Tag Archives: Highland history

What a find! One million Scottish records online

Back in 2015 I visited the Highland Archive Centre in Inverness where I was fortunate to get a glimpse of kirk (church) session mid-18th century minutes from Inverness-shire. Sad fact: I had only one afternoon to research. I was slavishly grateful to the librarian who made .pdfs of a few pages from the 1740 Croy Parish minutes.

Six years later, with many diversions along the way, I’m returning to work on the book about the Scots Gaelic migrants to Ohio. A lot can happen on the internet in six years. A lot can happen in six months! Yesterday I browsed again for information on 18th century kirk sessions, and found this news article in the March 17, 2021 issue of The Scotsman.

The stories of those who faced the wrath of the church in Scotland – from those drunk on the Sabbath to parents of children born out of wedlock – are being brought to life after hundreds of years.

More than one million pages of minutes from the Kirk Session of the Church of Scotland have gone online as a major project by National Records of Scotland comes to fruition.

They show how the ‘morality police’ punished ungodly behaviour as well as how the Church was involved in supporting the poorest and most vulnerable in the country.

Where?! Where online?! One million + records are now up and running at ScotlandsPeople. A search for kirk session minutes in the Moy and Dalacrossie Parish are there. I honed in on 1745-1746, the time of the Jacobite rising (right, the one portrayed in “Outlander”), but they stop in 1745. In 1748, there’s a note that the minutes of 1746-1747 were lost due to the “Troubles.” Sigh. Another casualty of that sad time in Highland history.

Abroad and at home

This May, I had the privilege of visiting the Archives Research Centre in Inverness, where I took a peak at Croy Parish Church registers. The Kirk, as it was known in those days. Unlike modern church sessions (at least, those of the mainline denominations with which I’m familiar), these Kirk sessions included provincial trials of misdeeds such as fist-fighting on the Sabbath.

Here’s an excerpt from one such record:

Croy July 13 1740 James Mitter Gardiner in [Cabrach] & Margaret Gordon in Mitten Delated for undecent correspondence are appointed to be cited to our next meeting of the Elders appointed to enquire into the grounds of such report. …
Croy July 20th 1740 Compeard James Mitter & Margaret Gordon & refusing their keeping any undecent correspondence the Elders were enquired if they searched into the grounds of such report & answered that they found there was such a flagrant story passing at that part of the Parish but that after diligent search they could find no ground for it. Closed with prayer.

Can you imagine such a meeting of sessions at a mainline church today? People might actually turn out for the show. Strange words appear in the text: Delated. Compeard. Then again, it’s fortunate I didn’t have to decipher them from Gaelic.

“Delate” does appear in the Merriam-Webster, an archaic word that means to denounce or accuse. Not so the word “compeard.” Perhaps it is dialect? I don’t believe it is a misreading of the handwriting–here’s a sample of transcribed text of another such record I found in Google books:
book scots regional dialect

Back home, I found another tidbit of Scots 18th century history in the oddest place — the Genealogical Abstracts from Newspapers of the German Reformed Church 1830-1839, collected by Barbara Manning.
book genealogical abstracts
In an abstract from the Weekly Messenger of the German Reformed Church dated Aug. 9, 1837, is the following:

//LONGEVITY. RICHARD TAYLOR, the oldest pensioner in Chelsea Hospital England, died on the 10th of June, aged 104. He was a drummer boy at the battle of Culloden in 1745; his last action was that of Alexandria in Egypt where SIR RALPH ABERCROMBIE fell. //

Other than the fact that the Battle of Culloden occurred in 1746, let’s give this the benefit of the doubt and assume the rest is correct. The announcement tells me several things. First, that Richard Taylor was most likely a drummer boy for the British side of that engagement. Second, that if Taylor did live 104 years, he was a drummer boy in the King’s service at the young age of 13 years. Third, back in the day the Battle of Culloden was so well known that the editors of  this small German denominational newspaper in the U.S. felt this news from England worthy of note. Yet today, many people I talk with have never heard of Culloden.