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What problems will I face tracing my tree through Old Parish Registers?

Foreign Death entry from Registers

The Parish Registers despite their incomplete and imperfect condition can still be of enormous help in tracing family lines back hundreds of years. However their comparative lack of information compared to the statutory records has to be kept in mind when using them. Below are a few of the problems you might encounter.

— The lack of mention of a mother in some baptism records can make tracing the parents marriage very difficult especially if the names involved were common in the area.

— Families might be baptised together which would mean that the date of baptism for a child may be years after their date of birth.

— The small pool of first names also creates difficulties, with a preponderance of men called John, James, William and Robert and most women seem to be called Margaret, Mary, Janet or Elizabeth!

— The constant name changing of ancestors can cause havoc with your research. Jean could later appear as Jessie or Jane. A child born Margaret could be known as Maggie in later life, or if you are searching for an Elizabeth bear in mind she may have preferred to have been known as Betsy.

— Surnames would evolve over the years leading to many different varieties of spelling or they may be spelt incorrectly due to people just not knowing how their name was spelt, leaving it up to the clerk or minister to spell the name how he liked. So names will have double letters one time and not the next e.g. Kinel or Kinnell or Betsy Johnstone might appear later as Elizabeth Johnston or Johnstoun!

— Other quirks which have to be looked out for include some child burials being indexed as baptisms especially if there is no first name of the child.

— Another complicating factor of the time was the high rate of infant mortality and this often led to parents naming successive children with the same name. This can lead to difficulty in finding out exactly which of the 4 John McDonalds born between 1710 and 1720 for example, was your ancestor.

You can also find pre-1855 death and burial information in the Library in the monumental inscriptions and miscellaneous transcripts and indexes series.