Was your ancestor buried in Scotland? By exploring these monumental inscriptions, you can enhance your family tree with additional names and dates of life events.
Each result will give you a transcript of your ancestor’s burial monument. These records were created by a variety of family history societies and independent licensors, with transcripts that will vary depending on the age of the monument and its legibility. Below is a list of what you may find in the transcript.
Name
Death date
Denomination
Graveyard
Place and county
Inscription –you may discover the individual’s age at the time of death, who else is buried at the same site (including their ages and death dates), and who erected the monument.
Memorial reference
Notes
OS grid reference – this reference will identify a position on all ordnance survey maps
Source’s website – a link to the society or licensor who created the transcript
Monumental inscriptions are memorials placed on a person’s grave or burial place. They vary in size and in how much is recorded about the person. Monumental inscriptions are an excellent resource for family historians because many record the names of other relatives such as a spouse, children or parents, as well as their birth and death dates.
For example, the record for Katherine Alexander holds six additional names: Katherine’s husband, two daughters, two sons, and daughter-in-law. Katherine’s eldest son was Captain Harry Charles Birnie. The inscription for Captain Birnie reads, ‘Birnie, DSO, RD, RNR, elder brother of Trinity House and commodore of ocean convoys, died gallantly in North Atlantic through enemy action 9 March 1943 aged 60’. The facts found in the inscription enabled us to find a death record for Harry Birnie in Findmypast’s British nationals armed forces deaths 1796-2005. Additionally, Birnie was found in the 1891 England, Wales & Scotland Census living in Aberdour with his parents and siblings.