SCOTTISH CHURCHES AND THEIR RECORDS

A guide to Scottish Churches over the centuries and their records will be inserted here in due course.
Details of many of the relevant records can however to be found in the Catalogue of the National Archives of Scotland.

In the meantime here's a quick guide to one of the most confusing set of Scottish churches.

Burgher and Anti-Burgher Churches
After the breakaway in the early 1700s of the Reformed Presbyterian Church (Cameronians, McMillanites etc), the Church of Scotland suffered another division in 1733 with the formation of the "Associate Presbytery". That grew into the "Associate Synod" in 1745, which encompassed three Presbyteries. Two years later however this new body itself split, and alongside the "Associate Synod" was established what later became known as the "General Associate Synod" - though the two bodies were better known, because of the subject of the split, as the "Burgher" and the "Anti-Burgher" Synods.
        The Associate/Burgher Synod split again in 1799 into - guess what? - the "Associate Synod" and the "Burger Synod". The latter seems not to have flourished and eventually disappeared - its members probably rejoining the Associate Synod which in 1805 took the additional name of the "Original Burgher Synod".
        Meanwhile the Anti-Burgher Synod continued to call itself the "Associate Synod" until 1788, when it formally became the "General Associate Synod". In 1805 it too split, with a new body calling itself the "Constitutional Associate Presbytery" alongside the continuing "General Associate Presbytery". The latter appears to have faded away in due course, while the former renamed itself the " Original Secession Church ".
        In 1820 the Original Burger Church (successors of the Associate/Burgher Synod) merged with the Original Secession Church (successors of the General Associate/Anti-Burgher Synod) to form the "United Secession Church"; and in 1847 the United Secession merged with the "Relief Church" - which had broken away from the Church of Scotland in 1761 - to form the "United Presbyterian Church". By then of course the "Disruption" had taken place (1841) and the split from the Church of Scotland of the Free Church was to start a whole new line of breakaway churches. And so it goes on, and on ....

Burgher and Anti-Burgher church records are amongst those held in the National Archives of Scotland.