Kirkcudbrightshire, Scotland Genealogy

Guide to Kirkcudbrightshire County ancestry, family history and genealogy: birth records, marriage records, death records, census records, parish registers, and military records.

Background
The Stewartry of Kirkcudbright is a county in the south of Scotland, bounded on the north and north-east by the Dumfriesshire, on the north and north-west by the county of Ayr, on the south and south-east by the Solway Firth, and on the south-west by Wigtonshire, Scotland county and the bay of Wigtown. It is 48 miles in length, from east to west, and thirty miles in extreme breadth, comprising an acrea of about 882 square miles or 564,480 acres. This district, which from its ancient tenure is called a stewartry, though for all purposes a county, occupies the eastern portion of the ancient province of Galloway.... The stewartry of Kirkcudbright was for some time included in the county of Dumfries and was under the jurisdiction of the same sheriff, but this ended prior to the time of Charles I, and since then it has formed a distinct and independent county, though still referred to as a stewartry...

ScotlandsPeople: An Important Online Source
ScotlandsPeople is one of the largest online sources of original genealogical information. If you are researching UK genealogy, your Scottish ancestry or building your Scottish family tree, they have more than 100 million records to look through.

The comprehensive choice of Scottish records includes: For more detail on record availability, see Guides. For the content guide to what records are on the site, see Guides A-Z. More information on the site, its contents, and instructions for using it can be found in the ScotlandsPeople Wiki article. Indexes may be searched for free, and there is a pay per view fee to see the digitized record.

Census
Many census records have been indexed by surname. Some indexes cover one parish (and will be listed in the Wiki on the parish page) and some indexes are for the county as a whole. The Family History Library has county-wide census placename indexes for Kirkcudbrightshire for. Click here for other census indexes available at the library.


 * ScotlandsPeople, index, images, free index, pay per view ($)
 * Scotland Census, 1841, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1851, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1861, no images. Also at MyHeritage, index, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1871, no images. Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1881, no images. Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1891, no images. Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * at FamilySearch — index.
 * Scotland Census, 1901, index and images, ($). Also at findmypast, index, ($). Also at Ancestry.com, index, ($).
 * Scotland Census, 1911, index and images, ($).

Church Records

 * 1658 - 1919 - at FamilySearch — index
 * 1736 - 1990 - at FamilySearch — index

Parishes
It contains 28 parishes. Kirkcudbright is the chief town and is a royal burgh, along with New Galloway. The county contains four other towns and some small hamlets. About one-third of the land is arable and the remainder is principally mountain pasture, moorland, and waste. The surface if strikingly varied and towards the coast is diversified with numerous rocky hills. Other parts are mountainous, intersected with valleys of great fertility in a high state of cultivation. Oats, barley, wheat, potatoes, turnips, and other crops are raised. Cattle are pastured and sheep are fed on the moorlands. Great numbers of swine are also reared, and the horses are much esteemed. The minerals are of no significance, and coal is scarce and brought from Cumberland. The manufacture of linen, cotton, and woolen goods is carried on to a considerable extent in the towns and villages. The principal trade is the export of cattle, sheep, and grain. Salmon-fisheries at the mouths of the various rivers are highly productive...

Parish Records
The Scotland Church Records Article and the Scotland Established (Presbyterian) Church Records Article provides and indepth view of Church Records. The ScotlandsPeople website provides an index and images of Church of Scotland parish registers. FamilySearch provides a searchable index and access to microfilm copies of the registers through Family History Centers. Refer to the Parish Pages for film and or batch numbers. "The condition of the Church of Scotland parish registers in Kirkcudbrightshire was recorded in the New Statistical Account. In 1849 William Turnbull published a book which extracted from the New Statistical Account remarks by the ministers about their individual registers. For the most part the ministers describe their registers as imperfect, defective, and not voluminous."

Nonconformist Church Records
A nonconformist church is any church that is not the Church of Scotland.


 * Catholic records on the ScotlandsPeople website
 * Munches (Buittle Parish) 1745 to 1815
 * Dalbeattie 1786 to 1991
 * Dumfries 1815 to 1972
 * Newton Stewart 1825 to 1915 in Penninghame Parish, Wigtonshire
 * Dalry 1848 to 2006
 * Refer to the Parish Pages for other known denominations and the records that are available at the National Archives of Scotland.

Court, Probate, Land, Military and Other records
Unlike census, civil registration, and Church of Scotland Parish Records, less then 20% of the people appear in these record classes with few exceptions.

Court Records
The county of Kircudbright was in the Sheriff's court of Kirkcudbright (SC16). The Registers of Deeds for Sheriffs' courts contain much valuable information for family history research such as marriage contracts and deeds of 'disposal and settlement' (or assignment) of property, which both give names and relationships. The records are deposited at the National Archives of Scotland in Edinburgh and are not indexed.

Probate Records
Probate records are those which deal with the settlement of the estate of a deceased person. In Scotland, until 1868, a person could only pass movable property such as household furniture, farm equipment, livestock, money and clothes through a document known as a 'testament.' Immovable property such as land was passed to the eldest son or heir through a document known as a 'Service of Heir,' which is not a record of probate. Read more about Scotland Probate Records.

Until 1823, the parishes of Kirkcudbrightshire were under the probate jurisdiction of either the Commissariot Court of Dumfries (CC5), the Commissariot Court of Kirkcudbright (CC13), or the Commissariot Court of Wigtown (CC22). For a break-down by parish, click on the parish links above. Since 1823, the county has been under the jurisdiction of the Sheriff's Court of Kirkcudbright (SC16).

Probate records for 1513-1901 (including inventories of goods) are indexed online at www.scotlandspeople.gov.uk. You must register on the website but use of the index to probate records, called 'Wills &amp; Testaments,' is free. You may then purchase a copy of the document or, if the document is before 1823, it will be on microfilm at the Family History Library. To find the microfilm numbers, search in the library catalog for the 'Place' of Kirkcudbright (county) and the subject of 'Probate records.' Then click on the link to the 'Testaments registers.

Military Records 1802 to 1808
There is a collection of ballot lists for 1802 and militia volunteer list for 1808 for most of the parishes in the County. They can be found at the National Archives of Scotland. The militia lists for the parish of Urr is online

Maps

 * Outline map of the parishes of Kirkcudbrightshire.
 * National Library of Scotland map collection

Poorhouse Records
There was one workhouse in this county:


 * Kirkcudbright Combination

A description with a drawing of the location of the workhouse is provided on the link above located on the site entitled The Workhouse: The story of an institution... which is owned and operated by Peter Higginbotham. It also contains a link to another site History, Places and People of the County of Kirkcudbright which is owned and operated by James Bell. This site provides information on residents living at the workhouse from transcriptions of the 1851, 1861, 1871, 1881, and 1891 census entries at Kirkcudbright Combination Poor House.

Societies
Family History Centre 9 Glasgow Street Dumfries DG2 9AF Scotland Phone-01387 248093

Scottish Genealogy Society 15 Victoria Terrace Edinburgh EH1 2JL Scotland Phone-0131 220 3677 Email enquiries@scotsgenealogy.com

Taxes
In the last decades of the 1700's there were a variety of tax records created. There was a tax on windows, horses, carriages, carts, and dogs

Statistical Accounts of Scotland
The accounts written by the ministers of each parish offers uniquely rich and detailed parish reports for each parish in Scotland, covering a vast range of topics including history, agriculture, education, trades, religion and social customs.


 * Old Statistical Accounts of Kirkcudbrightshire 1791 to 1797 : is available online at the EDINA website (University of Edinburgh), and it is free to browse.
 * New Statistical Accounts of Kirkcudbrightshire : account was published in 1845 in volume IV, is available online at the EDINA website (University of Edinburgh). Also a free google ebook

History
Galloway refers to Kirkcudbrightshire, Wigtownshire, and Dumfrieshire. The history of the region is often combined into single volumes.


 * History of Dumfries and Galloway by Herbert Maxwell (1900)
 * Rambles in Galloway by Malcolm McLachlan Harper (1876)
 * Article - Agriculture in Kirkcudbrightshire and Wigtownshire; pages 1 – 69 (1875)
 * Galloway by John MacGavin Sloan and James Faed (1908)
 * The New Statistical Account of Scotland: Dumfries, Kirkcudbright, Wigton (1845)

Websites

 * Kirkcudbrightshire Resources and help pages on RootsChat Kirkcudbrightshire Resources and help pages. (Free).
 * ScotlandPlaces website has resources and records for Kirkcudbrightshire. Also a place to transcribe the records of Scotland