This is a frequent question in these forums. I often find myself replying to such queries, so I am going to try to pull some of the information together into one item for future reference.
It's important to understand what records are and are not available.
The Great Divide is 1855, when statutory civil registration was introduced. From the outset, registration was compulsory. Births had to be registered within 21 days, and deaths within 8 days. It was a bit more complicated in the case of marriages, but generally speaking it is rare for an event to be missing from the registers after 1855. All registered births, deaths and marriages are indexed on SP, and the original certificates of births over 100 years ago, marriages over 75 years ago and deaths over 50 years ago can be viewed online at Scotland's People (SP)
www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk.
If an event after 1855 appears to be missing, the reasons may include
- the people involved failed to comply with the law, or
- the registrar made an error, or
- the event is registered under a name other than the name expected
- the event took place somewhere other than expected
- the name(s) have been incorrectly indexed
Before 1855, things are much more uncertain.
The principal source of information about births and marriages is the Old Parish Registers (OPRs) kept by the Church of Scotland (C of S) of baptism and proclamations of banns. Theoretically the C of S was supposed to record all births and marriages in its parish, but in practice this did not often happen. In 1855, all the surviving OPRs were compulsorily collected for safe keeping by the Registrar General for Scotland, and these are the backbone of the OPRs on SP. Baptism records do not always include the baby's date of birth, and records of proclamations of banns do not always contain the date of the wedding.
Then there are the records kept by the Roman Catholic Church. These too are available on SP, as are the surviving records of some other churches, including Dissenting, Secession, and Free Churches, held in the National Records of Scotland (NRS).
There is a very small number of surviving registers that are not available on SP
- a few of the other churches' registers held in the NRS where either it has not been possible to determine who actually owns them, or the congregation that owns them has refused permission for them to be made available on SP
- surviving records of the Scottish Episcopal Church (Episcopal Church in Scotland)/Church of England. These are either in the individual churches or in diocesan, university or local archives
- surviving records, if any, of various other Christian denominations, for example Society of Friends (Quakers), Congregational, Baptist and Methodist churches etc etc
- records, if any, of non-Christian religions
- a very occasional OPR lurking in a dark corner that escaped being sent to the Registrar General in 1855 and has not seen the light of day since
So why might a particular baptism, say, be missing? There are many reasons, including
- the parents did not have the child baptised
- the parents neglected to have the baptism recorded in the OPR
- the minister omitted to tell the parish clerk
- the clerk forgot to write down the record
- the OPR containing the record was damaged or lost
- the baptism was performed by a clergyman of one of the minor churches whose records, if they ever existed, have not yet made it on to SP
So how many records are missing? Estimates vary wildly, and the further back you go, the more are missing.
In my tree, I have 6637 people born in Scotland before 1855. Of these, there are 834 for whom I have no record of birth or baptism. That is about one in eight. I have seen estimates as high as 30%. Not surprisingly, anecdotal evidence suggests that records of country parishes, if they exist at all, are more complete than records of city parishes of the same period.
You'll have noticed that I have not included missing deaths before 1855. I'll deal with these in a separate message because the full works exceeds the maximum allowed length.
