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Scottish Record Office Number: 189
(used by ScotlandsPeople, see Research tips, below)
Churches: Drumoak Parish Church, Drumoak, Church of Scotland
Cemeteries: list available from the Aberdeen & NE Scotland FHS (link under Research tips)
Old Parish Register Availabilty (within FamilySearch):
Baptisms: 1692-1854
Marriages: 1715-1854
Deaths: none in FamilySearch
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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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[Condensed from A New History of Aberdeenshire, by Alexander Smith (Ed), 1875], provided online by GENUKI]
The most ancient name of this parish is mentioned in a papal bull of 1157, "Ecclesiam de Dulmayok," pronounced "Dal-maik", which in Gaelic signifies, Dail, "a field", and Maik of the holy well called "St. Maik's", or "Moak's", which is near to where the old church stands. The more modern name, Drumoak, appears in a charter, dated 1407, granted by Bishop Gilbert. The prefix "Drum", in Gaelic, Druim, signifies the ridge of the hill, a name which is more applicable to the general appearance of the parish than Dal, which refers only to the field of St. Moak's Well.
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The parish is located on the southern edge of Aberdeenshire but extended into Kincardineshire until 1891 when the county boundary were changed, bringing the land in the parish south of the River Dee into Aberdeenshire. The extreme length of the parish, in a direct line along the Dee from east to west, is 3½ miles; and the extreme breadth from north to south, also in a direct line, is 3 miles. The area of that part of the parish in Kincardineshire was 1,270 acres, while that originally in Aberdeenshire was 5,280 acres.
It is bounded on the north by the parishes of Echt and Peterculter, on the east again by Peterculter, on the south by Durris (in Kincardineshire) and on the west by the parish of Banchory-Ternan (also in Kincardineshire). (In 1975 most of Kincardineshire was merged with Aberdeenshire.)
[Condensed from F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4) provided online by Gazetteer for Scotland]
Drumoak is traversed by the Deeside section of the Great North of Scotland railway, with Drum and Park stations 10 and 11 miles west-southwest of Aberdeen, under which Drumoak has a post office... Nearly a quarter of the entire area is under wood, over a sixth is pastoral or waste, and the rest is in cultivation. James Gregory (1638-75), the greatest Scottish philosopher of his age was born in Drumoak, his father being parish minister. His brother David (1627-1720) had a singular turn for mechanics and mathematics....The chief antiquity is the Tower of Drum, and there are mansions of Drum and of Park. Five proprietors hold each an annual value of more than £100. The church [of Scotland], ½ mile north of Park station, is a good Gothic edifice of 1836, containing 650 sittings. A Free church, erected at a cost of £1500, was opened at Park in January 1880.
[From the [Wikipedia] article on Drumoak
Drumoak, (Scottish Gaelic: Druim M'Aodhaig, literally " the ridge of St Aodhag") is a village situated between Peterculter and Banchory in north Deeside, Aberdeenshire, Scotland. Drumoak is proximate to the River Dee, with Park Bridge, named for the local Park Estate, being a local crossing. The Park Estate, was formerly owned by the railway engineer Sir Robert Williams; Sir Robert is interred at Drumoak.
The Tower of Drum, or Drum Castle, was built in the 13th century by William de Irvine, armour bearer/secretary to Robert the Bruce, and remained in the possession of Clan Irvine until 1975.
Drumoak Manse in 1638 was the birthplace of James Gregory, discoverer of diffraction gratings a year after Newton's prism experiments, and inventor of the Gregorian telescope design in 1663. The design is still used today in telescopes such as the Arecibo Radio Telescope upgraded to a Gregorian design in 1997 giving Arecibo a flexibility it had not previously possessed. His older brother David Gregory was also born there in 1620.
Population Growth
| Area | acres | sq mi | hectares
| | 1801-1900 Aberdeenshire portion | 5,280 | 8.25 | 2,137
| | 1801-1900 Kincardineshire portion | 1,270 | 1.98 | 514
| | 1901-2001 | 7,239 | 11.31 | 2,930
| | Year | Population | Density per sq mi | Density per hectare
| | 1801 | 648 | 63.3 | 0.24
| | 1851 | 948 | 92.7 | 0.36
| | 1901 | 865 | 76.5 | 0.30
| | 1951 | 706 | 58.8 | 0.23
| | 2001 | 425 | 102.8 | 0.40
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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).
Density figures for 1801 and 1851 take in areas in both counties.
Research Tips
There was formerly a note on this page that the parish was linked to the Presbytery of Aberdeen, Synod of Aberdeen, 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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