Collins Tracing Your Scottish Family History

from 1929, the index reference to one party states the surname of the spouse too. In addition, between 1855 and 1863, brides are indexed under both their maiden name and their new married one.

registration district and reference number, that can be used for cross-referencing pre-1929.

The marriage records always show:

names of bride and groom.

occupations of both parties.

whether single, widow(er)ed or divorced.

ages of both parties. If there was a large age gap between the two parties, it was not unknown for one or both to lessen the difference by lying.

names and sometimes addresses of witnesses.

A certificate, issued in 1970, for the 1935 marriage of Frederick Crowley and Lillian Watt (courtesy of Mrs Moira Crowley).

names of parents of both parties, including maiden name of mothers. If a parent had died, the word ‘deceased’ will usually be added. Married mothers are shown with both married and maiden names (‘M.S.’ means ‘maiden surname’). If the person marrying was illegitimate, they might just state their mother’s name, but many concealed the fact by making up a father’s name and claiming that their mother was married to him.

name and denomination of the minister. If the marriage had been performed irregularly, but then registered with a sheriff, then details of the sheriff’s warrant will be given here.

in 1855 alone, the records also identified whether either party had been married before and, if so, how many children had been produced, and of these how many were still alive. Also, the date and place of birth of the bride and groom were given, and whether these births had been registered. These details were abandoned in 1856, but the birthplace of each party was restored in 1972.

Other death records

Municipal cemeteries have been operating since the nineteenth century. Along with crematoria, they usually keep their own records, or you can ask at the nearest archives.

Between death and burial, no small number of bodies went to the anatomy schools of Aberdeen, Dundee, Edinburgh, Glasgow and St Andrews. Registers of these cadavers from 1842 onwards are in NAS class MH1, and include name, age and last place of residence (often the workhouse or infirmary). A gory addition to your family tree, perhaps, and for pre-1855 deaths actually quite a useful one.

Transcribed monumental inscriptions from the churchyard in Robert Burns’ birthplace, Alloway (Alloway Monumental Inscriptions, Alloway and South Ayrshire FHS, 2000), showing how inscriptions can connect families across the world.

Deaths

The death indexes show:

name.

name and number of district.

reference number.

ages (the 1859-60 indexes lack ages, but they have been added to the online version).

from 1974 onwards the mother’s maiden name appears.

married women are indexed under married and maiden surname(s). Beware that if a woman was married before, her earlier married name might be given, accidentally, in lieu of her maiden name. If she had been married more than once, one or more of her former married names might (accidentally) be left out.

The death records always show:

name.

date, time and place of death.

cause of death, how long the deceased had been suffering, and the name of the doctor if present.

occupation.

marital status.

gender.

age, replaced from 1966 by date of birth.

place of death.

usual residence, if not the same as the place of death.

whether married or widow(er)ed.

parents’ names, including mother’s maiden name, and whether the parents were alive or dead.

occupation of father.

informant’s name and sometimes address.

in 1855 and from 1861 onwards you will also find details of the spouse (or spouses if there had been more than one marriage). This is not given in the period 1856-60, though of course the spouse might be the informant.

in 1855 you will learn where the deceased was born and how long they had lived in the place where they died.

in 1855 you will find the names and ages of children born to the deceased, plus their age(s) at death, if applicable.

the period 1855-60 records where the deceased was buried.

You may find a reference to the Register of Corrected Entries, that will include an entry from a sheriff court (see pp. 100-1) investigating any unusual or accidental deaths. These references are worth following up, as you may learn additional details about the deceased’s family. Any unusual deaths may have been reported in local newspapers too.

Death certificate for Walter Hooks (1877-1968), showing his parents’ names (courtesy of Mrs Moira Crowley).

Death traditions

Gaelic-speaking Scots believed that the soul stayed close to the corpse until after burial, so they introduced the custom of the Late Wake, watching the body constantly until burial, lamenting and singing, and even dancing and playing games: wakes were not necessarily somber or sober affairs. Anne Ross, in Folklore of the Scottish Highlands (Tempus, 2000), reports that ‘At the funeral of one of the lairds of Culloden the mourners were entertained so liberally before leaving Culloden House that when they did start for the Churchyard of Inverness they left the coffin behind! At another funeral a similar mistake occurred, and was only discovered when the party arrived at the churchyard and the sexton remarked, “It’s a grand funeral, but whaur’s Jean?”’

Some areas had their own death customs: in Soay, for example, a lock of the dead man’s hair was nailed to the door lintel to keep the fairies out. Some clans and families had special traditions, especially surrounding portents of death, for example, the Breadalbanes knew a family death was coming when they heard a bull roaring on the hillside at night, and for the MacLachlans, the appearance of a small bird foretold doom.

Lateral thinking Conquers all

This list of deaths in a family bible came to the Crowley family from their aunt Sissy, who in turn had it from a Margaret Hunt Conquer, who died without close family in 1953. The list was intriguing because Hunt was a middle name in the Crowley family too, from Sissy’s paternal grandmother Ellen Hunt, wife of James Crowley, who had married in Ireland in 1851 before the potato famine drove them to migrate to Scotland.

We used the list to look up the death records, which rapidly turned the list into a family tree. Margaret’s death record gave her parents as Robert Conquer and Catherine Adelaide Hunt. Catherine Adelaide Hunt’s death listed her parents as John Hunt and Catherine Kelly, proving she was a sister of Ellen Crowley, née Hunt.