Place:Kilmory, Bute, Scotland

source: Family History Library Catalog

source: Getty Thesaurus of Geographic Names

Kilmory is the civil and quod sacra parish on the Island of Arran serving the west and south sides of the island, including the hamlets of Lochranza, Catacol, Lagg, Shiskine, Blackwaterfoot, and Kildonan and Kilmory, the village. GENUKI provides descriptions from the 1882 and 1868 Gazetteers of Scotland.

The other parish on Arran is named Kilbride. The dividing line between them is best seen in the diagram provided by GENUKI which is also the source of this OPR data.

The Old Parish Registers for the parish, as recorded centrally, have the following coverage:

Births or Baptisms ~ 1701-1854

Marriages or Banns ~ 1701-1854

Deaths or Burials ~ no records

There was a separate register for Lochranza spanning the following years:

Births or Baptisms ~ 1732-1846

Marriages or Banns ~ 1802-1846

Deaths or Burials ~ no records

and for Shiskine spanning the following years:

Births or Baptisms ~ 1785-1854

Marriages or Banns ~ 1785-1854

Deaths or Burials ~ no records

For availability of these and other records, see the references under "Research Tips" below.

Note: there are a number of other pairs of places in Bute and in Argyll where the names Kilbride and Kilmory are used. There is even a hamlet on the Isle of Bute named Kilbride and a joined pair making one parish near Oban in Argyll (with a slightly different spelling). Care must be taken not to confuse one Kilbride (or Kilmory) with another.

Research Tips

• "Buteshire Resource and Information Links" on the Scotland GenWeb site has some very useful onward references.

• GENUKI's introduction to the County of Bute or Buteshire, and the annotated list of Bute's parishes are, for the most part, quotes from 19th century gazetteers, but nonetheless valuable for all that.

• Transcriptions of all the 19th century censuses are available on FreeCen.

• ScotlandsPeople holds indexes and images for all civil births, marriages and deaths, censuses 1841-1911, and for all Old Parish Registers throughout Scotland. It is a pay-per-view site. ScotlandsPeople also holds records of Wills and Testaments and Coats of Arms. Access to this latter part of their website is free.

• From the National Library of Scotland Website is John Arrowsmith's 1875 map of Scotland which can be digitally expanded to a very large scale. This brings up Arran and Bute and the surrounding mainland beautifully. This is one of a very large series of maps on this site which can keep a map-mad genealogist entertained for hours.

• Vision of Britain provides both the topographical Ordnance Survey of Scotland First Series (1856-1887) in black and white, and the Ordnance Survey of Scotland Popular Edition (1928-1945) in colour at a scale of 1:63360, as well as other series of maps covering the whole of the United Kingdom. These maps are wonderful for finding places that have diminished in size over the past 150 years.