Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Baptisms
Discover your Catholic Scottish ancestors. This collection holds baptism registers from all eight Scottish dioceses and encompasses over 300 years of record keeping.
See description
Discover your Catholic Scottish ancestors. This collection holds baptism registers from all eight Scottish dioceses and encompasses over 300 years of record keeping.
Learn more about these records
With each result, you will find a transcript and an image of the original sacramental register. The amount of information you discover is each record will depend on the parish’s standard of record keeping, the age of the document, and the document’s physical condition. Some records have been damaged and can be difficult to decipher. The transcript will include a combination of the following facts:
- Name
- Sex
- Birth year
- Birth date
- Baptism year
- Baptism date
- Denomination
- Baptism place
- Parish
- Diocese
- County
- Country
- Father’s name
- Mother’s name – a number of records will include the mother’s maiden name
- Volume
- Archive and reference
- Year range
- Section and subsection
Image
The images are an incredible source to add to your family tree. In some cases, they may give you extra facts about your ancestor such as
- Names of godparents or sponsors
- Legitimacy – the church was concerned with the legitimacy of each child, meaning whether the child’s parents were married. If they were not married, then the child was listed as illegitimate.
- Additional remarks – this may include notes explaining the person was a convert or a notation of when the person was confirmed or married.
Latin was the official language of the Roman Catholic Church, therefore, many of the sacramental registers were written in Latin. We have applied a Latin dictionary to the name search field. This gives our search the capability to search for the English and Latin versions of a name when the name variants option is selected.
Here is a list of common Latin words or phrases you may come across in the records.
- A me Infrascripto Parocho vel Vicario -- I the undersigned pastor or vicar
- Baptizandi Nomen -- baptised with the name
- Cognomen -- surname
Conjugum a me -- I married
- Die -- day
- Domicilium -- residence
- Ex parentibus legitimo Matrimonio junctis -- from the parents of a legitimate marriage
- Filium legitimum -- legitimate son (or child)
- Habitantibus in -- living in
- Matrina fuit -- the godmother was
- Mensis -- month
- Natus -- birth
- Nomina Parentum -- name of parents
- Patrinus fuit -- the sponsor of
- Sponsoribus -- sponsors
Search tips
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If you are having trouble finding your ancestor in the records, begin the search with only the person’s name. Then begin to narrow by county and year. The more you narrow your search, the fewer records you will search through.
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Search multiple years after your ancestor’s birth year. There may have been particular circumstances that prevented a baptism in the same year as your ancestor’s birth. You can also search up to 40 years later in case your ancestor was a convert and baptised as an adult.