What records can I find in the Mitchell: Registrars, Special Collections and Glasgow City Archives?
The Old Parish Registers (OPRs) of births/baptisms, banns/marriages, and deaths/burials kept by individual parishes of the Established Church (Church of Scotland) have been digitally imaged. Copies of these images for all of Scotland, together with a full index, are one of the many resources available as part of the ScotlandsPeople network, which you access in the Registrars within the Mitchell on payment of a daily fee.
Special Collections holds microfilm copies of Old Parish Registers for a number of areas in Scotland which can be accessed free of charge.
There are gaps within the OPRs. The earliest record is for 1538, but only a few records pre-date 1600. Many are much later.
To find out what registers survive, you should check ScotlandsPeople. In theory, registration was compulsory for all denominations, and while you may find records of other denominations, a high percentage of members of other churches through principle did not register their events within the records of the Established Church.
There was no standard form of entry and lack of regular inspections means that the information contained in the original registers are varied and can often very scant.
The best baptismal registers record:
The best marriage registers record:
name of bride and groom
occupation of groom
fathers’ names
where married and by whom
residence, assume home parish if does not say
witnesses
proclamation and/or marriage date (assume proclamation date if does not say)
There may be two entries if the couple belonged to different parishes.
Burial registers are the least well-kept and few survive. The registers may record:
date
name
residence
disease
location of burial, lair
The City Archives holds the records the original records for the Church of Scotland and those churches which had seceded from the established church in the 18th and 19th centuries, as well as for many other denominations. You should check the kirk session records for:
birth, marriage and death entries engrossed in the minutes
cases of irregular marriage
pre-1855 registers, particularly in seceding churches, as their records were not part of the OPRs
In addition, the records of other denominations held by the City Archives include many pre-1855 registers.