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Scotland (Counties as in 1851-1901) => Scotland => Topic started by: TunjiLees on Thursday 23 April 20 09:10 BST (UK)
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This hasn't been officially announced yet, but I contacted ScotlandsPeople to ask when they would be releasing their kirk session records online and got this response:
Dear Tunji
Thank you for your email regarding kirk session records.
The part of the website that will make the kirk session (and other court) records available is under active development at the moment.
The coronavirus lockdown has hampered us a little, as no National Records of Scotland buildings are open, but we're managing to continue development work remotely. I hope it will be only a mater of a few months before the first few thousand volumes of kirk session and presbytery records appear. The first release will be minute books and accounts of Church of Scotland kirk sessions and presbyteries from 1560 to about 1860.
Yours sincerely
Robin Urquhart
Archivist
National Records of Scotland
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Well, I'll believe it when I see them as they've been saying something like that for quite a few years.
Sceptical Gadget
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Yes I remember them talking about it about 10 years ago and saying they will be online within a year or two. Now they are saying within a few months, so hopefully that means sometime this year!
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At least Scotland is spending money on their records and making them available online, I wish the GRO would do the same thing.
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I think the main problem was how to index them. I'll keep my fingers crossed.
Crumblie - GRO do not have any parish records - many of which are on line via one or other sites and we will have to pay to access them, just as we have to pay for access to Eng & Wales parish records. You're not comparing like with like.
Gadget
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Crumblie - GRO do not have any parish records - many of which are on line via one or other sites and we will have to pay to access them, just as we have to pay for access to Eng & Wales parish records. You're not comparing like with like.
Gadget
You are right I did not actually mean parish records, I wish the GRO would make BMD records available online. If Scotland can do it there is no reason why England & Wales cannot apart from the expense involved of course.
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I think they started but the costs were too high. There is a thread (or threads) on here about it. I'm sure Guy will know.
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On a personal level, I would love for them to go online and then I maybe able to trace my 4 x greats parentage.
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I wish the GRO would make BMD records available online. If Scotland can do it there is no reason why England & Wales cannot apart from the expense involved of course.
Don't we all!
You can get some English and Welsh certificates in digital form from GRO, but not instantly, and at £6 a time they cost 4 times as much as Scottish ones. Even though the information they contain is not as good.
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Oooh I'm so excited
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You can get some English and Welsh certificates in digital form from GRO, but not instantly, and at £6 a time they cost 4 times as much as Scottish ones. Even though the information they contain is not as good.
You can get some burial, baptism and marriage records (not just transcriptions) online up to mid 1930s (and maybe later) on some of the subscription sites - mainly C of E but some non-conformist and RC ones. For example, I was able to get a copy of my parents' mid 1930s marriage. The number of England and Wales post 1837 records are vastly greater in number than Scotland's.
Also, this thread is really about kirk sessions records and not BMD.
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If you are trying to build up a full picture of your ancestors beyond just a list of names and dates, the kirk-session records are absolutely invaluable. At least, if your ancestors were a bit naughty and got into the bad books of the minister and the elders. If they kept their noses clean you won't find out much more about them.
I started doing genealogy back in the early 1980s when you had to go and queue on the steps outside Register House in the morning before they opened up, and once I had got some elementary family-trees going for both sides of the family, I discovered the kirk-session records in the Scottish Record Office handily next-door (now the National Archives of Scotland) and was often able to put some flesh on the bones of my ancestors with their help.
I still have to pinch myself when I sit down here at the computer like this and spend my pension on Scotlandspeople credits, so easy, and so tempting! If the k-s records do become available online in my lifetime I expect I will splash out on them too.
Harry
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I agree, Harry. I spent a good few hours in Edinburgh looking through some of them. Also, I was lucky that the parish clerk in one of the parishes let me have sight of some of the old kirk session records that he had. Unfortunately, I still need access to 2 or 3 more parishes and I don't think I'll get to Edinburgh anytime soon.
Gadget
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I am so excited about this. I have lots of things that would be in the Kirk Session records, I had been planning to go to Edinburgh this year to have a look, but obviously that didn't happen. They really are a wonderful team at SP.
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I agree, Harry. I spent a good few hours in Edinburgh looking through some of them. Also, I was lucky that the parish clerk in one of the parishes let me have sight of some of the old kirk session records that he had. Unfortunately, I still need access to 2 or 3 more parishes and I don't think I'll get to Edinburgh anytime soon.
Gadget
Actually, I remember that a lot of kirk-session and other records (e.g. heritors' records) were sent out to local record offices years ago in a process of decentralisation. When I used to look at them in Edinburgh these local repositories didn't exist, but a lot of East Neuk of Fife records went to St. Andrews University library and others went to a record office in Markinch, while a lot of Borders records went to Hawick, I think. What's it called, the Hub? So I don't know how many are left in the NAS in Edinburgh.
Harry
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The Kirk Session records sound like they could be a real gold mine.
I found this old rootschat thread from 2005 ::) which gave me a bit more information about Kirk Sessions:
https://www.rootschat.com/forum/index.php?topic=30381.0
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I thought they could already be viewed digitally at a few places in Scotland and not just Edinburgh.
I wonder what it will cost to see them online?
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I thought they could already be viewed digitally at a few places in Scotland and not just Edinburgh.
Yes, they can. Aberdeen, Inverness and Glasgow, and I believe Alloa and Hawick. There may be others.
I wonder what it will cost to see them online?
The grapevine tells me that how to charge for viewing them is the major stumbling block over making them available online.
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I was a little concerned when I read this that these minutes might no longer be available via LDS FamilyHistoryCentres, and it appears to be the case. I had a feeling that they might go the way of the census records that were suddenly removed from FamilySearch.
Looking at the catalogue on FamilySearch not only have kirk session minutes lost the locked camera icon next to them, but also next to parish records such as baptisms, marriages and burial.
I'm very sad about this, as when the lockdown started I'd been going through some parishes page by page, looking out for witnesses at baptisms and trying to work out who was related to or friends with whom.
I might as well just give up on trying to research in Scotland. For the period I was looking at in Edinburgh parish from the 1660s there were about 100 pages of baptisms per year. I can't afford to do this anymore.
I guess I also feel extremely frustrated by the timing, as without the lockdown I'd have been able to continue with this for a little longer.
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I was a little concerned when I read this that these minutes might no longer be available via LDS FamilyHistoryCentres, and it appears to be the case.
Don't confuse the Kirk Session records, the vast majority of which have never been available online, with the parish registers, which have long been available on FamilySearch.
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Kirk session records have never been available on Family Search, only in some local archive offices and Edinburgh.
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I understand the difference between the records, but they've all disappeared from FamilySearch.
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Kirk session records have never been available on Family Search, only in some local archive offices and Edinburgh.
I've been able to view them at LDS Family History Centres, but not from home. The last time I did so was in March this year. Perhaps not all of them, but I could access Forgandenny records from the 1700s and 1800s, and Fetteresso from the 1800s. I also looked at Rhynd records.
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I've been able to view them at LDS Family History Centres, but not from home. The last time I did so was in March this year. Perhaps not all of them, but I could access Forgandenny records from the 1700s and 1800s, and Fetteresso from the 1800s. I also looked at Rhynd records.
Well, I'm sorry to say that even these have disappeared from the Catalogue in the past few hours, so there's no evidence even of the fiches they were on.
I was SO looking forward to these - it's over seven weeks since I could last access these and little did I know that might be the last time.
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Have you tried accessing via the catalogue place name search?
I’ve just tried for those places listed and they are there. Albeit with locked camera icon, so you alphabetical have to to go to an LDS library.
(Sorry about that autocorrect, just noticed it)
Eg
https://www.familysearch.org/search/catalog/2770926?availability=Family%20History%20Library
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Kirk session records have never been available on Family Search, only in some local archive offices and Edinburgh.
I've been able to view them at LDS Family History Centres, but not from home. The last time I did so was in March this year. Perhaps not all of them, but I could access Forgandenny records from the 1700s and 1800s, and Fetteresso from the 1800s. I also looked at Rhynd records.
Have you been able to look at these records online via Family Search, or only at one of their centres?
They're still showing up on the catalogue, as Mckha489 says, with the locked icon.
Online access, as far as I knew, was only available in Edinburgh or at one of the various archive centres around Scotland. Fiche access was available at LDS centres in person, which is different. I'm assuming the LDS centres are closed at the moment.
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Have you been able to look at these records online via Family Search, or only at one of their centres?
They're still showing up on the catalogue, as Mckha489 says, with the locked icon.
Only at one of their centres. But the link Mckha489 isn't showing any icons at all for me, not even the fiche/film one. But I will bookmark those links. Fingers crossed it's just some database update issue.
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Don't worry hurworth. I don't think there's any reason to think that the kirk session images would disappear from the LDS Family History Centres just because they are being placed on ScotlandsPeople.
The parish records for example have long been on ScotlandsPeople and were still available at FHCs as well.
Also, FamilySearch gave feedback regarding the Scottish censuses disappearing, stating that it was due to a technical issue which they are trying to fix. They should be back online at some point.
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Don't worry hurworth. I don't think there's any reason to think that the kirk session images would disappear from the LDS Family History Centres just because they are being placed on ScotlandsPeople.
The parish records for example have long been on ScotlandsPeople and were still available at FHCs as well.
Also, FamilySearch gave feedback regarding the Scottish censuses disappearing, stating that it was due to a technical issue which they are trying to fix. They should be back online at some point.
Yes, the films should still be available to view, once the centres are allowed to open again.
With regard to the icons not showing, try a different browser - sometimes Family Search is a bit iffy depending on which one I use!
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Any word yet about when KS records will be available?
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Exciting news!
The attached link to Chris Paton's blog has news! He says that the first tranche of Kirk Session Records are going to be released in early 2021. Well worth a read as it indicates how searching and payment for downloads will be done.
https://scottishgenes.blogspot.com/2020/12/kirk-session-records-to-be-added-to.html
William
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Thanks for the info, William. I'd given up on them being put up.
Gadget
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Great news, especially about how they intend to charge for them :)
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I'd given up on them being put up.
Gadget
Ditto Gadget.
I wonder where the 'first tranche' will be?
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Fingers crossed they will get released as announced this time!
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This is exciting news, looking forward to it.
I wonder when The Scotland’s People Centre will re open, I have really missed it.
It is rumoured that Edinburgh will go back down to level 2 next week but we may have to be down to level 0 before they invite the public in again ? Has anybody heard ?
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Haven't heard anything since their announcement some time ago that they would not be reopening before March 2021.
I think it might be a while yet before any areas are put in Level 0. Even here, with only about 10 infections per 100,000, we are still in the more restricted variant of Level 1.
I'm missing the SPC too - and trips to Edinburgh in general.
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Think it will be a while yet before it reopens as Edinburgh is being kept in tier 3.
I am missing my visits to Edinburgh too
suzilad
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Think it will be a while yet before it reopens as Edinburgh is being kept in tier 3.
I am missing my visits to Edinburgh too
suzilad
There's the travel regulations too if you don't actually live in Edinburgh.
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There's the travel regulations too if you don't actually live in Edinburgh.
Yes.
I have to admit that when it comes to travel I have lost track of what is allowed, what is discouraged and what is actually illegal. Having decided it was all getting too complicated and that I would just stay at home for the foreseeable future, I stopped bothering to keep up with them.
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