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​A couple of months ago, while doing some eighteenth-century research for a client in the Carrington Kirk Session records, I came across a much later letter which had evidently been bound in with the accounts at a later date:
[Blind-stamped address]
​In a different hand – seemingly that of William Granville Core, minister of Carrington, who at this time was also acting as session clerk for the parish – the following two entries are extracted:
1695 Febry 10 Received from James Dewar in Capilaw & his wife being th[ei]r collection for the building of Kinkell harbour 7 shillings by reason they were not here the day if was gathered.
This is an example of what is known in genealogy circles as a lookup – a request for somebody to inspect a particular record set and to report back any entries that match the requester’s requirements. Instances are scattered throughout the Kirk Session records. There was a particular flurry of them following the enactment of the Old Age Pensions Act 1908, which for the first time granted the right to a pension to people aged 70 and over. Claimants had to prove their age, and often this would involve the pensions committee contacting the parish of birth to request confirmation of the information provided by applicants. Diligent clerks in some parishes incorporated copies of these lookup requests into the original Kirk Session records, sometimes providing useful information about what happened to parishioners.
Occasionally you will come across a request from someone researching their ancestry. We also recently found a letter to the session clerk of Dumbarton requesting a lookup about the writer’s grandfather, who was born in 1854. The letter was sent from Tasmania in 1973 – a fantastic discovery if you happen to be researching Robert Brown Ballantyne. ​ In the modern age, however, you don’t have to find the name and address of the parish clerk, send off a speculative letter and wait for a response by post, which might never come. (It would seem Robert Brown Ballantyne’s grand-daughter may never have received a reply, as her international reply coupon is included with her letter in the Dumbarton records!). We have recently launched a service offering lookups in Kirk Session records for a very affordable price, which we are gradually rolling out across the whole of Scotland. Those parishes currently available are shown below. If you don’t see the parish you’re interested in listed, let us know and we’ll have a look for you.
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The Church of Scotland is a Presbyterian church. Although the term Presbyterian is now often associated with a stern, austere form of Christianity, strictly speaking the term refers to the Church's hierarchical organisational structure. The supreme body of the Church of Scotland is the General Assembly, which meets annually in Edinburgh. The next level down from the General Assembly are the Synods, which are organised on a territorial basis. Synods are further subdivided into Presbyteries (whence the word Presbyterian). Finally, presbyteries are in turn divided into parishes. The parish is the basic unit of church governance.
Each parish had its own governing body, known as the Kirk Session. Each Kirk Session was convened by a Moderator, who in practice was the parish minister. The Session also had a Session Clerk who, in addition to his (until relatively recently, all members of the Kirk Sessions were men) duties as minute taker and record keeper, also had a significant role as an intermediary between the minister and the congregation. Parish schoolmasters often served as Session Clerks to supplement their meagre teaching incomes. The other members of the Kirk Session were the elders, generally chosen by the congregation. Elders were ordained for life, or until they resigned their position (usually through ill health, but occasionally elders were effectively forced out by scandal). Perhaps the best way to understand the role of Kirk Sessions is to consider them as a combination of court and management body. In some parishes – particularly larger urban parishes – the administrative functions of the Session were hived off to a separate management committee, responsible for such matters as maintaining the church buildings, secular business and the like. Before 1845, and to some extent afterwards, Kirk Sessions were also responsible for provision of support to local paupers – often including members of other denominations – and Kirk Session records contain a great deal of information about payments to poor people. These records can be particularly informative where a dispute arose as to which parish was responsible for supporting paupers. Parishes would often make interim payments to poor people, and then claim the money back from the responsible parish. We will consider Sessions' role in poor relief in a future post. But perhaps the most useful role of the Kirk Session was its quasi-judicial role. Kirk Sessions were notoriously inquisitive about what were considered sexual improprieties – particularly children born outwith marriage – and records of their interrogations of unmarried mothers are among the most interesting and useful of the Kirk Session records (see for instance here, here and here). Even if your ancestors were not cited to compear before the Session for sexual misdemeanours, they may have been cited as witnesses, or for other “scandals”, such as Sabbath breaking and irregular marriage. Other records produced by the Kirk Session include Communion Rolls (see here for an example from Kinclaven), accounts (which can include payments for mortcloth hire, which can serve as a substitute where no burial or death registers survive), testificates (the system used when parishioners moved from one parish to another, certifying that they were members of the Church), registers of marriages and baptisms (which continued after the introduction of civil registration of births and marriages in 1855, and as we have seen, can sometimes contain important information not included in the statutory registers), as well as many other records. Kirk Session records are a fantastic resource for genealogists and family historians. Unfortunately, unlike birth, marriage and death records, they have for the most part not been indexed, and are therefore much harder to access, particularly if you don’t live in Scotland. That is why we have started offering a lookup service, to make them accessible to Scottish genealogists around the world. To see which records we are currently able to lookup, browse our parish pages starting here. If we haven’t yet listed the available records for your parish, let us know and we will be glad to do so.
There have long been links between Scotland and Jamaica. As early as 1656, 1200 prisoners of war were deported to Jamaica by Oliver Cromwell. Later, many Scots migrated to Jamaica in search of their fortune. Famously, Robert Burns was set to sail for Jamaica before the success of the Kilmarnock Edition of his Poems Chiefly in a Scottish Dialect persuaded him to remain in Scotland.
Many Scots became plantation owners and wealthy merchants in Jamaica, frequently based on the exploitation of slaves. Often they would return to Scotland, having made their fortune. Others would leave money to the poor in their home parishes. One such was William Duffes (or Duffus), from Deskford in Banffshire. The Kirk Session records of Deskford include a list of the recipients of £15 left to the poor of the parish: ​List of the Poor of the Parish of Deskford nominated by the Revd Walter Chalmers Minister of Deskford & George Duffes in Knappycawset in terms of the will to receive the Legacy bequeathed by the late Mr William Duffes of Jamaica 17th November 1826
You can find more information on the records of Deskford - including nearly 700 heads of families from 1834 to 1840 - here.
Historically, illegitimacy – being born outwith marriage – often carried a great social stigma. It was considered something to be ashamed of – as if somehow the child was responsible for the actions of his or her parents. In my own family, my paternal grandmother was born before her parents were married, a fact that she kept hidden from my dad. She’d even gone to the length of consistently lying about her age to cover her tracks. It wasn't until about ten years after she died that I discovered the truth – much to the amusement of my dad, who had endured years of his mum putting his dad down because his father was illegitimate! This social stigma was incorporated in law: the Registration (Scotland) Act 1854 [Link] required that all illegitimate births be marked as such in the original register (a requirement which wasn’t removed until 1919). Section 35 of the Registration (Scotland) Act stated: In the Case of an illegitimate Child it shall not be lawful for the Registrar to enter the Name of any Person as the Father of such Child, unless at the joint Request of the Mother and of the Person acknowledging himself to be the Father of such Child, and who shall in such Case sign the Register as Informant along with the Mother Consequently, unless the father acknowledged paternity and agreed in person to be registered as the father, it was illegal to record his name in the birth register, with one proviso: Provided always, that when the Paternity of any illegitimate Child has been found by Decree of any competent Court, the Clerk of Court shall, within Ten Days after the Date of such Decree, send by Post to the Registrar of the Parish in which the Father is or was last domiciled, or in which the Birth shall have been registered, Notice of the Import of such Decree in the Form of the Schedule (F.) to this Act annexed, or to the like Effect, under a Penalty not exceeding Forty Shillings in case of Failure; and on Receipt of such Notice the Registrar shall add to the Entry of the Birth of such Child in the Register the Name of the Father and the Word "Illegitimate," and shall make upon the Margin of the Register opposite to such Entry a Note of such Decree and of the Import thereof In other words, the father’s name could be added to a birth record after initial registration if paternity was proven subject to a court order, although the stigma of the word illegitimate would remain. Section 36 of the Registration (Scotland) Act also illustrates an unusual feature of Scots law which distinguishes it from English law: In the event of any Child, registered as illegitimate, being legitimated per subsequens matrimonium, the Registrar of the Parish in which the Birth of such illegitimate Child was registered shall, upon Production of an Extract of the Entry of such Marriage in the Register of Marriages, note on the Margin of the Register opposite to the Entry of the Birth the Legitimation of such Child per subsequens matrimonium, and the Date of the Registration of such Marriage Under Scots law, a child born outwith marriage could be legitimated after birth per subsequens matrimonium – literally “by subsequent marriage” – if the parents later married, provided that they were free to marry at the time of the child’s birth. From a genealogy perspective, the main import of illegitimacy is that it can prove a significant obstacle to tracing the child’s paternal ancestry. However, it need not always prove to be a brick wall. Take the case of George Kerr Waterston, an illegitimate child born on October 9 1863 in Dunnichen, Angus. His statutory birth record does not name his father, instead just giving his mother’s name as Elspeth Waterston. As mentioned earlier, the law stated that in cases of illegitimate children, the father’s name could only be included if the father signed the register in person. The following entries from the records of Dunnichen parish demonstrate that the strict rules in force for civil registration did not apply to the Church, and thus how Kirk Session records can often be used to identify fathers of illegitimate children. At Dunnichen the 18th day of October 1863 years A couple of weeks later, in the Baptismal Register for Dunnichen, we find the following entry: Kerr, George Kerr Waterston (illegitimate), S[on]. [Father] John Kerr Junior, Greenhillock Tulloes; [Mother] Elspeth Waterston, Letham. Birth 9th October 1863, Baptism 9th December 1863 This entry provides another useful lesson - it's always worth checking baptismal registers, even after the introduction of civil registration.
The Reformation in Scotland placed great emphasis on education. In 1560, the First Book of Discipline established the ideal of universal education, of a school in every parish. Although the ideal was never actually realised in practice, it remained a worthy objective.
As a consequence, many wealthy individuals left legacies for educational purposes. Some, such as George Heriot in Edinburgh, left money to establish educational institutions for poor children, often referred to slightly confusingly as Hospitals. Others endowed funds to pay school fees for children in a district. One such fund was the Milne Bequest in the parish of Ellon, Aberdeenshire. The Parliamentary Educational Endowments (Scotland) Commission described it thus: The Milne Bequest, which is said to be dated in 1797, but did not come into operation till 1808, its precise date not being ascertainable, but a record of it appearing in the kirk session minutes under date July 21, 1808, was left by the Rev James Milne, minister of Ellon, ‘for the purpose of educating poor children’. Its amount is nearly £20 of capital, and it is paid to the School Board for the education of poor children.
The benefactor being a minister, it is perhaps not surprising that operation of the Milne Bequest was placed in the hands of the Kirk Session of Ellon. Fortunately, the elders kept excellent records of payments made under the bequest. The entries for 1862/63 are as follows:
The Kirk Session records of Ellon parish include payments made from the Milne Bequest from 1852 to 1880. Apart from the details of ill health as shown above, and the details of guardians of children - presumably orphans - some of the earlier records also include comments on the individual pupils ("giddy, thoughtless", "less fair from want of parental oversight") that offer a unique insight into their characters. You can request a lookup in these and other Ellon parish records here.
One of the slightly unusual features of the Scottish system of statutory registration is the Register of Corrected Entries (now known as the Register of Corrections, Etc, or RCE). This allows for errors in original records to be corrected. In modern times, the RCE is a separate volume - the original register is not actually changed; instead a note is added in the margin, with a reference to the RCE. While the RCE system only applies to statutory registration of births, marriages and deaths, as introduced in Scotland in 1855, it was clearly not without precedent, as the following entry from the Kirk Session of Barony, in Glasgow, shows: 31 October 1832 Several things stand out from this entry. Firstly, it shows that even contemporary, primary sources can be incorrect: although in this case, it seems that the clerk did change the original register, and a modern researcher would find the correct date (assuming the father was telling the truth). Secondly, you have to wonder how and why the father noticed the error, almost exactly 21 years after the event. Perhaps the children were involved in some legal matter that required them to be 21 years of age, possibly an inheritance. And thirdly, it also inadvertently offers a glimpse into family history as opposed to genealogy: Mary Ann and John were twins, but they were born 2 days apart, suggesting that their mother (unnamed in this entry, but she was Agnes Robertson) must have experienced a lengthy labour of at least 24 hours, more than 35 years before James Young Simpson pioneered the use of anaesthesia in childbirth.
The following entries are from Athelstaneford Kirk Session minutes, and the minutes of the Presbytery of Haddington. Athelstaneford Kirk Session minutes CH2/18/1 p. 180 Thomas Darling is not mentioned again in the Kirk Session minutes for Athelstaneford. He does appear at West Fortune in the 1841 census, a farmer aged 42. Janet Brook is also found living in Athelstaneford village in 1841, with her 7 year old son, David Darling. Although the child is not named in the Athelstaneford Kirk Session or Presbytery of Haddington records, it seems almost certain that David Darling is in fact Thomas Darling's son.
Without the Kirk Session records, it might not otherwise have been possible to identify David's father. These entries also illustrate how individual Kirk Sessions could refer cases to their Presbytery for a ruling. As well as revealing the likely father of David Darling, the entries also reveal something of the character of Thomas Darling. You can see what other records are available for Athelstaneford here. Rowan trees have a special place in Scottish folklore. They are traditionally seen to have apotropaic power - that is, they can ward off witchcraft, and particularly the evil eye. Sometimes this tradition can appear in unexpected places, such as this case from the Kirk Session of Cumbernauld parish, from 1728: 18th Febry 1728 Clearly the members of Cumbernauld Kirk Session were more concerned with Sabbath breaking than the potential use of magic. But this is just one example of some of the fascinating snippets of social, local and family history to be found in the Kirk Session records. We will be writing more about some of our discoveries in Kirk Session records over the next few months as we roll out our kirk session records lookup service.
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Old ScottishGenealogy and Family History - A mix of our news, curious and intriguing discoveries. Research hints and resources to grow your family tree in Scotland from our team. 
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