Births, deaths and marriages

If you are coming to Edinburgh to see Scottish birth, death and marriage records in person, then you should visit the National Records of Scotland. They are the official source for these documents.

If you can't visit in person, some of the records are available for a fee on the Scotland's People website.

Parish indexes and records

We have a microfiche index to the Church of Scotland's old parish registers up to 1854. They include dates of births, baptisms and marriages, deaths and burials.

Scottish Parish Records is a CD-ROM resource which allows you search across many publications. It includes church records, family papers, testaments, protocol books, gravestone inscriptions, and records of Writs.

Gravestones

Gravestones can tell us when a person was born and when they died. They might also show if they were married, had children, where they lived, or what job they did.

We have an index of monumental inscriptions which can help you find gravestone inscriptions of your ancestors. Also see 'A list of published & unpublished monumental inscriptions held by the Scottish Genealogy Society' by Angus Mitchell, Mary Mitchell and Marjorie Stewart.

There are also monumental inscriptions in the India Papers collection.

Statutory Death Registers of Scotland

The McKirdy Index on microfiche alphabetically lists records from the Statutory Death Registers of Scotland.