Scotland Roman Catholic Parish Burials

Each record provides an image of the sacramental register from The Scottish Catholic Archives and a transcript of the vital details.

• Name

• Sex

• Age

• Denomination

• Birth year

• Death year

• Burial year

• Burial date

• Burial place

• Cemetery

• Parish

• Diocese

• County

• Country

• Archive

• Reference

• Volume and year range

• Section and sub section

Image

The images may give you more information about your ancestor, for example

• Marital status

• Cause of death

• Date of re-interment

• Name of the person ordering interment – in some cases, this is the next of kin

• Burial location

• Comments about the person – for example, Alistair MacEachey’s record tells us that he was ‘a lovely holy man.’

The Scotland Roman Catholic Burials contain burial and interment registers from all eight Scottish dioceses: Aberdeen, Argyll & The Isles, Dunkeld, Galloway, Glasgow, Motherwell, St Andrews & Edinburgh, and Paisley. You will find burial records from three municipal cemeteries: Mount Vernon Cemetery, Old Dalbeth Cemetery, and St Peter's Dalbeth Cemetery. The collection is extensive, but there are gaps. For a full list of the parishes and year ranges available consult the Scotland Roman Catholic parish list available in the Useful links and resources. Findmypast is dedicated to expanding this collection and acquiring registers from missing parishes.

In each parish, the parish priest was responsible for the sacramental registers. The details of all sacraments performed were supposed to be recorded; however, some registers may have been lost or not properly kept. Furthermore, the formats and standards of registers will vary from parish to parish.

In the records, we found the name of John MacDonald who lived to the old age of 111. MacDonald was buried at St Mary’s Cathedral on 29 September 1826. By searching the newspapers, we were able to uncover more about MacDonald. The Bristol Mirror conveyed that MacDonald ‘served as a private in the 15th Regiment of the Foot for 14 years and was discharged on a pension in 1749, in consequence of being wounded in both thighs. He walked about not many months previous to his death’. Another article in the Inverness Courier adds further detail about MacDonald’s life: ‘He was a sufferer at the [Great Fire of Edinburgh] in November 1824, having been carried out of his house in a helpless condition by his daughter, whose anxiety was solely directed to the preservation of her aged parent’.

Margaret Sinclair

Margaret Sinclair, known as the ‘Edinburgh wonder worker’, was born in Edinburgh in 1900 in a tenement building. To earn money, she worked in McVitie’s biscuit factory. Later, Margaret was called to religious life and entered the Colettine Poor Clares, a convent dedicated to working with those in poverty. Margaret took the religious name Mary Francis of the Five Wounds and lived a life of penance and prayer. Only two years later, she contracted tuberculosis and died on 24 November 1925 in Warley, Essex. The Scotland Roman Catholic Parish burials holds two records for Margaret Sinclair. One record shows, in 1927, her body was returned to her home city and re-interred at Mount Vernon, Liberton, Edinburgh. After her death, many have attributed miracles through prayers to Margaret. In 1978, Pope Paul VI declared Margaret Sinclair as Venerable, which means that she was a servant of God and heroic in her virtues. A campaign to canonise Margaret as a saint has continued. A second record tells us that in 2003, Margaret Sinclair was re-interred at St Patricks Church in Edinburgh. It was at this church that Margaret was baptised and received her first Holy Communion. Today, it is the home of the National Shrine of the Venerable Margaret Sinclair.

• Begin your search broadly with just a name.

• If needed, you can narrow your results by including additional search criteria such as a year or place.