Illegitimate births & Kirk Sessions

[casliber]

Wow - a bunch of good info. The main reason I haven't dived into it more extensively is the tying of two poeple together. I have an ancestor who as an adult in Scotland unfortunately has his parents not listed anywhere including his death cert and he had no siblings. The likely birth/christening I cannot quite confirm as I have no other info tying it together (yet)...

[Thrall]

Hi all, I can confirm that the relevant Kirk Session minutes can be prove to be as good as gold dust, having found my own gr.grandfathers parents on a visit to NAS in Edinburgh. Not for the faint hearted however, in my case, page after page of interrogation.

ibi wrote"Basically, 95+% of Established Church of Scotland (ECoS) sessional records are held at National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh, either in the form of the originals (currently being digitised) or microfilms of originals which have been sent back to regional archives.  A look at the index on the NAS website will let you know what they hold".

I read recently on "Talking Scot" if one may name other fora, that there is hope that in the unspecified future these digitised records will be online outside NAS, so there will be an option for those who cannot visit Edinburgh.

Good hunting,

Thrall

[Forfarian]

Incidentally, this illegt son, who became a ploughman, then went on to be reprimanded by a minister in another parish in 1826 for 'antinuptial fornication'.  I believe this indicates the birth outside marriage of my ggggrandfather.  At least he and the mother seem to have married later.

It's normally antenuptial, not antinuptial ('ante' means 'before' as opposed to 'anti' which means 'against') and simply means 'before marriage'. So by definition anyone hauled up for antenuptial fornication is married, but their premarital activity has been found out, usually by a baby arriving after too short an interval after the marriage.

[Forfarian]

I too (likely) have an illegitemate ancestor in Skene Aberdeenshire - just clarifying, the Book Of Discipline is separate to the Kirk Session records?

No, not as a rule. In most cases the record of discipline is part of the minutes of the kirk session, not a separate document.

[valr]

Terance, Can I ask which parish books you looked at and where they were? Pls email me if you'd rather!
Val

[marysma]

Hi,

      for those who are interested there are minutes of the kirk sessions of Rathven on   myweb.tiscali.co.uk/sheena_charles/genealogy (or google rathven parish registers).

They are a great read and sometimes laugh out loud funny .

Happy Easter to all,
Marysma

[Chevalier]

Val:

"Over the last thirty odd years I have needed to access these books for three parishes in Perthshire and one in Stirlingshire none of which were archived in Edinburgh.  In the Stirlingshire case it was kept by the incumbent Session Clerk at his home as it was in one of the Perthshire parishes while in another it was in a storeroom at the kirk and in the last it was at the manse."

The Stirlingshire parish was Drymen.  The then Perthshire parishes were in the order above, Kilmadock, Gartmore (Port of Menteith parish books), and Killin.

Happy Easter!

Terrance

[valr]

I would love to see those especially Killin and Drymen.....

Here is a link to a book from 1849 that covers all of the parishes in Scotland and states what records were kept - it tells you the years covered by the various books of discipline etc:

http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=aCELAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA125&dq=kincardine+book+of+discipline&hl=en&ei=oAKzTcn8NIWg8QPN88yVDA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7&ved=0CEwQ6AEwBg#v=onepage&q=kincardine%20book%20of%20discipline&f=false