I'm wondering if someone would point me in the right direction to find registrations for births, deaths, etc. within the Free Church for areas around Rathven, Buckie, Loosiemouth etc. I realize this includes several different Parishes. Thanks for any advice Jean Stewart

Jean Stewart wrote: >I'm wondering if someone would point me in the right direction to find registrations for births, deaths, etc. within the Free Church for areas around Rathven, Buckie, Loosiemouth etc. I realize this includes several different Parishes. Thanks for any advice > > Such records as survive are most likely to held by the National Archives of Scotland, although some are in local archives. There is a useful volume by Diane Baptie: "Registers of the Secession Churches in Scotland" (ISBN 0-874722-16-1 published by the Scottish Association of Family History Societies) which gives information on surviviving Registers from various of the breakaways from the Kirk of Scotland, of which the "Disruption" or foundation of the Free Kirk in 1843 was the last and largest. Various of these splinter groups subsequently merged in the later 19th and early 20th century, so some Registers of the Free Kirk for the period 1843-1855 may well have ended up with different denominations. The surviving records most commonly include baptisms, some have marriages, but very few list deaths. Gavin Bell

> I'm wondering if someone would point me in the right direction > to find > registrations for births, deaths, etc. within the Free Church > for areas around > Rathven, Buckie, Loosiemouth etc. I realize this includes > several different > Parishes. Thanks for any advice Buckie is in Rathven, and Lossiemouth is in Drainie, so that's only two parishes. The National Archives of Scotland has records of Drainie Free Church from 1845 to 1961. However the catalogue entry (CH3/745) does not specify whether or not they contain baptism, banns or burial records. There are also various records of Free Churches in Buckie, catalogue entry CH3/1524, starting in 1843. Again, the catalogue entry does not say whether or not they contain baptism, banns or burial records. As far as I am aware there were no separate Free Church burial grounds. If I am wrong no doubt someone will correct me. There might be microfilms of these records in the Local Heritage Centre in Elgin, but you'd have to ask about that. I don't recall having seen them. Unless you specifically want the church records, you can get all the necessary informatio after 1855 from the civil records of birth, marriage and death at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk HTH Anne

Hi Jean What time frame are you looking at? After 1855 when civil registration commenced all registrations would be on Scotlandspeople. Andy ----- Original Message ----- From: "Jean Stewart" <jean46@telus.net> To: <MORAY-L@rootsweb.com> Sent: Tuesday, August 04, 2009 12:02 PM Subject: [MORAY] Free Church > I'm wondering if someone would point me in the right direction to find > registrations for births, deaths, etc. within the Free Church for areas > around Rathven, Buckie, Loosiemouth etc. I realize this includes several > different Parishes. Thanks for any advice > > Jean Stewart > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > MORAY-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes > in the subject and the body of the message >