Kirk Session Records.....

[Davie]

Hi all
I have been down in London, looking through the war records at the National Archives.
Spent a full day at Kew, for FREE.
I got chatting to an Aberdeen lad, and we exchanged a few sites.
He showed me some records he had from the Kirk sessions.
I was surprised at the information they gave.
He had been searching for an illigitimate child, and found him, his mother and father.
The parents had to attend the Kirk for six weeks and virtually made to marry.
I have never looked at these records before in Edinburgh, but as I have a few unsolved mysteries, will plan a visit soon.
Anyone else found a rellie on the Kirk Sessions
Davie

[Tracey]

Hello Davie

Anyone else found a rellie on the Kirk Sessions

No and if i remember correctly the years i need to look at for Gamrie 1851 - 54 are missing

Good luck in your search

Tracey

[Alcluith]

Kirk Session Records are ideal for finding illegitimate births It is especially worth while if you do not have a father's name.
I had one Christian Davidson had a child and the father turns out to be a James Rettie, a married man of the Parish.
The child James Davidson so I could have been a Rettie

The are a bit of a hit and miss with detail and availability but its worth a look if everything else fails.

[CatrionaL]

Hi Davie,

And don't just limit yourself to the years around the time of the illegitimate birth! On my last visit to NAS, I was disappointd to learn that the years I was interested in were lost or destroyed. Decided to have a look at what was available for the particular parish anyway.

The first record was for my 2nd Great Grandmother, 20 years later than I had expected.

Regards

Catriona

[joette]

Well having searched in vain for so many of my lot-honestly wonder where I&my sisters missed out on the wanton hussy gene & my brothers on the "sow my seed on the wind" gene will have a look for my lot.So many of them Fathered/Mothered children at will without benefit of clergy & then made up a father's name,invented a marriage date/place or picked a parent's name from the back of a newspaper.
I am totally teed off with so many of the lies they have told-it is making it impossible to trace them.Some lies/half-truths I can work out,guess but a few are lost in the mists of time & I cannot break down the wall.
I am not bothered that they never married it is the lies they told to cover it all up without any thought to their children knowing who they really were.Rant over for the day!

[Morag]

I also spent a great day going through records at NAS. My relative was a Free Church minister and I found the records for his church. There was a 5 page obituary on the prevoius minister and I waded through all the records - only to find the only mention of my one's death was that 2 of the elders had attended the funeral ! It could have been so different - so definately worth a visit .

Morag

[DavidWW]

I had reason to nip into NAS earlier today to check on a couple of things and took the opperchancity to check something on which I was uncertain in relation to kirk session records.

This is that they don't arbritarily stop at 1854, - most go on well into the late 1800s, and beyond into the 1900s.

The law is that a church are perfectly entitled to keep their kirk session records, - and something like 50 or 60 Established CoS churches around Scotland have exercised that option (this includes all the congregations that came back into the 'Auld Kirk' in 1929 when the great majority of the congregations of the United Free Kirk rejoined the fold).

Otherwise, if a congregation don't want to retain their kirk session records, then they are obliged by law to donate them to NAS for safekeeping.

This means that a 1875, say, illegitimacy which may still be a matter for consideration by the kirk session, with all that that implies on possible info on the alleged father, may still be found in sessional records at NAS, but maybe not, as enforcement of church discipline was by then dropping off considerably compared to 50 or a 100 years earlier.

Add on another 50 years, - many NAS kirk session records extend well into the 20th C, - and there may well be no genealogically helpful "kirk discipline" info

David

[sheilajim]

Hi All

I would love to get my hands on Kirk Session records, even if I don't find anything, about my ancestors in them. I think that it would show the kind of culture that they were living in. This would be especially so in small towns.

I think that there was some mention of them going online sometime in the future. This would be very useful for people like me, who have to do their searching long distance. Does anyone know when they might go online?

Regards

Sheila

Searching- Stirlingshire: McDonald, Dunn, Kay, Watson, Scott- Renfrewshire & Ulster: Kennedy, Boyd,McKee, Veiny, McLaren - Mull- McKinnon, Campbell

[joette]

Re Kirk discipling I know my Granny was totallty humilated in the latter years of the First World War.So much so that her staunch Church going Family moved from the Parish Church where her Father,Uncles cousins were elders to another in the Village.
I will have a wee look at NAS to see if there is any mention of her SITTING ON THE PENITENT PEW.The father of her unborn child escaped this ordeal but then he lived in an adjacent parish.

[Liz Turner]

Some 20 years ago my sister and I had spent most of a day going through the OPRs searching Pittenweem and Kilconquhar for our relatives. We got through all of the records that were readable and with time left, we asked what else might be available. We knew the family(ies) had been involved in the secession church (a few ministers) and that one had been the second minister of the Relief Church in Pittenweem.

I remember at that time looking through notebooks which contained what I'm sure was the Kirk Session records. They were handwritten in pencil!! We made notes of the bits that interested us, but from my memory the books included lists of the elders (grouped in threes) who had responsiblity for collecting seat rents etc. A lot of the talk was about the need to raise more money for the church and to get more young people involved (nothing changes - eh??). So it's worth a look at the Session records because you might find the names of some relatives.

One entry I do remember was a bit of a stooshie about the minister being called before the session as a result of "pre-marital fornication". From the first entry it wasn't clear who was being called before the session, but subsequent entries showed that it was the minister himself!! He was disciplined and in effect booted out.

I agree with Sheila that these records can shed some great light on the real lives of the people we're looking for and the communities they lived in. They can be great to read, even if you don't find your relatives!!