Series 1 > Diary of the Reverend John Mill, minister of the parishes of Dunrossness Sandwick and Cunningsburgh in Shetland, 1740-1803. With selections from local records and original documents relating to the district

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INTRODUCTION
limited to that year, but is a continuous record till probably
an advanced period, if not indeed applying to the entire course
of Mill’s incumbency. It is thus of doubtful value, either as
a matter of church statistics or as a test of population, so far
as details go, because an accurate list of the communicants in
the different districts for any one year cannot now be safely
deduced from it, and the list has therefore not been tran¬
scribed for the present work. But some of the points brought
out are noteworthy.
Taking the list as a whole, covering a somewhat extended
period, the proportion of the sexes is fairly maintained in the
aggregate, Dunrossness proper (excluding Sandwick and Cun-
ningsburgh) showing 24*4 males and 232 female communicants.
But there are some curious variations in the detail. For
instance, in the district of Tolb, the female communicants are
exactly double the males, i.e. 26 to 13; while in South Voe
the males are more than double the females, being 11 to 5 ;
and in St. Ninian’s Isle, now uninhabited, and which would
seem incapable of supporting more than one or two families,
no less than 16 males, with 7 females, are presented. Scat-
ness, with 6 males, has 20 female communicants; these in
every case, as previously explained, extending over a series
of years.
The state of the roll does not admit of a satisfactory com¬
parison being made between its date and the present time, and
the circumstances, besides, are widely different. In the Church
of Scotland Year-Book, 1888, the communicants in Dunross¬
ness are given as 424, and in Sandwick and Cunningsburgh,
413. To this must be added, in any estimate of church-mem¬
bership, a considerable number for those attached to other
Churches, while, at the date of Mill’s Communion-roll dissent
was unknown, except as regards the small remnant who had
refused to accept the Revolution Settlement and still adhered
to Episcopacy. Among these were the leading families in