According to an announcement from ScotlandsPeople:
Thousands of volumes of historical records from the collections of National Records of Scotland (NRS) are now available online for the first time, covering the years 1559 to 1900.
Images of more than a million pages from the kirk session and other court records of the Church of Scotland, containing details of key events in communities across the country, have been added to ScotlandsPeople, NRS’s online research service.
Drainie kirk session minutes, 1707, CH2/384/2, page 3
These records offer remarkable insights into the everyday lives of ordinary Scots, recording important moments such as births, marriages and deaths. The church also adjudicated on paternity of children and provided basic education, as well as disciplining parishioners for what could be called anti-social behaviour – drunkenness, cursing and breaking the Sabbath.
The newly-added records also include accounts of how people dealt with exceptional historical events such as:
- wars
- witchcraft trials
- epidemics
- crop failures
- extreme weather
Drainie kirk session minutes, 1707, CH2/384/2, page 3Further details may be found at https://www.historyscotland.com/history/scottish-history/over-1-million-records-from-the-collections-of-national-records-of-sco#.