Scottish Parishes .....

[Charles Henderson]

Scotlands People lists parishes dating back to 1553. With reference to the earlier parishes, 1553 to 1700, what religion was responsible for the listing of mariages and births, or was the parish a political unit as opposed to a religious body?

[Liz Turner]

Charles

Welcome to this great site! Don't get your hopes up too high about the older records. People took a much more laid back view of registering than we do today...

I am certain someone will be along very soon to give you the low down and direct you to what you want to know.

Good luck with your searches.

Liz

[DavidWW]

Scotlands People lists parishes dating back to 1553. With reference to the earlier parishes, 1553 to 1700, what religion was responsible for the listing of mariages and births, or was the parish a political unit as opposed to a religious body?

The "Old Parochial Registers" or OPRs were maintained by the Established Church of Scotland. They were originally intended to include the records of all the inhabitants of a parish, but only rarely included information relating to other than members of the Established Church.

There were many secession presbyterian churches in that whole period, not least the Free Kirk in 1843, known to have involved 40% of the ministers of the Established Church, and, according to various estimates, up to 60% of the communicants of the Established Church.

David

[AndrewP]

The Parochial Registers (later to become the Old Parochial Registers, better known os the OPRs) were the responsibility of the Church of Scotland. I presume that to have been the case since the reformation in 1590. There is a dozen or so parishes with older records than 1590. I don't know if these were held by the Roman Catholic Church, or by the pre-reformation Church of Scotland (or some other?).

All of Scotland was (and still is) divided into parishes of the Church of Scotland. They were responsible for the Parochial Registers until the end of 1854. At that point, all registers up to the end of 1819 were to be given over to the newly formed General Register Office for Scotland. The registers of 1820 to 1854 were to be handed in to the local Registrar's offices (presumably these offices were new too), for safe-keeping for another 30 years, when they too were to go into the care of the General Register Office for Scotland. The keeping of these registers was written into statute by the Registration of Births, Deaths and Marriages (Scotland) Act 1854.

The parishes (about 900 of them at the time) formed the basis of the Registration Districts that were formed in 1855.

I would define a parish as an area of land which came under the auspices of a parish church. In its day, the parish had responsibilities for such "local government" matters as education and welfare (poorhouses and the like). Civil Parishes (Quoad Civilia) became separate from Religious Parishes (Quoad Sacra) over the years. The Local Government (Scotland) Act 1929 saw the end of civil parishes in 1930. Most of their functions will have transfered to the county councils (or city councils) that had been created by the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1889.

All the best,

Andrew Paterson