Findmypast publishes 10.7 million Scottish parish records

With great excitement, Findmypast yesterday announced at a virtual launch event, attended by more than 230 genealogists from both sides of the Atlantic and perhaps even farther afield, the publication of a vast new online collection of Old Parish Registers in collaboration with local archives and organizations across Scotland.  

Participating in the launch were actors Brian Cox, known for his role as Logan Roy in the TV series Succession, and Colin McFarlane, who plays Ulysses in Outlander. Both shared touching stories.

The new collection dates back to 1561 and spans 450 years of Scottish history.

• Scotland, Parish Births & Baptisms, 1564-1929
• Scotland, Parish Marriages & Banns, 1561-1893
• Scotland, Parish Deaths & Burials, 1564-2017

It contains more than 10.7 million historical documents chronicling baptisms, marriages, burials and more.

Largest online collection Scottish family history records
When combined with Findmypast’s existing collection of Scottish records and historical newspapers, yesterday’s release establishes Findmypast as the home of the largest collection of Scottish family history records available anywhere online, enabling users to explore their Scottish family tree in greater depth and detail than ever before.  

Yesterday’s announcement from the Scottish-owned company forms a cornerstone of what is now the most comprehensive collection of online records for Scotland ever assembled, covering every parish in every corner of the country.

The collection includes records that not only reveal vital information on Scottish ancestors, but also provide valuable insights into parish life, including;

• Records of non-conformist churches including the Episcopal, Free Church, United Free Church and more, fully indexed and searchable for the very first time
• Newly published 20^th century records (current online collections stop at 1855) that provide vital details of more recent ancestors, allowing users to uncover the details of previous generations and trace their family tree back from there
• Rare “Irregular Marriages” from Kirk Sessions (those not officially recorded by the parish registers and conducted without a ceremony)
• Mortcloth rentals, records of deceased Scots who were too poor to afford a proper burial, having to the hire the cloth that was placed over their coffin, or where original records no longer survive
• “Ringings of the burial bell,” records of those too poor to even afford a mortcloth rental so instead paid for a ringing of the church bell in their memory

Thanks to volunteers
This new resource is the result of Findmypast’s close collaboration with local family history societies, archives and volunteers from across the country. It brings together a wide variety of important historical records, many of which were previously inaccessible to public and are now fully searchable in new ways for the first time.

• The Scottish Genealogy Society
• Fife Family History Society
• The Highland Family History Society
• Dumfries & Galloway Family History Society
• Renfrewshire Family History Society
• Lothians Family History Society
• Lanarkshire Family History Society
• Glasgow & West of Scotland Family History Society
• West Lothian Family History Society

Names, dates, locations, the names of parent’s, spouses, children and other biographical details such as occupations, residences and more were transcribed and then digitally converted thanks to the hard work of hundreds of Scottish family historians.

The collection is a comprehensive index of transcribed records. There are, unfortunately, no images of the original documents.

Some of Scotland’s most renowned sons and daughters can be found within the collection, including inventors and forgotten figures.

Cultural icon
Scotland’s national poet, Robert Burns, is celebrated worldwide. He is the best known of the poets who have written in the Scots language and regarded as a pioneer of the Romantic movement. After his death in 1796 he became a great source of inspiration to the founders of both liberalism and socialism, and a cultural icon in Scotland and among the Scottish diaspora around the world. A native of Ayrshire, Burns can be found numerous times in the records, including his 1759 Baptism, the 1785 baptism of his illegitimate daughter with Elizabeth Paton and his irregular marriage to Jean Armour in 1788.

Forgotten figures
Early feminist, socialist, abolitionist and social reformer, Frances Wright was baptized in Dundee in 1795. She became a US citizen in 1825 and founded the Nashoba Commune in Tennessee, a utopian community designed to prepare slaves for eventual emancipation. Throughout her life, Wright campaigned for universal education, the emancipation of slaves, birth control, equal rights, sexual freedom, rights for married women, and liberal divorce laws. She was also vocal in her opposition to both organized religion and capital punishment and her radical views were constantly attacked by the press and members of the clergy.

Scipio Kennedy was a slave taken as a child from Guinea in West Africa and brought to Scotland in 1702. Purchased at the age of five or six by Captain Andrew Douglas of Mains, Scipio served as a slave under his daughter, Jean, the wife of Sir John Kennedy, 2nd Baronet of Culzean in Ayrshire. He was granted his freedom in 1725, but continued to work for the Kennedy family and was given land on the estate.

In 1728, Scipio was recorded as having fathered a daughter, Elizabeth, “by fornication” with Margaret Gray. Scipio married Margaret later that year and baptism records reveal the couple had a further seven children, and he is known to have descendants living today.

Inventor and innovator
Inventor of the first practical telephone and co-founder of the Bell Telephone and American Telephone and Telegraph companies, Alexander Graham Bell was born in Edinburgh in 1847. Bell and his parents can be found in an 1847 baptism record 23 years before the family emigrated to Canada and settled in Brantford, Ontario.

Thomas Edison’s early experiments with hearing devices eventually led to 29-year-old Bell being awarded the first U.S. patent for the telephone, on March 7, 1876. Despite the world-changing impact of his creation, Bell viewed it as an intrusion on his real work as a scientist and refused to have a telephone in his study.