David Purves - birth/marriage register
According to the census and death register, he was born in Smailholm Rox., Scotland between 1797-1801 from Janet Purves (illegitimate son), married to Jessie (or Janet) Bell (daughter of Thomas Bell + Jane Hersel) around 1820. I have his census data, from 1840 to 1881 (died 1883), even the 1871 that they wrote a correction leaving the transcription to figure out his age (looked like a 6 or 7 with a 0, but I know is 7 because his 1880 census data), and I also have James Anderson birth Bunkle & Preston around 1826 (another missing register) from John Anderson + Margaret Brown (as his census data and death register married to Isabella, David Purves daughter in 1853).. Is there a possibility that their registers will appear (are still being transcripted) or I should give up to obtain those registers?
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Smailholm is parish 805 in the Old Parish Registers. The surviving OPRs should all be on ScotlandsPeople (the pay site). Confirming what is on SP is slightly convoluted - start with Which parishes and congregations have registers in the index on URL https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/guides/record-guides/church-registers
Looking for Church of Scotland registers takes you to https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/research/guides/old-parish-registers/list-of-old-parish-registers and from there you find that Smailholm is parish 805.
More detail on each parish is found in the PDF on https://www.nrscotland.gov.uk/files//research/list-of-oprs/detailed-list-of-old-parochial-registers-of-scotland.pdf
That implies Smailholm PRs for those dates exist (unlike 1759-1783, for instance), so they should be on ScotlandsPeople. Unfortunately, I can see nothing in the CofS registers for David - confirming what you know.
There aren't any Roman Catholic or "other" results for him either.
This is a problem with Scotland - in my personal experience, there seem to be more families in non-Establishment churches - i.e. non-Church of Scotland - than is the typical case in England. And the "non-conformist" registers are much more problematic than the Church of Scotland registers - it can be difficult even to know what to look for, so it is not impossible that someone might appear in a non-conformist register in the future.
There is one further chance - if David was illegitimate, there is a good chance that his mother was brought before the Kirk Session and examined about her fornication. The Smailholm Kirk Session records are on ScotlandsPeople - go to https://www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk/virtual-volumes/record-creator-search and enter "Smailholm" as the record creator and you will get access to the Kirk Session records for Smailholm. It will take you some time to wade through that lot - it's unindexed apart from the record creator - i.e. the parish - and range of years. I'm fairly certain that you need to look at the Minutes, not the Accounts. Browsing the KS records is free but downloading images will cost you. (I have no experience of KS records beyond an hour or two.)
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