Where can I find parochial board, parish council and poor relief records for a parish?

The records of most parochial boards and parish councils have passed to local authorities in Scotland. Many are now held by local authority archives, some are with local authority library services and a few are with the National Records of Scotland. In some areas (e.g. Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire) the survival rate is very good. In other areas (e.g. Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire) very little survives. In general, very little survives for the parochial boards of the major cities, Edinburgh, Aberdeen and Dundee, except Glasgow, where huge runs of application registers survive for Glasgow City, Barony and Govan parishes (held by Glasgow City Archives). The National Records of Scotland hold parochial board and parish council records for some parishes in East Lothian (CO7/7, DC4/4-12, DC5/4-5, DC7/4), Midlothian (CO2/77-91), and Wigtownshire (CO4/30-47). For parochial board and parish council records for other parishes you should contact the appropriate local authority archive, in the first instance.

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 cointinued 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.