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.
