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Family history records go online
01/04/2009
New records of famous Scots, including Adam Smith and Sir Walter Scott, have today been made available online.
The digital images, on www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk, the official Government source of genealogical data for Scotland, are of deaths and burials contained in the Old Parish Registers of Scotland (OPRs).
The OPRs are the records which the Church of Scotland kept of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials for the 300 years before the start of the civil registration system in 1855.
ScotlandsPeople website already contains the OPR entries for births/baptisms and banns/marriages and now, in the year of Homecoming, the death/burial entries will complete the project to make all the OPRs of Scotland available on the internet.
The new images will enable family historians from across the world to trace their Scottish roots more easily. The deaths and burial records also include entries for some famous Scots such as:
When the office of Registrar General for Scotland was created in 1855, every parish in Scotland was required by law to deliver to the Registrar General all its registers of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials up to and including those for 1855. The earliest surviving entries in the OPRs were created in the 16th century.
There is no death or burial entry for Robert Burns (died 1796 in Dumfries). The parish register for Dumfries did not survive long enough for the Registrar General to take it into care in 1855 along with the other OPRs.
Minister for Tourism Jim Mather said:
"Scotland has given the world many great personalities and it is fantastic that the records of these famous Scots have been made available on the internet during the year of Homecoming.
"These images will greatly assist people from Scotland and beyond to extend their family history searches, helping to connect today's generations with the past.
"The international availability of these records allows the diaspora to discover their family connections to Scotland and encourage them to walk on the land of their forefathers."
Duncan Macniven, Registrar General for Scotland, said:
"Making available on the internet the images of the Old Parish Register burial and death records dating back to the 16th century marks the completion of the digitisation project begun by the General Register Office for Scotland in 2001.
"That is not the end of the story. Further important records will come online from our partners in ScotlandsPeople which will further extend the sources of information for family historians."
ScotlandsPeople is the official Government source of genealogical data in Scotland and is a partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland, the National Archives of Scotland and the Lyon Office. The ScotlandsPeople website is enabled by brightsolid.
ScotlandsPeople holds digital images of Scottish records of births, deaths and marriages dating back to 1553, the open census records from 1841 to 1901, wills and testaments from 1513 to 1901 and Coats of Arms from 1672 to 1907.