Sources - new communicants lists.

Kirk Session records – the records kept by individual Church of Scotland congregations – vary from parish to parish.  One under-utilised source is the list of new communicants often (but not always) found in the records.  In the Church of Scotland, young people took their first communion as young adults, often in their mid to late teens. These lists include all levels of society, and both males and females. This is particularly useful and female names are often absent from other records.

In 1714, for example, Kintore Kirk Session had the following new communicants:  William Robertson, John Bruce, George Brown, Margaret Rae, James Colly, Robert Malcolmson, John Malcolmson, Margaret Low, Robert Law, John Grub, Margaret Christie, Isobel Wright.

There are, unfortunately, no addresses, and no way of telling whether Robert and John Malcolmson were brothers or cousins.  A John Grub married Helen Carnie in the neighbouring parish of Kinellar in 1723; was this the same person?

Unless a name is highly unusual, new communicants lists are unlikely to give definitive answers to genealogical questions – but they do confirm the existence of names in parishes and can be used as pieces in the jigsaw.