450th Anniversary of Christine's Baptism

27th December 2003

A baby girl called Christine Hay was baptised 450 years ago today in the village of Errol in Perthshire.

The record of her baptism is the earliest one to survive and is held at New Register House in Edinburgh among 4,000 other parish registers listing baptisms, marriage and burials.

Christine's parents, Peter Hay and Jonet Fermline brought her to the parish church to be baptised on December 27, 1553.

The previous year the pre-Reformation Catholic church had ordained that every parish should keep a register of baptisms and of proclamations of marriage. Christine's baptism is the earliest result of this of which a record survives.

Other records include the proclamation of the banns of Mary Queen of Scots and Lord Darnley, and the rebuke uttered by the Mauchline kirk elders to Robert Burns and Jean Armour on account of their irregular marriage.

The records are old and fragile and visitors to New Register House are usually only able to see them as microfilm copies.

However, the General Register Office for Scotland (GROS) are now creating digital images of these records, as part of the DIGROS (Digitally Imaging the Genealogical Records of Scotland's people) project.

In the course of 2004 these images will make the records much more widely available to family historians and others not only in New Register House but on the ScotlandsPeople website (where an image of the Christine Hay record can be seen) and in local registration offices.

The Christine Hay baptism entry is recorded partly in Latin. The text below gives the original text followed by a translation.

Original Text:

Nomina Baptizatorum anno domini milesimo quingentismo quinquagesimo tertio decem: within the paroch of Erroll 1553 decemb: 27 Baptized Christine Hay daughter to Peter hay and jonet fermline in Erroll

Interpretation:

Names of the baptised in the year of our Lord one thousand five hundred fifty three within the parish of Erroll 1553 december: 27 Baptised Christine Hay daughter to Peter hay and jonet (Janet) fermline in Erroll.

Notes for News Editors

1. The General Register Office of Scotland is an associated department of the Scottish Executive. One of its functions is to make its genealogical database available to members of the public. It holds the statutory registers of births, marriages and deaths and census records for Scotland and Old Parish Registers of the Church of Scotland.

2. The ScotlandsPeople pay-per-view website is run in partnership between the General Register Office for Scotland and Scotland On Line, a private sector firm based in Dundee.