Births, Baptisms & Marriages

Old Parish Registers
Before civil registration of births, deaths & marriages began in 1855 the only official records of these events were those entered in church registers. The amount of information entered in the register varied between parishes and between ministers, and it was often very sparse. The usual practice was to record marriages and baptisms, but not deaths or burials. In the later baptism records of some parishes the date of birth of the child was noted as well as the date of baptism. The parish register records were not always complete; in some registers, as in that of Tiree in the 1700s, there were gaps of weeks or months where the minister of the day neglected to enter marriages and baptisms that he had performed. Tiree was part of the Parish of Tiree & Coll, but a separate register was kept for each island.

Tiree Parish Register 1766-1774
This single register, which records marriages, baptisms and proceedings of kirk sessions from 15th July 1766 to 20th May 1774, is believed to be the oldest surviving register of the Parish of Tiree. An undated transcript of entries in the register was made some years ago by Archibald Strath Maxwell, a professional genealogy researcher, and later reproduced on LDS Film No.0845450. The data presented here were transcribed from the LDS film by Ann Hentschel and edited by Keith Dash. To load the new transcript, click here .

Indexing the Tiree Old Parish Registers
Work on indexing the marriages, baptisms and births in the Old Parish Registers started 20 or more years ago. It began with the vision of Donald MacFadyen of Ontario, Canada, who wanted to see all of the information in the registers available to the public. Several people worked on the project over the years, and in 2004 Louise MacDougall started pulling the pieces together. Donald MacFadyen's vision is gradually coming to fruition, thanks to Lynn Clark, Barbara Humphrey and others who have put in long hours of exacting work doing the data entry. Louise, the Project Coordinator, intends to have all the records available in both searchable Excel format and printable PDF format. Her goal is to have the present draft files proofread and merged some time in 2007.

Tiree Marriages 1766-1854
With thanks to Donald MacFadyen, Lynn Clark and Louise MacDougall. The index can be downloaded here, either as a searchable Excel spreadsheet or a printable 35-page PDF table . You can print one or more pages, or all 35.

McPhaiden Baptisms 1766-1854
With thanks to Donald MacFadyen, Lynn Clark and Louise MacDougall. This set contains all the baptisms where the child's father or mother was a McPhaiden or a variant of that name. The set can be dowloaded here, either as a searchable Excel spreadsheet or a printable 16-page PDF table .

Tiree Baptisms 1766-1855
With thanks to Barbara Humphrey, Louise MacDougall and others. This will be an index of all the baptisms from 1766 to 1854, excluding those where the child's father or mother is a McPhaiden or a variant of that name. The data are in 3 sets: 1766-1800; 1801-1825; and 1826-1855. They may take a little time to load.
Tiree Baptisms 1766-1800 can be downloaded here, either as a searchable Excel spreadsheet or a printable 40-page PDF table .

Tiree Baptisms 1801-1825 can be downloaded here, either as a searchable Excel spreadsheet or a printable 53-page PDF table .

Tiree Baptisms 1826-1855 can be downloaded here, either as a searchable Excel spreadsheet or a printable 52-page PDF table .

Use Landscape setting to print the PDF tables, and make yourself a cup of tea while you wait.

Civil Registration
Civil registration of births, deaths & marriages began in 1855.

Tiree Births 1855-1875
The International Genealogical Index (IGI) has an index of civil registrations of births and marriages in Scotland for the years 1855-1875. Russ McGillivray has extracted the Tiree births and formatted them into a searchable Excel spreadsheet, which is reproduced here with his permission. To load the spreadsheet, click here .