A new year and a new blog for Scottish Kin! We will bring you a mixture of hints and tips for those who are researching their own Scottish family history; occasional news items from the world of Scottish genealogy research; and interesting stories about Scottish ancestors that we come across in our genealogy travels around Scotland and research in the archives.

If there’s anything you would like us to cover, please let us know.

Firstly some news for those who are researching their own Scottish family history.

As part of their New Year celebrations, ScotlandsPeople have announced that their Scottish Catholic Parish Register indexes will be free to search for the next seven days (until 9th January 2016). As they say “the Catholic Parish Registers are records of sacramental events recorded by the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland between 1703 and 1903” - mainly births/baptisms, marriages, deaths and burials. Most of the surviving Catholic parish registers are pre-1855, and record keeping varied between parishes and between years. The information may also be recorded in Latin, rather than English.

And with the New Year ScotlandsPeople have also released their annual update of the images available to view and download on the website. This means that Scottish births registered in 1915, marriages in 1940 and deaths in 1965 can now be viewed. For privacy reasons birth, marriage and death records are only available to view on the site once their closure period has expired - 100 years for births, 75 years for marriages and 50 years for deaths. 

Good luck with your research! And don’t forget that if you would like to know more about your family’s history but are not quite sure where to begin, Scottish Kin’s genealogy services include an Essential Research package to help you get off to a great start.