WHO knows what stories lie in Glasgow’s old parish registers?

Family history website, Findmypast has announced the publication of a vast new online collection of of these invaluable records, in collaboration with local archives and organisations across Scotland.

Dating back to 1561 and spanning 450 years of Scottish history, the new collection contains more than 10.7 million historical documents chronicling baptisms, marriages, burials and more.

As well as helping people track down their ancestors, the records provide valuable insights into parish life, including rare ‘irregular marriages’ from Kirk Sessions (those not officially recorded by the parish registers and conducted without a ceremony), ‘mortcloth rentals’, records of deceased Scots who were too poor to afford a proper burial, having to the hire the cloth that was placed over their coffin, or where original records no longer survive; and ‘ringings of the burial bell’, records of those too poor to even afford a mortcloth rental so instead paid for a ringing of the church bell in their memory.

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The collection includes some fascinating Glasgow finds, including the 1853 baptism of Alexander Watson Hutton from the Gorbals, who became known as the “father of Argentine Football”.

Watson Hutton emigrated to Argentina in 1882, where he founded Buenos Aires English High School. He taught his pupils football and in 1893, helped establish the Argentine Association Football League (AAFL), with five teams competing for the inaugural title.

He created a team for former BAEHS students in October 1898 and entered it into the league. When school names were banned from simultaneously acting as team names – considered to be a form of advertising – the team officially became Alumni Athletic Club in 1901, and a legend was born.

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Watson Hutton’s club dominated the first decade of the Argentine game, winning 10 of the first 12 league titles of the 20th century, interrupted on only two occasions by great rivals Belgrano Athletic Club. The team carried all the traits associated with British footballers at the time: they played as a unit, displayed fair play and gentlemanly conduct, and were energetic and physical. However, they also appealed to the masses and were renowned for their entertaining and ultimately winning brand of football.

In 1911 Watson Hutton retired and his club was disbanded. He died in 1936 in Buenos Aires and the AFA library is named in his honour.

The 1819 baptism of Allan Pinkerton, the Scottish–American detective and spy best known for creating the Pinkerton National Detective Agency, is also within the collection.

Pinkerton was also born in the Gorbals, the son of a policeman forced to retire from the force after being injured on duty. After the death of his father, Pinkerton left school aged 10 to support the family as an apprentice barrel maker in the McCauley Cooperage Works and became very active in the reforming Chartist Movement.

Pinkerton married Joan Carfrae in 1842. As their marriage ceremony was concluded he heard word he was about to be arrested for his Chartist activities, so the couple immediately boarded a ship in Glasgow bound for the New World. The ship ran aground and was wrecked on the shore of Nova Scotia and Pinkerton and his new wife made their way, penniless, to the immigrant town of Dundee, near Chicago. There he established a cooperage business and became an active anti-slavery campaigner: with his business forming part of the “underground railroad”.

While in Dundee, Pinkerton helped catch a gang of counterfeiters whose hideout he had stumbled upon and was appointed deputy sheriff of Kane County. In 1849, he became Chicago’s first full-time detective and a year later founded the National Detective Agency in Chicago. The slogan used by the Agency was “We Never Sleep” and its logo was a large unblinking eye: giving rise to the phrase Private Eye.

In March 1861, while working on a railway Pinkerton discovered a plot to assassinate Abraham Lincoln en route to his Presidential inauguration. After the outbreak of the American Civil War later that year, Lincoln appointed Pinkerton as head of the Union Intelligence Service.

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After the war, Pinkerton returned to running his Agency, which made its name in a number of high-profile cases, including that of Frank and Jessie James. By the 1870s, the agency had the world’s largest collection of photographs of criminals and suspects.

Soon the Agency became known for some extremely aggressive tactics and became employed to break labour strikes and keep watch on union members – a stark contrast to Pinkerton’s origins as a member of the Chartist Movement in Scotland.

In later life, Pinkerton became increasingly occupied writing detective stories, leaving the running of the Agency to his two sons. In late June 1884 he slipped on a pavement in Chicago, biting his tongue as he did so. He didn’t seek treatment and the tongue became infected, leading to his death in 1884.

The collection also includes the marriage and burial records of John Muir Wood, a Scottish musician, piano maker, music publisher and an early amateur photographer. He established John Muir Wood & Co on Buchanan Street and helped to arrange the visit of Frédéric Chopin to Glasgow in 1848.

Wood was also an early practitioner of photography although never pursued it for profit. His collection of more than 900 images, believed by experts to be the first serious series of landscape pictures of Scotland, are part of the collection of the National Galleries of Scotland.