Where can I find kirk session records for a parish?

Kirk session records are the responsibility of the Keeper of the Records of Scotland. The records of most kirk sessions are held at the National Archives of Scotland. However, some are then sent back (the National Archives use the term ‘retransmitted’) to local archives under what is known as ‘charge and superintendence’ (that is, they are kept by local archives under certain conditions). To find out whether the kirk session records for a parish survive, and whether they are held at the National Archives of Scotland or a local authority archive contact the National Archives of Scotland or the local archive concerned. The responsibilities of heritors, kirk sessions and parochial boards overlapped to some extent, and this is reflected in the surviving records of many parishes. Some heritors’ records survive among kirk session records and vice versa. For example some kirk session minute books contain minutes of heritors’ meetings, and the minute books of some parochial boards predate 1845, and begin as the minute book of heritors’ meetings before becoming the minute book of the parochial boards. Many kirk sessions continue to provide for the poor out of church collections for several years after 1845. For example, the minutes of the kirk session of Greenlaw contain lists of poor who received contributions after communion services until 1881. The records of the heritors of Dirleton parish contain poor rolls from 1825 until 1847. For any given parish the researcher should check the catalogues to the kirk session, heritors’ and parochial board minutes.