John Rutherford and Rachel Johnston of Kelso

[CelticMom]

It means all the records that are in existence.

AHH, that explains all the missing records then. Thank you

The mention of the John Rutherford that died in Brighton. Where was that sourced? As I am struggling to find it. EDIT: Just seen you said it was the Kelso Chronicle. So ignore me lol. I need to retire for the night.

[vivdunstan]

It means all the records that are in existence.

In existence in the OPRs (Old Parish Registers), yes, but the way Church of Scotland records were split into OPRs (for General Register Office for Scotland / New Register House) and kirk session material (for the then Scottish Record Office) was messy.

Often you will get extra burials recorded in kirk session records, which usually ended up in the Scottish Record Office. These are unindexed, and very patchy, but there are some. The details are often sparse, but you can find payments for burials in there, even when there are no deaths in the OPRs at the same time.

Kirk session records can be searched online at a limited number of archives in Scotland. Hopefully the long awaited Internet version for the public launches soon.

Again I don’t want to get anyone’s hopes up. But there may be some more records.

[Sunlaws]

As Viv said, kirk session minutes often reveal events not in the actual registers, which indeed was what I meant. Kelso kirk session records have been extensively digitised, and are available to view in Edinburgh
https://bit.ly/2L7YLOw

but are (as far as I know) are not indexed. Even though a death was not recorded in the registers, for instance, the amount of money the deceased person's family paid for the use of the mortcloth to cover the coffin was certainly worth recording in the session's books!

[CelticMom]

That’s really interesting, thank you both for that insight.

When I first started my research back in 2003, there wasn’t much online at all. The majority of my roots are from Ireland. So I was stuck behind a brick wall for years. Although I struck gold when I emailed one of the churches and had an amazing office person there help me out with tracing one branch back quite a few generations. Plus there are amazing helpers on this forum like yourselves,  That have local knowledge. I find rootschat amazing for that.

Now of course the online resources are amazing.

It’s not quite the same as accessing records in person, as there is something great about seeing official documents in person. But it means many from overseas can access records to where their ancestor originally came from.