Birth, death and marriage registers

Birth, death and marriage registers
Prior to compulsory civil registration of births, marriages and deaths in 1855, local Church of Scotland ministers kept a record of baptisms, marriages and burials for each parish. The oldest records date back to 1553.

Each minister would have had his own way of keeping track of the baptisms, marriages and deaths in his parish. These documents formed part of records of the particular kirk session. After the 1854 Registration of Births, Deathsand Marriages (Scotland) Act the lists of birth, deaths and marriages were separated from the rest of the kirk session records to form the Old Parish Registers (OPR series), which can now be searched via the ScotlandsPeople website. Sometimes one can still find some birth, deaths and marriages amongst the kirk session records, as the posers below will highlight.

poser 283 - Baptisms for Pencaitland, 1600
poser 279 - Marriages for Aberdeen, 1672
poser 314 - Marriages for Rutherglen, 1675
poser 313 - Baptisms for Rutherglen, 1677
poser 277 - Births in Edinburgh, 1693
poser 378 - Deaths in Canongate, 1698
poser 317 - Deaths in Edinburgh, 1776
poser 377 - Deaths in Rayne, 1785
poser 334 - Edinburgh birth registers, 1851

Help on other websites
For more information about the OPRs see the guidance available on the ScotlandsPeople website.

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