Orkney Old Parish Records

This page has been updated. Please read the description of what is included in this database. Thanks

I have transcribed all the Orkney records from the 1995 LDS Scottish Churh Records CD and put them into a MySQL Database. According to the LDS, the index is a comprehensive, country-wide index to the Old Parochial Registers of the Established Church of Scotland (Presbyterian), but also includes vital records from other Scottish churches. It has been brought to my attention that while the records are comprehensive with regard to the registers, they are not comprehensive in that they do not include every birth, christening, and marriage record for the Orkney Island Parishes and do not include any other churches. It was also brought to my attention that the B events in the database might not be Birth records but could be Baptism records. It is not to be construed to be the all-inclusive and is only a guide to further research. Hopefully any researchers will find the ancestor they are looking for here and then order the appropriate record from the Scottish GRO site. This is a work in progress. Most of the data is there but I need to work on various ways of extracting the data. I did go through and clean out many duplicate records but left in any questionable records. I also performed SOUNDEX searches based on the Father and Mother's names and created a Family Research Number that joins all the siblings together. There is a few duplicates in here where the marriage was registered in more than one parish on the same date.

You may search on First and/or Last names but you must put in a Last name. You can search using the exact spelling, part of the name, or a Soundex of the name. You can not use wild cards.

When you get the results of your search on the next page you can click on the FRN number on the far right and see all the other siblings. If there is no FRN, it usually means that both parents are not listed.

Search child's name. For the first name I would suggest using the "Contains" selection as many entries have more than one Given Name. When searching for names that start with a C or K like Catharine use the "Contains" selection and search for ath. This will find all Catharines, Katharines, Kathrins, etc.

First Name:
Last Name: *Field Required

Search for children based on parent's names. I suggest using the SOUNDEX choice here due to the many different spellings of the last names. You must at least fill in either Mother's last name or Father's last name.

Father First Name:
Father Last Name:
Mother First Name:
Mother Last Name:

Search for marriage date. I suggest using the SOUNDEX choice here due to the many different spellings of the last names. You must at least fill in either Bride's last name or Groom's last name.

Groom's First Name:
Groom's Last Name:
Bride's First Name:
Bride's Last Name: