Hi Lesley, >Indeed, it's amazing that any church records survived! In addition, >anyone subscribing to one of the non-conformist denominations will >not appear as their records are in the NAS (formerly SRO) where >they survive. As far as I know, they're not yet indexed (when I went >to look for an ancestor, I was handed an old exercise book - the >original register!). Depending on when the family converted, it can Yup, they're largely not indexed, and many of the churches don't leave surviving registers for all their existence (especially into 18th century). Another category of people who can be frequently missed by Scottish parish registers are children who were illegitimate. In the early 19th century and earlier there's a good chance the local kirk session would have dragged in the mother for a quizzing, but any subsequent record (including of a baptism) would often go into the kirk session minutes (held at the NAS/SRO, if they survive) - not into the parish registers. >The Borders were a hot bed of dissent - the Minister for Whitsome >complained in his (1790s) Statistical Account entry that about a >third of the folk in his parish were Free Church members, and >there's no reason to think that Whitsome was better or worse than >any other parish I agree. Actually I have quite a few short quotes from ministers in the Statistical Account among my Scottish Border GENUKI parish pages. The Jedburgh one springs to mind at the moment, and checking the Eckford GENUKI page I see that the 18th century minister there was lamenting in the Statistical Account about the state of his parish's registers. For anyone who doesn't know about GENUKI it's at http://www.genuki.org.uk/ and is hierarchical e.g. follow the links through UK&Ireland, then Scotland, then Roxburghshire, then Eckford to reach the latter's parish page. GENUKI (started 1995) is an online UK and Ireland genealogical information service. Best wishes. Viv