Often the parish clerk did the recording and not the ministers. Looking thru the Maxton parish records I found an inscription written by my ancestor Robert HANDYSIDE. In it he says he has recorded only those baptisms that had been paid for. HANDYSIDE was the parish schoolmaster at the time. He also was paid to act as Kirk session recorder and spells his own name differently over the years. His children are recorded with different spellings of HANDASYDE also. The Maxton Monumental Inscriptions XIV,published by the Borders Family History has a list of Ministers. It shows David Clerk 1770-1776. No Clerks in the MI's though. >Hi All, > >I have been looking through some of the OPR's and admiring (or trying to >decipher) some of the handwriting over the years. I have noticed that for the >parishes that I am currently searching through that the handwriting styles >appear to change at about the same time periods. This has drawn me to ask if >the same parish priest be responsible for a number of neighboring parishes - or >would there have been 1 priest per parish. > >Does anyone have of know of a list of Parish Priests for the different Border >Parishes? I am particularly interested in Bowden, Maxton and Selkirk around >1750 - 1780. > >The other reason that this is particularly interesting for me is that I have >just found 3 distinct records from around this period where my CLARK family has >been spelt CLERK. If it was the same priest then this is fairly understandable >- however if different priests all spelt it this way then maybe the family at >the time used to spell it this way? I know names change spelling all the time - >but it is interesting to pinpoint a period that a particular spelling may have >been used in. > >Kind regards, >Cameron Clark. >Melbourne, >Australia. >

I have been following the discussion re the spelling of CLERK/CLARK/CLARKE with interest as I have CLARK connections just over the border in Norham. I have done a count of the 1881 census for the Eastern border counties, Berwick, Peebles, Roxburgh and Selkirk and the spellings are as follows:- CLARK 478 CLERK 9 CLARKE 19 So it would appear that by 1881 the spelling had normalised to CLARK and that CLERK had almost disappeared. Best regards - Mike Simpson, Penrith, NSW, Australia Email: agene@bigfoot.com HomePage: http://www.bigfoot.com/~agene