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M'Kerlie's Wigtownshire Estates,
Properties and Farms

The two Wigtownshire volumes of "Lands and their Owners in Galloway" by Peter Handyside M'Kerlie, were published by William Paterson in Edinburgh in 1870 and 1877. The author included very many references to the names of farms and estates, but the work was indexed only for proprietor's names. We include an extract of M'Kerlie's name index, but please bear in mind that he usually only included landowners, and in general makes no reference to tenants. Please also note that a later edition was published in 1906, and is available in many countries on the web at Google Books. However, while parish data remains the same, the page numbers are unfortunately quite different, but web search will usually enable a good context location. The URLs for the two 1906 volumes are Vol I: http://books.google.com/books?id=rV8JAAAAIAAJ&dq and Vol II: http://books.google.com/books?id=3F8JAAAAIAAJ&dq

Our main listing indexes the Wigtownshire farm names, showing the properties to which they belonged, the parishes in which they are located and the pages in Volumes I and II where the name is to be found. Between publication of Volume I in 1870 under the name of James Paterson, and Volume II in 1877 in his own name, M'Kerlie added many farms to the listings, and made several corrections. These are included.

Where a farm was an individually owned property (and there were still but few in 1870) he appears to include it in his primary listing of contents. For the larger properties, he frequently gives a listing of tenanted farms. Earlier land names from sasines, wadsets etc., which are very numerous, and may represent only names of land parcels rather than historically occupied farms, have been omitted where later names are given. Where there is some doubt in my mind, I have probably erred on the side of caution and left a name in, although it may be a duplicate.

The parishes for the barony, estate or property names in the main listing can be located in the parish and property list by use of the keys given. For example, Cutreoch (q) [the reference being just a letter, with no number] is a property in Whithorn, while Polwhilly (m6) [the reference is a letter plus a number] is a tenanted farm on the property of Clary or Clachary in Penninghame. M'Kerlie often provides extensive historical notes with much background on location and name derivations, etc. For Polwhilly, for example, they would be found in Vol I on page 324. Parish names (in upper case) are also included, to provide similar indexing.

Crawford MacKeand, Kennett Square PA USA
July 2001, January 2011

To find out in which parish your farm or property was located, you must first find it by using the alphabetical box below.

Example: to locate the information for the farm 'Aird', click on the A box.


Alphabetical Listing
Click on the appropriate letter
A B C D E
F G H I J
K L M N O
P Q R S T
U V W X Y-Z
To go directly to M'Kerlie's name index, please click here.
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