Chris Paton - Tracing Your Scottish Ancestry Through Church and State Records: A Guide for Family Historians

T RACING Y OUR S COTTISH A NCESTRY THROUGH C HURCH AND S TATE R ECORDS

Birth, Marriage & Death Records

Birth, Marriage & Death Records

The Family History Web Directory

Tracing British Battalions on the Somme

Tracing Great War Ancestors

Tracing History Through Title Deeds

Tracing Secret Service Ancestors

Tracing the Rifle Volunteers

Tracing Your Air Force Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors

Tracing Your Ancestors from 1066 to 1837

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Death Records Second Edition

Tracing Your Ancestors through Family Photographs

Tracing Your Ancestors Through Letters and Personal Writings

Tracing Your Ancestors Using DNA

Tracing Your Ancestors Using the Census

Tracing Your Ancestors: Cambridgeshire, Essex, Norfolk and Suffolk

Tracing Your Aristocratic Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors

Tracing Your Army Ancestors Third Edition

Tracing Your Birmingham Ancestors

Tracing Your Black Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Boer War Ancestors

Tracing Your British Indian Ancestors

Tracing Your Canal Ancestors

Tracing Your Channel Islands Ancestors

Tracing Your Church of England Ancestors

Tracing Your Criminal Ancestors

Tracing Your Docker Ancestors

Tracing Your East Anglian Ancestors

Tracing Your East End Ancestors

Tracing Your Family History on the Internet

Tracing Your Family History on the Internet Second Edition

Tracing Your Female Ancestors

Tracing Your First World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Freemason, Friendly Society and Trade Union Ancestors

Tracing Your Georgian Ancestors, 17141837

Tracing Your Glasgow Ancestors

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Gallipoli Campaign

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: The Somme

Tracing Your Great War Ancestors: Ypres

Tracing Your Huguenot Ancestors

Tracing Your Insolvent Ancestors

Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet

Tracing Your Irish Family History on the Internet Second Edition

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors

Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors Second Edition

Tracing Your Labour Movement Ancestors

Tracing Your Legal Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors

Tracing Your Liverpool Ancestors Second Edition

Tracing Your London Ancestors

Tracing Your Medical Ancestors

Tracing Your Merchant Navy Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors

Tracing Your Northern Irish Ancestors Second Edition

Tracing Your Oxfordshire Ancestors

Tracing Your Pauper Ancestors

Tracing Your Police Ancestors

Tracing Your Potteries Ancestors

Tracing Your Pre-Victorian Ancestors

Tracing Your Prisoner of War Ancestors: The First World War

Tracing Your Railway Ancestors

Tracing Your Roman Catholic Ancestors

Tracing Your Royal Marine Ancestors

Tracing Your Rural Ancestors

Tracing Your Scottish Ancestors

Tracing Your Second World War Ancestors

Tracing Your Servant Ancestors

Tracing Your Service Women Ancestors

Tracing Your Shipbuilding Ancestors

Tracing Your Tank Ancestors

Tracing Your Textile Ancestors

Tracing Your Twentieth-Century Ancestors

Tracing Your Welsh Ancestors

Tracing Your West Country Ancestors

Tracing Your Yorkshire Ancestors

Writing Your Family History

Your Irish Ancestors

A Guide for Family Historians

CHRIS PATON

First published in Great Britain in 2019 by

PEN AND SWORD FAMILY HISTORY

An imprint of

Pen & Sword Books Ltd

Yorkshire Philadelphia

Copyright Chris Paton 2019

ISBN 978 1 52676 842 1

eISBN 978 1 52676 843 8

Mobi ISBN 978 1 52676 844 5

The right of Chris Paton to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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G enealogists and family historians seek materials within archives which document the very existence of the people we are hoping to learn about from our ancestral pursuits. In Scotland, our forebears were thankfully great advocates of a quill and ink, and as a consequence have left behind a wealth of material to help us on our way.

For centuries Scotland was an independent nation, before economic pressures and issues surrounding the royal succession led to a political union with England and Wales in 1707, creating a relationship which has at times been cautious and challenged by political circumstances. While the union led to a more homogeneous approach to worldwide affairs, as the British Empire flourished, within Britain itself Scotland remained virtually independent from its partners in many ways.

Following the union, Scotland retained its own legal system, which has been heavily influenced by Roman Law and by the feudal form of land tenure, maintained for centuries long after being abandoned by the rest of Britain. Scotland kept its own state church, one that differed markedly from its Anglican equivalent, but which for much of its existence fought with itself over the issue of control between its flock and its patrons. Scotland also kept its own education system, which in itself has seen many challenges, not least through the rapidly changing demographics of the Scottish population caused by the Industrial Revolution, as well as the aftermath of the Irish Famine in the mid-nineteenth century.

The idea for this book emerged from a series of short guides that I initially produced for an Australian company called Unlock the Past, which sought to explore a variety of Scottish topics from a Scots-based perspective. To understand Scotlands records is not as straightforward as applying what you already know from other jurisdictions and hoping for the best. Scotlands records have their own legal language, and their own reason for existing. In some cases, such as with the land-based sasine records, they are simply not replicated anywhere else in the world, while many records, such as our parish and civil registration records, provide a mixture of similarities and differences to other countries holdings in equal measure.