Bowden

The Borders Family History Society has published a CD of Bowden monumental inscriptions.

The Scottish Genealogy Society has a listing of pre-1855 monumental inscriptions in Bowden churchyard. This is part of the society's collection of unpublished monumental inscription listings and may be viewed at the society's library in Edinburgh.

Nigel Hardie has transcribed and published parish of Ancrum mortcloth records for 1697-1803.

Graham and Emma Maxwell have transcribed and indexed the 1841, 1851 and 1861 census returns for this parish.

In the Bowden entry for the Statistical Account of Scotland (compiled 1790s, see the Statistics section of the Roxburghshire page for more details) the following comments were written:

"About one third of the inhabitants are Burghers and Antiburghers. The latter have a meeting-house in the parish; the congregation of which, from this and other parishes, pays their minister L.60 per annum."

Books about the local church include:

• Bowden Kirk by William Cuthbertson, published in Edinburgh by James Thin in 1899.
• A short guide to the parish kirk of Bowden by Ian B. Smith, published at Galashiels in 1973.
• Bowden Kirk 1128-1978 by J.S.M. Macdonald, originally published in 1978, republished at Hawick by Bowden Kirk Session in 1994.

The parish church (Church of Scotland) has registers dating from 1697. Old Parish Registers (before 1855) are held in the National Records of Scotland in Edinburgh, and copies on microfilm may be consulted in local libraries and in LDS Family History Centres around the world. Later parish registers (after 1855) are often held in the National Records of Scotland as are any records of non-conformist churches in the area (often unfilmed and unindexed, and only available there).

The presence of non-conformist churches in the parish is revealed by Rutherfurd's Southern Counties Register and Directory which lists the following in the year 1866:

• Free Church
• Original Secession Church (at Midlem)

There may have been other non-conformist churches at different times.

The National Records of Scotland holds records of Midlem Original Secession Church among its collection of Miscellaneous Records (MR 60). These include records of births between the years 1748 and 1915.

Registration of Births, Marriages and Deaths began in Scotland on 1st January 1855. For further details of this see the National Records of Scotland website.

The Bowden Village website includes photographs and a history of the parish.

• Geograph
• Flickr

• Ask for a calculation of the distance from Bowden to another place.

A descriptive account of the records of one 16th century Bowden notary was published in 1997 by the Walter Mason Trust: The Protocol Book of Sir Ninian Brydin, 1536-1564 was transcribed, translated and edited by Teresa Maley and Walter Elliot. Sir Ninian Brydin was a notary in Selkirk from 1536 to 1545, worked in Edinburgh from 1546 to 1559, then returned to the Borders, working in the Bowden/Melrose area, between the years 1560 and 1564.

Ordnance Survey maps covering Bowden include:

• Landranger 73: Peebles, Galashiels & surrounding area - scale 1:50000, or 1.25inch:1mile, or 2cm:1km
• Outdoor Leisure 44: Tweed Valley (Peebles to St Boswells) - scale 1:25000, or 2.5inch:1mile, or 4cm:1km

Bowden is also covered by an old Victorian one-inch to the mile Ordnance Survey map published by Caledonian Maps. The relevant sheet is sheet number 25 "Kelso & Melrose" which also includes Earlston, Galashiels, Gordon, Greenlaw, Lauder, Polwarth, Roxburgh, St Boswells, Selkirk and Westruther.

You can see maps centred on OS grid reference NT537290 (Lat/Lon: 55.552763, -2.735591), Bowden which are provided by:

• OpenStreetMap
• Google Maps
• StreetMap (Current Ordnance Survey maps)
• Bing (was Multimap)
• Old Maps Online
• National Library of Scotland (Old Ordnance Survey maps)
• Vision of Britain (Click "Historical units & statistics" for administrative areas.)
• Magic (Geographic information) (Click + on map if it doesn't show)
• GeoHack (Links to on-line maps and location specific services.)

• All places within the same township/parish shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby townships/parishes shown on an Openstreetmap map.
• Nearby places shown on an Openstreetmap map.

Here are some figures showing the parish's population through time:

• 1755 - 672
• 1794 - 860
• 1801 - 829
• 1811 - 865
• 1821 - 954
• 1831 - 1010
• 1861 - 864

A transcript of the Bowden School Admission Register (held at the Scottish Borders Archive and Local History Centre, reference R/ED/3/3) was printed in the February and June 1994 editions of the Borders Family History Society magazine. The first admission recorded took place in 1864, the last in 1873. The surnames listed among the 68 admissions are:

Amos, Anderson, Baptie, Barnes, Bell, Bonnington, Brown, Cairns, Dalgliesh, Dickinson, Dodds, Donaldson, Fisher, Gaffney, Grant, Grieve, Halliburton, Henderson, Hogg, Hume, Lilie, Lowrie, Mackay, McVitae, Mitchell, Morrison, Ormiston, Porteous, Scott, Shiel, Stavert, Thomson, Turnbull, Welsh, Whillans, Wilson, Woodger and Yule.