Moray (formerly Elginshire), Scotland Genealogy

Guide to Moray (or Elginshire) County ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records. Scotland Online Genealogy Records Ask the Community

History
Moray or Elginshire is located in the north-east of Scotland, bounded on the north by the Moray Firth, on the east and south-east by Banffshire, on the south by a detached portion of the county of Inverness, and on the west by Nairnshire. It is about 40 miles in length and 23 miles in extreme breadth, comprising an area of 840 square miles or 537,600 acres.

Moray contains 20 parishes and parts of several others, and for civil purposes is joined with the county of Nairn under the jursdiction of one sheriff. It contains the royal burghs of Elgin (the county town) and Forres, and includes the towns of Garmouth and Lossiemouth and a few villages. It was anciently part of a province that included the county of Nairn and a large part of the county of Banff, and was for many ages distinguished as the 'granary of Scotland.'

The population of the county in 1851 was 35,012.

ScotlandsPeople: An Important Online Source
ScotlandsPeople is one of the largest online sources of original genealogical information. If you are researching UK genealogy, your Scottish ancestry or building your Scottish family tree, they have more than 100 million records to look through.

The comprehensive choice of Scottish records includes: For more detail on record availability, see Guides. For the content guide to what records are on the site, see Guides A-Z. More information on the site, its contents, and instructions for using it can be found in the ScotlandsPeople Wiki article. Indexes may be searched for free, and there is a pay per view fee to see the digitized record.

Census
Many census records have been indexed by surname. Some indexes cover one parish (and will be listed in the Wiki on the parish page) and some indexes are for the county as a whole. The Family History Library has county-wide census placename indexes for Moray for. Click here for other census indexes available at the library.


 * ScotlandsPeople, index, images, free index, pay per view ($)
 * Scotland Census, 1841, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1851, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1861, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1871, no images. Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1881, no images. Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1891, no images. Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * at FamilySearch — index.
 * Scotland Census, 1901, index and images, ($). Also at FindMyPast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1911, index and images, ($).

Church Records

 * 1658 - 1919 - at FamilySearch — index
 * 1736 - 1990 - at FamilySearch — index

Parishes
Some of the Moray or (Elginshire) parish records are indexed in Moray or Elginshire, Scotland, Extracted Parish Records.
 * This database is a collection of historical parish registers from the county of Moray or Elginshire in the country of Scotland. The records in this collection can range in date from the early 1500s to the mid- to late-1800s. The records include baptisms/christenings, burials, marriages, tombstone inscriptions, obituaries, tax lists, wills, and other miscellaneous types of records. Also included are some records from non-conformist churches.  You will find interesting phonetic spelling. Some of the records may be in Latin or even a Welsh or Scottish dialect. Due to the nature of the records and because the records were originally compiled by a third party, it is difficult to absolutely verify the completeness and validity of the data.

Here is a list of the historic parishes in the county of Moray (or Elgin). Click on the parish name to see information about records. Click on this link for an outline map of the parishes of Moray.

Maps

 * National Library of Scotland map collection

Poorhouse Records
NOTE: Workhouses in Scotland were commonly known as poorhouses. For more information on Scottish poorhouses, go to the Scotland Poorhouses, Poor Law, Etc page.

There was one workhouse in this county:


 * Morayshire Combination (Elgin)

A description with drawings and photos of the workhouse today along with databases of those living there from the 1881 Census are provided on the link above located on the site entitled The Workhouse: The story of an institution... which is owned and operated by Peter Higginbotham.

Societies
Aberdeen & NE Scotland FHS 164 King St Aberdeen AB24 5BD Scotland Tel No: +44 (0)1224 646323

Moray & Nairn Family History Society 3 Dunbar Lane Duffus ELGIN Moray IV30 5QN Scotland

The Moray Burial Ground Research Group 127 Morriston Road ELGIN Moray IV30 4NB Scotland

Scottish Genealogy Society 15 Victoria Terrace Edinburgh EH1 2JL Scotland Phone-0131 220 3677 Email enquiries@scotsgenealogy.com

Taxation
17th and 18th Century Taxation Records. A list of Hearth Tax, Cart Tax, Horse Tax, Carriage Tax, Window Tax and Inhabited House taxes levied on inhabitants. Some names given and the amount of tax listed. Covers 1691-1779. Article in The Lands and People of Moray.Family History Library Ref. 941.23 H2b pt. 9. year 2002, pages 71-73.

Websites

 * Elginshire Moray Resources and help pages on RootsChat Moray Elginshire Resources and help pages. (Free).