RootsChat.Com
Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Fife => Topic started by: nellie d on Saturday 04 October 25 16:35 BST (UK)
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I am still on the trail of my (possible) 10x gt aunt, Marion Cunynghame.
She was baptised on 11 August 1583 in Dunfermline and married to John Rowane on 5 July 1614.
In May 1655 she was accused of witchcraft and appeared before the ministers at the local Kirk Sessions. They prohibited her from receiving communion and ordered her to re-attend for further trial in a fortnight. The outcome of the subsequent hearing was the same as the first. I have scoured the kirk and presbytery records but can find no further mention of Marion. Looking on Scotland’s People, Familysearch and Ancestry, I can find no records of her death or burial and I wondered if there is anywhere else I could look…or…is there anyone with access to other records that might be able to have a look for me please? 🤞🏻
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If there is nothing in the Kirk Session records (only available at SP) the information you are seeking has almost certainly been lost.
I take it that you have checked the catalogue of the National Records of Scotland? https://catalogue.nrscotland.gov.uk/nrsonlinecatalogue/search.aspx
There is a chance that Fife Archives https://www.onfife.com/libraries-archives/archives/ might hold some 17th century material from Dunfermline Burgh Council but other than that I think you are very unlikely to find anything.
Ancestry, Family Search etc only have indexes and transcriptions of the original records. You would be wasting your time looking there or in other commercial web sites.
See https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=714261.0
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Thank you Forfarian…and many thanks for the link to your post regarding Scotland’s People v “the rest” 🙌🏻
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She is on this page of the Scottish Survey of Witchcraft. There is also another (different) person of the same name in Irvine.
https://witches.hca.ed.ac.uk/quick/?fullname=marion&page=7
Unfortunately, there is not very much about her yet.
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She is on this page of the Scottish Survey of Witchcraft. There is also another (different) person of the same name in Irvine.
https://witches.hca.ed.ac.uk/quick/?fullname=marion&page=7
Unfortunately, there is not very much about her yet.
Thank you GR2.
Yes, that’s her.
https://archive.org/details/extractsfromkirkhend/page/33/mode/1up
I recently read a book called Something Wicked by Carol Ann Lee. It followed the lives of the people involved in the Pendle witch trials in 1612.
She suggested that former Roman Catholics still held onto some of the, then, banned prayers and rituals that they had grown up with, and these were viewed by the protestant church and community as heretical and marked such practices as witch craft.
This seems to be the crux of the matter with Marion with her “prayers”
I wanted to find out what happened to her.
She was forbidden from taking Communion and had to re attend the kirk in two weeks and at that further “trial” she was treated to the same outcome. I have looked for any further action but there is nothing, so it’s my assumption that perhaps she died.
There’s no record of her being imprisoned, but many such records have been lost to time