Place:Kinross, Kinross-shire, Scotland

NameKinross
TypeParish, Burgh
Coordinates56.217°N 3.45°W
Located inKinross-shire, Scotland     ( - 1975)
Also located inTayside, Scotland     (1975 - 1996)
Perth and Kinross, Scotland     (1996 - )
source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names
source: Family History Library Catalog
the following text is based on an article in Wikipedia

Kinross is a burgh in the council area of Perth and Kinross in Scotland. It was originally the county town of Kinross-shire which was abolished in a reorganization of local government in 1975. The site of the original parish church and churchyard are located down a small wynd overlooking Loch Leven, a little away from the town. Kinross has a population of 4000 to 5000 people.

This attractive former market town was originally linked by railway to places in Perthshire, Fife and Clackmannanshire until the rail links gradually disappeared. Recently Kinross has expanded considerably, especially since the construction of the M90 motorway - the main north-south artery which bypasses the town. Many people working within a commuting radius of Kinross have settled in the town owing to its convenient central location and excellent local amenities. Loch Leven is also a popular holiday base for tourists, who especially appreciate its proximity to Edinburgh, Glasgow, Stirling, Perth and St Andrews--all lying within an hour's drive of Kinross. The burgh is attractively located on the shores of Loch Leven, and there are boat trips around the loch and to Loch Leven Castle, where Mary, Queen of Scots was famously held prisoner in 1567.

Balado Airfield is the locale of a now inactive NATO ICBM early warning radar and during the Second World War there was an airstrip and barracks.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Kinross.

Research Tips

Notes for Kinross-shire

The Family History Societies covering Kinross-shire are:

Sources for Old Parish Registers Records, Vital Records and Censuses

  • Scotland's People This is a pay website providing vital statistics and census data for all of Scotland with original images. There is a description at Scotland under Genealogical Resources.
  • Tay Valley Family History Society has published booklets of 1851 census indexes for the whole parishes of Cleish, Fossoway & Tulliebole, Kinross, Orwell and Portmoak, and parts of Arngask and Forgandenny. The remainder of the latter two may be listed under Perthshire.
  • The FreeCen Project has a searchable (not browsable) transcription of the whole of Kinross-shire online for the 1841 and 1851 censuses.

Transcriptions of Gravestone Inscriptions

  • The Scottish Genealogy Society provides a series of monumental inscriptions either in print in booklet form or on CD. Most of these were prepared by John Fowler Mitchell and Sheila Mitchell and published 1967. These have been reprinted.

Further Sources of Reference

Please note and respect the copyright warnings on these websites.

  • GENUKI article on Kinross-shire. This page was last updated in 2009.
  • The Gazetteer for Scotland article on the the county of Kinross-shire. The tabs on the right provide more information, and a map of the parish within its surrounding area, with small settlements highlighted and linked to more information.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki article on Kinross-shire provides direct reference to FamilySearch holdings on many topics with respect to the county.
  • The National Library of Scotland have a website devoted to maps from the 1600s right up to the present. Comparisons of modern-day and old maps of the same place can be made. From the home page click on "Find by place" and then follow the instructions on the next page. Once you are viewing the place you want, use the slider <----> at the top of the map to compare the layout of roads and the place names of smaller areas, perhaps even farms, with the landscape today. The website takes some getting used to. The One-inch 2nd edition, Scotland, 1898-1904 OS is a series of maps with the parishes delineated. Each of these maps cover an area of 18 x 24 miles and will zoom to comfortable reading size with a couple of mouse clicks on the map itself. Unfortunately, they are not geo-referenced, and it is necessary to go to the OS One Inch 1885-1900 series to locate places by latitude and longitude.
  • The Statistical Accounts for Scotland In the 1790s and again in the 1830s, the ministers of the all the parishes of the Church of Scotland were asked to provide a description of their parish to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland. The original account request included 160 questions to be answered. These accounts are available in print in 20 volumes and are also online where it is freely available to browse. The browsing portal is below the viewing area of most computer screens. Scroll down to "For non-subscribers" and click on "Browse scanned pages". This brings you to another page on which one can enter the name of the parish in which you are interested.
  • Excerpts from The Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland: A Survey of Scottish Topography, Statistical, Biographical and Historical, edited by Francis H. Groome and originally published in parts by Thomas C. Jack, Grange Publishing Works, Edinburgh between 1882 and 1885 are provided by Scottish Places. Selections from Groome and other gazetteers from the 19th century are also found on GENUKI.


This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Kinross. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.