This is a Message Board Post that is gatewayed to this mailing list. Author: Forfarian Surnames: Classification: queries Message Board URL: http://boards.rootsweb.com/localities.britisles.scotland.ans.general/5540.1.1.1/mb.ashx Message Board Post: Ah, yes. I have had a further look and all the entries in the IGI do refer to the same person, though there is a remarkable lack of unanimity about his date and place of birth, his date of marriage and even the exact date of his death, suggesting that much of the information in the IGI is guesswork. Only the year and place of his death seem to agree. The principal source of information about births in Scotland before 1855 is the registers of baptism kept by the Church of Scotland. Few of these survive from before 1700; there is a list of parishes, with the dates of surviving records, at http://www.gro-scotland.gov.uk/famrec/hlpsrch/opr-cov.html You can search the parish registers online at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. However I am not hopeful of finding a baptism entry for your Silvester Prophet. A search of the online indexes returned no results. Other churches also kept baptismal registers, but very few, if any, have survived from the 17th century. Most of those which have survived are in the care of the National Archives of Scotland www.nas.gov.uk. On the Scotland's People site there are searchable indexes to wills and testaments, and there are a few Prophets listed, but no Silvester. All of them are testaments dative, which means that they are not wills written during the lifetime of the person who has died, so they are unlikely to contain extensive lists of beneficiaries There may be other sources which could shed light on Silvester Prophet in the National Archives of Scotland www.nas.gov.uk but most of these are not online and you would need to get a searcher familiar with the archives to look on your behalf, because the majority of these documents are not online. The online catalogue has 103 references to Silvester and 94 to Sylvester, none of them your Silvester Prophet, but by no means everything in the archives is in the online catalogue. You may also like to check the National Archives in London http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/. Again, to search there you would have to get someone to go on your behalf. If you have got back to around 1700, you have got much further back than most people with Scots ancestors. Unless Silvester was from a wealthy or landowning family, or had a criminal record, the likelihood of finding much information about him is small. Important Note: The author of this message may not be subscribed to this list. If you would like to reply to them, please click on the Message Board URL link above and respond on the board.