While a considerable number of baptisms and marriages were recorded in the parish registers, deaths are much rarer. Some parishes kept a burial register or noted payments for the hire of a mortcloth, but, on the whole, it was not considered so important to record deaths.
If there is no burial register amongst the parish records and there is no gravestone, tracing the date of a death is usually impossible. If a man lost his wife and had very young children to look after, remarriage was often fairly soon after the death of his first wife. Sometimes he gets a housekeeper and then marries her.
If the first child by his second wife was born less than nine months after the marriage, the kirk session minutes might contain a reference to it and possibly make mention of his former wife. The problem is that the Disruption took place in the period (1843) and many members of the Kintore congregation joined the Free Church.
