Hi all, Re the query about Kirk Session records. In my experience (which admittedly is for Angus rather than Argyll) the amount of information on these tends to reflect the general state of the church records so you might not necessarily find extra births etc. However in the case of the records for 'my' parish in Angus, which is a rural one (Lintrathen), there are quite extensive lists from time to time of, for instance, all the heads of household in communion at a certain date, which may well be of use in tracking someone down even if you don't have a birth record. I think the records will probably vary such a lot from one parish to another that it's impossible to predict whether any of this kind of list will be included. At the National Archives you can view most of the Kirk Session records on computer screen although they are not available online - I don't know if there is a plan to put them on line or not. Hope this helps, best wishes, Sheila Perry

I understand that the Kirk Session records will eventually form part of the Scotlandspeople website. The team that digitised the Wills and Testaments section of Scotlandspeople is currently working flat out to digitise the Kirk Session minutes. I understand that the first stage of the roll-out of the internet version, target date March 2007, will be to churches and local authorities. Digitising the documents does not seem to be a problem. However, indexing them has been. The time required to produce a comprehensive index would add years to the completion date for the project. SCAN, who are doing the digitising, has devised a relatively simple index based on parish name and year. How well it will work in practice will only be discovered once the project is available to go on line. Iain McKenzie ----- Original Message ----- From: "Sheila Perry" <[email protected]> To: <[email protected]> Sent: Monday, October 16, 2006 9:34 AM Subject: [ARGYLL] kirk session records vs igi > Hi all, > Re the query about Kirk Session records. In my experience (which > admittedly is for Angus rather than Argyll) the amount of information on > these tends to reflect the general state of the church records so you > might not necessarily find extra births etc. However in the case of the > records for 'my' parish in Angus, which is a rural one (Lintrathen), there > are quite extensive lists from time to time of, for instance, all the > heads of household in communion at a certain date, which may well be of > use in tracking someone down even if you don't have a birth record. I > think the records will probably vary such a lot from one parish to another > that it's impossible to predict whether any of this kind of list will be > included. > At the National Archives you can view most of the Kirk Session records on > computer screen although they are not available online - I don't know if > there is a plan to put them on line or not. > Hope this helps, > best wishes, > Sheila Perry > > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > [email protected] with the word 'unsubscribe' without the > quotes in the subject and the body of the message >