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Scottish Record Office Number: 178
(used by ScotlandsPeople, see Research tips, below)
Churches: Auchterless Parish Church, Auchterless, Church of Scotland
Cemeteries: list available from the Aberdeen & NE Scotland FHS (link under Research tips)
Old Parish Register Availabilty (within FamilySearch):
Baptisms: 1735-1854
Marriages: 1725-1854
Deaths: FamilySearch had no records
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NOTE: Civil registration of vital statistics was introduced to Scotland in 1855. Prior to that date births, marriages and deaths had been recorded in local churches in the Old Parish Registers (OPRs). The OPRs were collected by the Registrar for Scotland in Edinburgh as civil registration started. Although local churches continued to record bmd after 1855, these registers were not collected and stored by the Registrar for Scotland. Some may have found their way into local archives. FamilySearch and ScotlandsPeople both keep records prior to 1855, but only ScotlandsPeople retains microfilms of the original parish books.
Missing intervals in OPRs dates may be due to non-collection of volumes (possibly through loss or damage), or the events being recorded in another book held in the parish.
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The parish of Cairnie was located on the border between Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, about 4 miles northwest of Huntly. In 1851 Samuel Lewis, in his A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (available on GENUKI) describes it as "hilly, and comprehends an area of forty-eight square miles, of which extent 8000 acres are in tillage, and 2600 acres were planted in the year 1839 with nearly seven million trees by the Duke of Richmond, who is proprietor of almost the whole parish. The soil in the vicinity of the streams is fertile, and the husbandry on a respectable footing. Extensive limeworks are in operation at Ardonald, which, in the twenty-three years previous to 1842, produced a revenue of £69,770, an gave employment to forty workmen for nine months annually. The mosses supply part of the fuel consumed, the remainder of which consists of coal brought from the coast, eighteen miles distant; the substrata comprise granite, hornblende, greenstone, clay-slate, and a few other varieties....Grain, black-cattle [Aberdeen Angus breed], and dairy-produce which are the principal marketable commodities, are taken for sale to Huntly, or sent to the coast. Facilities of communication are afforded by the road from Aberdeen to Inverness, which passes through the parish."
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Cairnie is bounded on the north by the parishes of Grange and Rothiemay in Banffshire, on the east by the parish of Huntly, on the south by Glass, and on the west by the Banffshire parishes of Botriphnie and Keith.
In 1891 the parish boundaries were altered and since that date the whole of Cairnie parish has been in Aberdeenshire. Settlements within the parish include Ardonald, Ruthven and Windyraw. Each of these places had a school in 1882.
Population Growth
| Area | acres | sq mi | hectares
| | 1801-1900 | 17,004 | 26.57 | 6,881
| | 1901-2001 | 15,818 | 27.72 | 6,401
| | Year | Population | Density per sq mi | Density per hectare
| | 1801 | 1,561 | 63.1 | 0.24
| | 1851 | 1,565 | 63.3 | 0.24
| | 1901 | 1,283 | 51.9 | 0.20
| | 1951 | 891 | 36.0 | 0.14
| | 2001 | 521 | 21.1 | 0.08
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Populations 1801-1951 from A Vision of Britain through Time (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk).
2001 population from Scotland’s Census (https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk).
Before 1900, according to John Bartholomew's A Gazetteer of the British Isles (1877), 5,004 acres of the parish were in Banffshire.
The area in Samuel Lewis's A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland quoted above are at variance with those in the above table (which have been re-checked).
Research Tips
There was formerly a note on this page that the parish was linked to the Presbytery of Strathbogie, Synod of Moray, Scotland. It would appear that since 1975 the organization of the presbyteries and synods has been revised. Readers are reminded that the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian in nature while in England the Church of England is Episcopalian. (See Wikipedia.)
- official civil (from 1855) and parish registers (from when first produced) for births, marriages and deaths for all of Scotland
- original census images for all years available (1841-1911).
- references to wills and property taxes, and
- an extensive collection of local maps.
This site is extremely easy to use. There are charges for parish register entries and censuses. The charges are reasonable and payable by online transfer.
- The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online provides access to digitised and fully searchable versions of both the Old Statistical Account (1791-99) and the New Statistical Account (1834-45). These uniquely rich and detailed parish reports, usually written by local Church of Scotland ministers, detail social conditions in Scotland and are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Scottish history.
- Scotlands Places
- Gazetteer of Scotland includes descriptions of individual parishes from F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4)
- The FamilySearch Wiki
- GENUKI which provides, amongst other data, complete quotations from A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1851) by Samuel Lewis, John Bartholomew's A Gazetteer of the British Isles (1877), and A New History of Aberdeenshire edited by Alexander Smith (1875)
- A list of Burial Grounds in Scotland is now available on the website of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.
- Aberdeenshire and Moray Records. Town Council minutes, accounts, letters, plans and harbour records provided by Aberdeenshire Council plus other local records.
- Aberdeen and North-East Scotland Family History Society is one of the largest and most reputable family history societies in Scotland and has a long list of publications referring to individual parishes.
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