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The early 1800s, including the 1840s, was a huge era of upheaval in the Scottish church community. Many people moved away from the main Church of Scotland. Sometimes to non conformist churches, who may, or may not, have left surviving baptism records. Often no records survive for these churches.

It means that it is extremely common for births not to be recorded in Scottish church records, no matter how hard or how long you look for. This is why it is so important to have other records. Fortunately you have the census records. Where do the parents names come from? Have you tried tracing them back? You may just have to accept that this birth, like thousands of others, is not recorded with a baptism.

If that was Lamberton Toll in Berwickshire they had a runaway irregular marriage. There is probably not a legal church record of it. Unless the local kirk session interrogated them about it afterwards, perhaps when bringing in the first child to be baptised. These kirk session records where they survive are generally unindexed and in a separate archive from the parish registers of baptism and marriages. They cannot yet be searched online, and have to be looked at in Edinburgh or via computer in a number of archive search rooms around Scotland.

That's really interesting! I just wish I could pin down an accident report because then I'd know how long ago the head injury happened. My great-grandparents had retired and "come back home" to Edinburgh (after years living in what was then Southern Rhodesia) around 1932 or '33, so the accident could have occurred any time between then and late 1939.

You could try accessing her detailed patient records at Dingleton. The hospital’s records survive, in Edinburgh. I describe them in GENUKI at

https://www.genuki.org.uk/big/sct/ROX/Melrose#MedicalRecords

And if you follow the link though from there you should be able to find the full archive details. There are confidentiality closures, but as a great grandchild you may be able to access them.

Thanks, Viv A lot of info there. It mentions at the end of William's writeup that he's buried in St Mary's. Refers to my great(x4)-grandmother too, Margaret who married William Kennedy. And the Boa spelling (for a good while I was looking for Boas instead of Bowies). If I'd had this way back when, I could've saved myself some frustration. All good stuff though

Excellent! I hadn’t looked at the entry, and didn’t think it would list a burial place. Excellent result! And glad there is extra info in there for you.