family search Batch Numbers

Batch numbers refer to the film of the records.

If you know that your ancestor was born in say Old Cumnock and the rough date you can get in to the records to browse them via the Batch Number. This is also very helpful when the name was spelt or transcribed differently from expected.

Go to Wallis Batch numbers for the Batch numbers for all of Scotland. They were prepared by Hugh Wallis some time ago. Familysearch changed its site hierarchy and the links are no longer valid, but you can copy and paste the link in.

Here are the Batch numbers for Old Cumnock. You'll see that they go up to 1875.
C… refers to Baptisms and Births and M… refers to marriages

C116101 refers to statutory births and C116102, and C116104 refer to old parish records. Note that they are not complete and I have found records in the OPRs on scotlandspeople that aren't on here. But it's always worth trying here first as they are free to search!

Don't click on the blue link, as I said it is no longer valid, but go instead  to https://familysearch.org/search/

click on Batch Number and paste the number in the box which appears.

You don't need to put in any place information, just put in a name and a date range. You can even leave it completely blank. 

and see your results. Note the varying spelling of the mother's name.

Familysearch

https://familysearch.org is the site of the Mormon church (church of the Latter Day Saints) and a fantastic worldwide resource and it's FREE.

Once you get your line back to 1875 you can find births and marriages on familysearch for free. You don't get to see the original documents but the way the search works is better than scotlandpeople, in my opinion.

For example:

• it will recognise similar names so you don't need to have the spelling absolutely correct
• you can do a parent search
• the results give you the parents where the search results on SP just give you the name so you have to pay even more credits to get the document which may turn out to be  the wrong person.
• you can also search by Batch Number more on this next time