New and exclusive Scottish family records

3-4 minute read

By Liam Kelly | June 12, 2020

Findmypast is home to the fastest-growing collection of Scottish family records online.

If you’ve got Scottish ancestors, you’ll want to see what’s new this Findmypast Friday. These latest record releases are only available online at Findmypast.

Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms

We’ve added almost 69,000 additional records to this collection, covering 11 parishes across Scotland. Baptism records can reveal excellent details for your family tree including:

Your ancestors' names
Their birth and baptism dates
Their parents’ names
Where they were baptized

The digitised images of the original records are incredible, in some cases giving you extra facts about your ancestors such as:

The names of their godparents or sponsors
Whether they were classed as legitimate or not. If the baptized child's parents were not married, the church listed them as illegitimate
Additional remarks about them – this may include notes highlighting if they were converted to or from another religion or when they were confirmed or married

Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Congregational Records

Once you’ve found your ancestor’s baptism record, it’s time to find the next milestone event in their life. To help with this, we’ve added over 55,000 congregational records to our Scottish Roman Catholic collection. Congregational records include registers of confirmations and communion recipients, as well as parish lists, seat rentals, and lists of people who converted to Catholicism. The records can reveal even more details for your family tree including:

Your ancestors' names
The event date, year and event type
Where the event took place

A list of parishioners who rented seats in the St Peter's church, Dalbeattie.

Always check the digitized image of the record. It will usually provide additional facts about your ancestor such as the names of their confirmation sponsors or the location of their seat rental.

Scotland Roman Catholic Marriages

With over 27,000 new marriage records across 11 parishes, there's never been a better time to find out more about your Scottish Catholic ancestors. Who did they marry and where did they marry? Marriage records tell the stories, with revealing details like:

Your ancestors’ names
Their ages and birth years
Their spouses' names
Where and when they were married
Their fathers' names

Once again, the record images can reveal even more detail. By viewing the original record, you could uncover witness and priest names and where the couple lived.

For all of this week's Catholic additions, check the parish list for details of the new parishes and time frames covered. You'll see them tagged as new on the list.

Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Burials

The Scottish Roman Catholic collection is rounded off with brand new burial records from eight parishes, nearly 9,000 of them. Burial records provide details on the final resting place of your ancestors including:

Their names
Their birth, death and burial dates
Their ages when they died
Their occupations
Where they were buried

All of the latest additions to our Scottish Roman Catholic parish record collection have been provided by the Catholic National Endowment Trust Charity No. SCO 16650 (known as The Bishops' Conference of Scotland) and form part of our groundbreaking Catholic Heritage Archive.

Scotland, Linlithgowshire (West Lothian), Electoral Registers 1864-1931

We've added over a million names to this collection in partnership with the British Library.

As voting lists were compiled annually, you're likely to find your ancestor featured more than once. Your search could reveal:

Your relatives' names and addresses
A description of their property
Their occupations or ages (sometimes)
The names and addresses of their landlords

Published as searchable PDF documents, using keywords and wildcard searches can help you pinpoint the record you're looking for.

Scotland BillionGraves Cemetery Index

More than 59,000 records have been added to our cemetery index for Scotland.

Cemetery records not only help you discover where and when your ancestor died, they can also provide you with important information on birth and marriage dates.

The grave of Flora MacDonald, one of many powerful women at the centre of Scotland's Jacobite Rebellion.

Our partnership with BillionGraves aims to save you time and money as you search for your family's gravesites. BillionGraves is the largest resource of its kind online, with over 12 million GPS-tagged headstone and burial records.

Newspapers

This week, we've added five brand new titles to our newspaper collection:

Wakefield and West Riding Herald covering the years 1839, 1844, 1853-1871, 1873-1896 and 1898-1913
South Yorkshire Times and Mexborough & Swinton Times covering the years 1877-1897, 1899-1942 and 1956-1959
Link covering the years 1915-1921
Wakefield Free Press covering the years 1860-1891 and 1894-1900
Wakefield Advertiser & Gazettecovering the years 1906-1925

As well as those brand new editions, Cricket has been updated with pages from 1882-1913.

Findmypast Fridays live

What have this week's new records and newspapers helped unlock in your past? Perhaps a Scottish chapter of your family story has been shaped by these latest releases. We'd love to hear about your discoveries. Reach out to us on social media using #WhereWillYourPastTakeYou? for a chance to be featured.