Buchans in Old Parish Registers

In this post I tabulate the number of Buchans in the baptism, marriage and burial records in the Old Parish Records for each county. These records are found on ScotlandsPeople and the indexes are free to view. The purpose of doing this comparison was to explore where the Buchan families were distributed across Scotland and ask whether this might inform thinking about our Buchan origins. 

Old Parish Registers

"The Old Parish Registers (OPRs) comprise the records of births and baptisms, banns and marriages and deaths and burials kept by individual parishes of the Established Church (Church of Scotland) before the introduction of civil registration in 1855.

The parish minister or the session clerk usually assumed responsibility for maintaining the registers, but since there was no standard format employed, record keeping varied enormously from parish to parish and also from year to year. As a result, the information may be sparse, unreliable and difficult to read. The oldest register dates from 1553 (baptisms and banns from Errol, Perthshire), but although there was a requirement from 1552 that parishes record baptisms and marriages, many did not commence until much later, and some more remote areas only have registers from the early 19th century. Some registers have been lost or destroyed and the condition of the surviving 3500 is variable. The National Records of Scotland holds the surviving original registers.

Registration in the Church of Scotland's registers was costly and unpopular, so many people did not bother to register events at all. Although details of some non-conformists can be found in Established Church registers, many members of other religious denominations chose to have events registered in their own churches. In addition, rapid urbanisation during the 19th century contributed to the diminishing influence of the Church and a decrease in registration in these areas. It was estimated at the time that as few as 30% of events actually occurring were being recorded for some urban parishes.

Civil registration started in 1855. However in a small number of districts the local registrar was not in place at the very beginning and therefore there are a small number of events that are recorded in Old Parish Registers but are not featured in our statutory records."

(1) The text above is on ScotlandsPeople Church Registers 

Approach to understanding the results

I have separated the records according to the time periods of 'before/in 1700', and '1701-1854 '.  As OPR entries exist from the 1550s, this first time frame addresses the late-medieval pre-industrial times, when perhaps people had not moved far from ancient locations. Of course there were two major wars fought in the first half of the 18th century, and perhaps Buchan families were involved. Population explosion occurred in 1701-1854, trebling from one million in 1707 to 2.98 million in 1855. This change is described in the Government report Scotland's Population Story. It is also likely that record creation and survival improved over time. 

Most of us will want to find our Scottish ancestors in the OPR. The period before 1855 encompasses the time when almost all our Buchan family were living in Scotland, and makes a convenient (if not enforced) line in the sand to explore the movements of people.

Traditional district associate with Buchan surname

The surname Buchan is associated with the lands of the Earls of Buchan being Aberdeenshire. There are 9,338 registrations for Buchans, with a small percentage of duplicate entries. This occurred when people married from different parishes, and occasionally with baptisms and also with burials. 

George Buchan who died in April 1818 had a burial record in Borthwick Parish where he died, and one also in Newbattle Parish where he was buried. 

Baptisms 

There were 5,059 baptisms, with just 511 before/in 1700. There are no surprises regarding the distribution of Buchan children when baptised. The hand-coloured image below shows the expected concentration of Buchan children baptised between 1700-1854 in Aberdeenshire. In fact this number was 1787, nearly 40% of all Buchan children baptised. Those counties with counts between 300-999 are all under 500. Four Scottish cities are given separate totals: Aberdeen City (in Aberdeenshire), Dundee City (in Angus), Edinburgh (in Midlothian) and Glasgow (in Lanarkshire). In every county with a City total, the city count is the vast majority of that county with the exception of Aberdeen, where the vast proportion of the Buchans are living in the rural regions. 

These numbers argue, unexpectedly, for the origin of the Buchan name to be Aberdeenshire. Over centuries Buchans have migrated to the counties surrounding Aberdeen - Perthshire, Angus and Stirlingshire. There is a geographical interruption to migration paths to reach Midlothian. Edinburgh City, as the capital of Scotland, and a major port of the realm, was a clear attraction to migrants from other counties. Here a population of Buchans has probably sailed to Edinburgh, rather than gradually walked there. [Fine grained time-period analysis would probably confirm this sweeping overview of the movement of the name over time. I may do that analysis later]. 

The purple counties have between 107 and 125 baptisms, and are contiguous with the more populated counties. The counties in lime green have between 22 and 68 Buchan baptisms over 154 years. Those in teal have under have less than 20 baptisms in this time. Indeed nine counties have 3 or less.

Distribution of baptisms of Buchan children,1700-1854

The graphs below compare the numbers and the proportion of births in the top 5 counties, for baptisms, marriages and burials, and includes numbers from pre-1701. Baptisms and burials are likely to be under-reported, especially the burials as you'll see below. Marriages are more likely to be registered, but non-clergy, or irregular marriages, remained legal in Scotland till the 20th century. The distribution of marriages follows exactly the grouping of counties into the colours shown above.

The highest number of children baptised in each time period was Aberdeen. The top 4 counties were the same for each time frame, with Fife included before/in 1700 and Angus included after 1700, as shown in the image below. Before/in 1700 there are similar proportions for Aberdeen (20.7%), Stirling (19.4%), Perth (18%) and Midlothian (17.9%). This suggests that the name emerged centuries before the commencement of these baptism registers, and of course, the history supports this as the Earldom of Buchan was in power for many centuries before 1700.

The vast majority of baptisms in Midlothian occurred in Edinburgh, encompassing the large parishes of Edinburgh City, North and South Leith, Canongate, St Cuthberts and Duddingston among about 28 parishes/congregations aggregated by Scotlands People, and from now I call these parishes 'Edinburgh'. There are few baptisms in the rural parishes. Before 1701, there is just one baptism in Liberton, one in Colinton (Scotlands People add them into Edinburgh City), and six in Inveresk & Mussleburgh (east of Leith).

From 1701 families emerge in Dalkeith, Lasswade, Peniciuk, Newbattle and Glencorse. There is just one family in Borthwick being ours, and just one family in Newbattle; and I strongly suspect these are related. 

Marriages

2,273 marriages were recorded, with just 188 before 1700. Aberdeen, Perth and Midlothian figure in the image below. Fife drops out of the top 5 counties after 1700, while Stirling joins the list with the fourth highest number of Buchan marriages after 1700.

Aberdeen accounts for 34.5% of all marriages, followed by Perth 19.5% and Fife  14.3%.

Burials

Burials were the least likely record to be found in the OPR. Here there is a significant difference between Edinburgh (part of Midlothian) and the other counties. Only 29 burials were recorded before 1700, and nearly 50% (14) were in Edinburgh City. 

For all categories of record, the clear majority of Buchan registrations in Midlothian occurred in Edinburgh rather than in rural parishes: 59 of 66 baptisms and all marriages and burials before 1700 occurred in Edinburgh. This trend continued after 1700; 325 of 438 baptisms (76%), 220 of 254 marriages (87%) and 434 of 509 burials (85%) were registered in Edinburgh rather than rural parishes. These numbers suggest that migration into Midlothian occurred via Edinburgh, not unexpectedly. There is a separate post to come that follows the movements of Buchans in the rural parishes, and why this argues for our Buchan family to have come from the Dalkeith Buchan family. Again the larger population of Dalkeith as the major rural town in the 18th and 19th centuries makes this a logical migration path.

Edinburgh City [within Midlothian] has the unique position in these records of having more burials than baptisms after 1700. There were 509 burials in Midlothian and 434 in Edinburgh City after 1700 [ie 75 in rural parishes], compared to 438 baptisms in Midlothian and 325 baptisms in Edinburgh City [ie 113 in rural parishes]. This can only be due to the practices of church officials in Edinburgh City primarily, but the increased likelihood of burials in Midlothian rural parishes is certainly higher than most other counties.  

Dying in a city certainly increased the likelihood of a burial being registered. Aberdeen City had 110 burials compared to 114 baptisms after 1700 (96%), while the rural parishes had only 166 burials compared to 1673 baptisms (just 10%).  Glasgow City had 75 burials compared to 106 baptisms after 1700 (71%), and Dundee City had 29 burials after 1700 compared to 37 baptisms (78%). Church scholars may well know why this is the case, but better resourcing is a likely factor.

Prior to 1700 only two burials occurred outside Edinburgh parishes, being both in Liberton. I chose to bring Liberton out of the Ediburgh City parish list that ScotlandsPeople use, as it is geographically a more rural-looking parish. From 1701-1854 there were 75 burials outside Edinburgh parishes, of which 51 where in Dalkeith. The only burial in Borthwick was the record pertaining to George Buchan who was actually buried in Newbattle. Two other burials in Newbattle were the son of George Buchan in 1808 [whom I believe to be our George's ninth child], and a David aged 34 in 1841. 

The dual reporting of George's burial in 1818 was the only duplicated one amongst the rural parishes. I thought it was important to see how many duplicate burial entries there were in all Midlothian. I found 47 clearly duplicated burials. I couldn't buy these certificates to understand why they were duplicated as they were for George in 1818. Therefore the number of individual burials between 1701 and1854 was really only 462, still exceeding baptisms. 

There are limitations to be kept in mind when analysing index entries. Indexes are extracted in the first place, and human errors creep in. The dual reporting of burials and marriages is mentioned above. Merely perusing the lists of baptisms confirms that there are duplicate entries, sometimes with different dates. Would this have been done if the parents were from different parishes, rather than a whole second ceremony? Removing such duplicates would probably not change the general sense of the movements of Buchans that I have described above. I haven't exhaustively checked the Roman Catholic records, but my sense of the Minor Churches is that there are only a few Buchans there. 

Counties with no or few Buchans

Some counties had none or very few Buchans living before 1855. No Buchans were baptised in Sutherland, Kirkcudbright and Bute.  Other counties with few Buchans baptised (with the numbers pre-1700, post-1700 in brackets) were Wigtown (0,1), Ross&Cromarty (0,1), Selkirk (0,2), Navin (0,2), Dumbarton (0,2), Moray (0,3), Shetland (0,4), Dumfries (0,4) and Inverness (0,6). There were also no baptisms before 1700 in Caithness, Peebles and Argyll. Many of these areas are the Highlands and Islands, and counties to the south west and to the south east. 

A potential 'path of migration' of Buchans

Surname research generally aims to identify the earliest recorded uses of a surname and infer from changing population numbers how that surname moved locations over time. The area with the highest number of any surname is thought to represent the location where the surname emerged. Clearly many surnames in Scotland are of the type where (usually) a man adopted the name of a local authority figure see Guild-of-One-Name-Studies. Thus the highest number of Buchans are unsurprisingly in Aberdeenshire, Perthshire and Stirlingshire - an arc of Scotland heading towards the other concentration of Buchans, in Edinburgh City. The Buchan surname clearly arose in Aberdeenshire.

But what of those counties in between Stirlingshire and Midlothian? The counties around Midlothian actually have few Buchan baptisms, especially before 1700; Berwick (1,18), Peebles (0,13), Selkirk (0,2), East Lothian (2, 68) and Lanarkshire (2,118).West Lothian is the connecting county between Midlothian and Stirlingshire, and has the highest number of Buchan baptisms (11,28) before 1700 outside this arc.

This has been my first pass over these records, and I will check and triple check them before preparing a article for the Guild of One Name Studies, although Buchan is not my the name I am researching as my registered One-Name-Study. That is McGuiness of County Clare. 

Nevertheless there is enough suggestion in these preliminary analyses to warrant presenting them here.