Place:Fintray, Aberdeenshire, Scotland

The following is from Wikipedia

Hatton of Fintray, commonly referred to as Fintray, is a village on the River Don in Aberdeenshire, Scotland, in the parish of Fintray. It was a textile village and its church dates from 1821, and there used to be a nearby ferry crossing the river.

[Condensed from F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4), provided online by Gazetteer of Scotland]
Fintray, a village and a parish of southeast Aberdeenshire. The village, Hatton of Fintray, stands within 700 yards of the Don's left bank, 3¼ miles east by north of Kintore, and 1¼ mile NNE of Kinaldie station on the Great North of Scotland [railway], this being 10½ miles NW of Aberdeen, under which Fintray has a post office. Fairs are held here on the first Saturday of February, April, and December.

The parish rudely resembles a triangle in outline, with northward apex, it has a maximum length from north by west to south by east of 4 miles, a maximum width from east to west of 5 1/8 miles, and an area of 7389 acres, of which 69¾ are water. It is bounded on the northeast by the parishes of New Machar and Udny, on the east by more of New Machar, on the south by Dyce and Kinellar, on the southwest by Kintore, and on the west and northwest by Keithhall. The [River] Don, winding 7¼ miles east-by-southward, from just below Kintore to opposite the manse of Dyce, roughly traces all the southwestern and southern boundary; and, where it quits the parish, the surface sinks to 116 feet above sea-level, thence rising, in gentle knolls and rounded eminences to 415 feet at the Hill of Tillykerrie in the furthest north.

Granite and gneiss are the prevailing rocks, but 78 per cent of the entire area is regularly or occasionally in tillage, about 660 acres are under wood, and the rest is either pastoral or wasteland. Cothal Mill here was a large woollen factory, now stopped, with steam and water power, and upwards of 100 hands.

Patrick Copland, LL.D. (1749-1822), professor of natural philosophy at Aberdeen, was a native, his father being parish minister. Fintray House, near the bank of the Don, 7 furlongs (0.875 mile) east of the village, is a large modern mansion in the Tudor style; the estate was acquired in 1610 by the first of the Forbeses of Craigievar, having belonged to the Abbey of Lindores in Fife from 1224 down to the Reformation. Another residence is Disblair Cottage; and 3 proprietors hold each an annual value of £500 and upwards, and 2 of between £100 and £500. Fintray church, at the village, is a neat and substantial structure of 1821, containing 800 sittings; there are 2 public schools, at Disblair and Hatton.

Population Growth

Populations 1801-1951 from A Vision of Britain through Time (http://www.visionofbritain.org.uk).
2001 population from Scotland’s Census (https://www.scotlandscensus.gov.uk).

Research Tips

There was formerly a note on this page that the parish was linked to the Presbytery of Aberdeen, Synod of Aberdeen, Scotland. It would appear that since 1975 the organization of the presbyteries and synods has been revised. Readers are reminded that the Church of Scotland is Presbyterian in nature while in England the Church of England is Episcopalian. (See Wikipedia. )

• Scotlands People, the website of the Scottish Register Office provides

• official civil (from 1855) and parish registers (from when first produced) for births, marriages and deaths for all of Scotland
• original census images for all years available (1841-1911).
• references to wills and property taxes, and
• an extensive collection of local maps.

This site is extremely easy to use. There are charges for parish register entries and censuses. The charges are reasonable and payable by online transfer.

• The Statistical Accounts of Scotland Online provides access to digitised and fully searchable versions of both the Old Statistical Account (1791-99) and the New Statistical Account (1834-45). These uniquely rich and detailed parish reports, usually written by local Church of Scotland ministers, detail social conditions in Scotland and are an invaluable resource for anyone interested in Scottish history.
• Scotlands Places
• Gazetteer of Scotland includes descriptions of individual parishes from F. H. Groome, Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland (1882-4)
• The FamilySearch Wiki
• GENUKI which provides, amongst other data, complete quotations from A Topographical Dictionary of Scotland (1851) by Samuel Lewis, John Bartholomew's A Gazetteer of the British Isles (1877), and A New History of Aberdeenshire edited by Alexander Smith (1875)
• A list of Burial Grounds in Scotland is now available on the website of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.
• Aberdeenshire and Moray Records. Town Council minutes, accounts, letters, plans and harbour records provided by Aberdeenshire Council plus other local records.
• Aberdeen and North-East Scotland Family History Society is one of the largest and most reputable family history societies in Scotland and has a long list of publications referring to individual parishes.