Over the past few years, with the help of a volunteer, we have been creating an index to ‘paternity’ cases found in the Sheriff Court records. These are court cases where (usually) the mother of an illegitimate child takes the father to court to prove paternity and force him to pay maintenance, or aliment for the child. We have now indexed Linlithgow Sheriff Court records from 1860-1916.
Our index is free to search and you will be given the following information:
Pursuer’s name (usually the mother)
Defenders name (usually the father)
Year of Child's Birth
Year of Decree or Extract
Sheriff Court
NRS Reference
The NRS Reference would enable you to look at the full entry for free in the National Records of Scotland.
As you can see from this example, the index entry itself can be very useful as it is not unusual to see the father’s name of the pursuer (i.e. the name of the grandfather of the child):
http://www.scottishindexes.com/courttranscript.aspx?courtid=41004008I hope this resource proves useful!
Emma
