Product Ref: FHF-135
Parish Registers in the Kirk Session Minutes of the Church of Scotland
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Parish registers found within the Kirk Session Minutes of the Church of Scotland offer a rich and often underutilised resource for genealogists and historians. These records, maintained by the session clerk of each parish, go beyond the standard ecclesiastical documentation and frequently include entries of baptisms, marriages, proclamations, deaths, and burials that may not appear in the official Old Parish Registers.
This makes them especially valuable for uncovering details that might otherwise be lost to history.
Kirk sessions, established as local church courts since 1560, were composed of the minister and elders of a parish. Their minute books served not only as records of disciplinary proceedings and church governance but also as repositories for a wide array of civil and social data. These included poor relief accounts, lists of parishioners, certificates of transference, and even statistical returns.
Because the session clerk often held multiple roles—such as registrar, schoolmaster, or clerk to other local bodies—the records sometimes contain information from overlapping jurisdictions.
The FamilySearch collection of Kirk Session Records (1658–1919) includes registers of baptisms, marriages, and burials originally filmed from the National Archives of Scotland, offering a digitised gateway to these historical documents.
If you're researching Scottish ancestry or local history, these records can provide a more nuanced view of parish life, especially in cases where official registers are incomplete or missing.
ISBN : 087472217X