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Old Parish Registers 1553-1854

The ScotlandsPeople Centre provides access to indexes and digital images of surviving Old Parish Registers of

— Births and Christenings - 1553 to 1854

— Banns and Marriages - 1553 to 1854

— Deaths and Burials - 1553 to 1854

What are Old Parish Registers?

Old Parish Registers are the records which the Church of Scotland kept of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials for the 300 years before the start of civil registration in 1855.

Civil registration started in 1855, however in a small number of districts the local registrar was not in place at the very beginning and therefore there are a small number of events that are recorded in Old Parish Registers but are not featured in our statutory records.
Even though the OPRs officially stop at 1854, later OPRs can be accessed in the same way as all other records, simply by keying the required year(s) into the input boxes.

Please be aware that we are continuing to expand the indexes as new entries are discovered in the original registers or documents like the Kirk Session records. Thus, even if you don't find your ancestors when you carry out your search, do try again at a later date.

Details of the OPRs that survived are available here. You can also consult pre-1855 birth, death and marriage transcripts and indexes in the Centre's Library. This collection covers registers of the Episcopal Church of Scotland, Free Church of Scotland, Quaker and Roman Catholic churches as well as private records and some Old Parish Registers where a transcript may be helpful if you are unable to read the original.

Example of a death and burial entry from the Registers, 1787

Old Parish Registers 1553-1854

What are Old Parish Registers?

Example of death entry from Registers, 1787