Aberdeen City Archives

Aberdeen City Archives,
Town House,
Broad Street,
Aberdeen,
AB10 1AQ

and

Old Aberdeen House,
Dunbar Street,
Aberdeen,
AB24 3UJ

Approximately 192,000 burial records from The City of Aberdeen in Scotland are available, comprising Burial and Lair register scans and associated computerised indexes. These records cover burials dating back to 1767, across the following nine cemeteries and burial grounds.

Notes:

In these Scottish burial records married women are usually registered under their maiden names.

There may be some duplication of entry of records with St Peter's as information on the same person may be found in more than one place. We have kept this information within the online service as agreed with the City Archives. We hope to be able to cross link this information at a future date, but inconsistencies and incompleteness in the original records do not make this a simple task.

Name spellings in John Knox Churchyard are phonetic so extra care is advised when searching these.

St Nicholas Churchyard, Aberdeen
10,814 records, dated July 1824 to Dec 1838 and Jan 1855 to Feb 1928, are available as Dues register scans with up to 37 entries per scanned page.
3,342 burials, dated June 1843 to April 1851, are available as Burial register scans with up to 42 entries per scanned page.
A total of 14,156 records have been recovered from an incomplete collection of registers.

Trinity Churchyard, Aberdeen
1,467 burials are available as a Burial index scans with up to 31 entries per scanned page. Unfortunately the index does not contain any date information, so the search date boxes should be left blank to find any of these records.
4,585 proprietor records, dated June 1819 to August 1986 (a majority dated December 1881 to July 1924), are available as Proprietor register scans with up to 31 entries per page. These records have been indicated as "(Proprietors)" as the proprietor may not be buried in the grave. They have been included as they may provide useful clues about who is buried in these graves.
A total of 6,052 records have been recovered from an incomplete collection of registers.

Nigg Cemetery, Aberdeen
1,721 burials, dated April 1878 to September 1923, are available as Lair or Grave register scans with between 1 to 3 entries per scanned page.

John Knox Churchyard
4,500 burials, dated 1838 to 1894, are available as grave digger register scans.
The spelling of names in the early registers is phonetic, producing some interesting results, as the local Aberdeen dialect / language is Doric, which can defeat the website's "sound-alike" facility. As these records are legal documents they have had to be transcribed as they appear in the registers, so additional care and creative thinking needs to be applied when searching for names in this churchyard.
To assist in your searches a wild card facility is available, where "%" will match any number of any characters (including none), and "_" will match any single character. These can be inserted in your search name where variations are most likely to occur in the spelling. Full details on how to use wild cards in searching are available in our Advanced Search Help page here, but below are examples of some spelling variants with, in brackets, the wild card search string that will find them all in each case.

Alexander, Alex, Alx, Alexand, Alexr, Alexdr (Al%x%)
Alison, Allethen (Al%n)
Ann, Ane (An_)
Barbara, Barbra, Barbrow, Barbraw (Barb%r)
Dewar, Dewor (Dew_r)
George, Gorg, Gorge (G%org%)
Heather, Headr (Hea%r)
Henry, Hendry (Hen%ry)
Margaret, Margrat, Margrate, Margret, Margt (Marg%t).

St Peter's Cemetery, Aberdeen
68,216 burials, dated January 1849 to 23 April 1951, are available as Burial register scans in various formats with between 10 and 30 entries per scanned page. Further records for the South and West divisions are being added in February.

St Peter's Churchyard (Spital Churchyard), Aberdeen
36,963 burials, dated January 1830 to 29 December 1894, are available as Burial and Dues register scans in various formats with between 10 and 30 entries per scanned page. Further records from 1798 to 1830 held primarily in Dues books are to be added.

St Clement's Churchyard, Aberdeen
6,731 burials, dated 1 January 1855 to 1 February 1928, are available as Burial register scans with up to 34 entries per scanned page.

Old Machar Churchyard, Aberdeen
9,181 burials, dated 5 October 1863 to 30 March 1907, are available as Burial register scans with up to 38 entries per scanned page.

Grove Cemetery, Aberdeen
Currently 147 burials, dated 26 Setember 1962 to 21 November 1983, are available as Lair register scans.

Nellfield Cemetery, Aberdeen
7,813 burials, dated 22 December 1856 to 18 August 1892, are available as Burial register scans in various formats with up to 23 entries per scanned page.

Note

For the purposes of the UK Data Protection Act, the names and addresses of funeral applicants and grave (lair) owners for burials during the last 75 years have been withheld from publication.