DEWAR - children not on ScotlandsPeople or IGI

[Joanna Tolhurst]

Searched all variations of names, places, etc but can't find any reference to the baptisms of the following children:

Parents -
Michael DEWAR and Christian GRAHAM (marriage in parish records Edinburgh 1840)
Children -
Michael and James 6 months old in 1841 living at Clydes Stables Old Monkland,  in 1851 Michael was 12 born in Lanarkshire living in Barony and no sign of James, in 1861 Michael was 20.
John 8 years old in 1851 born in Lanarkshire, 18 in 1861
Christina 5 years old in 1851 born Glasgow, 14 in 1861
Gemina 10 months old in 1851 born Glasgow, 10 in 1861.

Christian nee GRAHAM's death certificate names John her son as informant.

Are some parish records from Old Monkland and Barony missing from Scotlands People?
Jo

               

[avm228]

Are some parish records from Old Monkland and Barony missing from Scotlands People?

 

The coverage of the OPRs is very far from complete across Scotland - many parish records don't survive or survive only in part, and in any case those covered on SP are only Church of Scotland records so that Catholic and non-conformist vital records are not included at all.

For what it's worth, I don't have a single one of my Glasgow-area ancestors covered on the OPRs.

Anna

[Joanna Tolhurst]

Thanks Anna, that explains my frustration.
Jo

[JAP]

Hi Jo,

Some more thoughts:

a) many many parents did not bother to have their children christened at all

b) most (though not all) of the records in the IGI, and all of the records on ScotlandsPeople, are from the Old Parish Records of the established Church of Scotland (a Presbyterian church).  There were many breakaways from the established presbyterian Church of Scotland - for a good summary see:
http://website.lineone.net/~davghalgh/churchhistory.html
Those breakaway Presbyterian church records are not on SP - just as records of other churches such as Episcopalian (i.e. Anglican), Baptist, Methodist, RC, etc are not on SP.

c) and just to add another little problem - some pre-1855 Lanarkshire (and other) birth/baptism batches on the online IGI list only the girls ...

JAP

[Alwef]

This thread has enlightened me as well. It does explain why I can't find some of my family birth records. 

I do know that some of them adhered to the Free Church or similar schisms, but does the fact that children were not christened mean that neither were their births registered? Indeed, was christening the only form of registration in the late 1800s?

Equally, I have not always been able to find records (online) of deaths, although I know they have taken place.  Is this for similar reasons?

[M.R. Dien]

Civil registration came into being in Scotland in 1855 (records for that year only are some of the best to get in a genealogy sense due to the detail recorded).

prior to that date you have to rely on the Parish registers (OPR's) ..... one of the many problems here is the fragmentation of the church in Scotland over the years.

Currently only the records held by the "Established" Church of Scotland are available online although some records of the smaller "dissenter" churches are available at the NAS as are some Roman Catholic records.

As regards deaths, prior to 1855 these were recorded only on a very patchy basis and many parishes simply did not keep records although some did rent out a mort cloth for the coffins and these records have been maintained but other than that it was often at the discretion of the incumbent plus the fragmentation of the church again could intervene.

[JustJean]

This thread has enlightened me as well. It does explain why I can't find some of my family birth records. 

I do know that some of them adhered to the Free Church or similar schisms, but does the fact that children were not christened mean that neither were their births registered? Indeed, was christening the only form of registration in the late 1800s?

Equally, I have not always been able to find records (online) of deaths, although I know they have taken place.  Is this for similar reasons?

In addition to all the reasons already stated.....the most frequent reason for not finding statutory records on SP (in my opinion and experience anyway!) is failing to consider various spellings.  Wildcard searches very often turn up records hiding behind some very creative spellings....some of which are not always the registrars fault!

Best wishes
Jean

[shirl100]

I have Dewars in my tree, and the surname varies from Dewar, Dewars, Deuchar(s) etc so a wildcard search is well worth it . Also on IGI if you do go to the  batch number of the parish and search using  the christian name only, you might just get results. I have managed to locate quite a few ancestors that way where the surnames were either incorrectly transcribed or recorded with one of the variant spellings.

Shirl