top of page]
Queries
If you have any other queries about how to obtain archived
documents or certificates, please use the comprehensive
help facility on the
ScotlandsPeople website.
[top of page] |
