Expanding the Indexing

This page was last updated on: Oct 15, 2018 @ 11:52 am

Glitch

There has been a glitch in opening links to the archive.org web-site. The link took you to the right page, but the page didn’t show. All that you need to do, if that happens again, is to look at the controls at the bottom right of your screen and to click the option that allows you to see two pages at a time.

Developments

A number of improvements are in process of being made.

In the later years of the 1830s two significant government surveys were made in Scotland: one dealt with the state of the schools, the other with the matter of church accommodation. These are both invaluable sources of information for appreciating the circumstances in which ministers worked, giving as they do a snap shot of the educational and ecclesiastical circumstances in which they ministered.

The information regarding the parochial schools is readily available on line. Not all school-masters replied to the Queries that were issued, but over 900 did.

Regarding Church Accommodation, a Commission visited every parish in Scotland, received answers to the Queries issued, interviewed parish ministers and some others as well and wrote up their findings in several volumes of Reports.

References to these two surveys, insofar as they are available on line, are now being added under the appropriate ministers as “Publications – about him”.

This material deserves fuller attention and I may get round to writing blogs on two surveys some day.

Already our website contains material about the ministers of the congregations which formed the United Presbyterian Church: the standard work  by Robert Small A History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church, from 1733 to 1900, is fully indexed under the General Index of Scottish Presbyterian Ministers on this site. There is, however, a previous work, covering the same grounds as Small, by William McKelvie. It is not so complete as Small – it only deals with the congregations of the United Presbyterian Church up till the 1870s. Much of McKelvie’s material is covered by Small. It may be wondered, why, if there is so much overlap, attention needs to be paid to McKelvie. The answer is, in part, that he deals with non-Scottish congregations of the UP Church – which Small doesn’t do. McKelvie’s work will therefore be incorporated in the General Index in the next few weeks, all being well.

At the same time as this development is going on, I have tried to improve the General Index in another way. Experienced researchers know well which Presbyterian denominations Small, Ewing, McKelvie, David Scott, and Hew Scott wrote about, but the church these men dealt with may not be evident to less experienced researchers, who may well be confused anyway about splits and unions of Scottish Presbyterianism. Fuller information is now being given in the index. Under each minister, the full title of the reference work is given once; thereafter an abbreviated form only is provided. So for Church of Scotland ministers, for example, the reference is initially: Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae (FES); thereafter it is simply FES. For ministers of the United Presbyterian stream, the initial reference is: Robert Small, A History of the Congregations of the United Presbyterian Church from 1733 to 1900; thereafter it is simply Small, History. We hope this will make the General Index more useful, especially for the less experienced.