Place:Wigtown, Wigtownshire, Scotland

NameWigtown
Alt namesWigtonsource: Family History Library Catalog
Wigtnsource: WeRelate - abbreviation
Wigtwnsource: WeRelate - abbreviation
Bladnochsource: settlement in parish
Carsegowansource: settlement in parish
TypeParish
Coordinates54.8833°N 4.4785°W
Located inWigtownshire, Scotland     (1706 - 1975)
See alsoDumfries and Galloway Region, Scotlandregional administration 1975-1996
Dumfries and Galloway, Scotlandunitary Council Area since 1996


NOTE: The parish of Wigtown should not be confused with the town of Wigton across the Solway Firth in Cumbria, England.


Wigtown (#17 on map) was a parish located in the former county of Wigtownshire at the top of Wigtown Bay. Both county and parish ceased to exist following the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1974. The parish had an area of 33.1km2 (12.8 sq. miles) and had 2 neighbouring parishes: Kirkinner and Penninghame. Wigtown is now located in the Dumfries and Galloway Council Area, some 5 miles (8 km) south of Newton Stewart.

The parish included the settlements of Bladnoch, Carsegowan and the town of Wigtown.

the text in this section is based on an article in Wikipedia

Wigtown is a town and former royal burgh and county town of Wigtownshire, within the Dumfries and Galloway region in Scotland. Wigtown is the gateway to and main centre of the Machars peninsula. It lies east of Stranraer and south of Newton Stewart. It has a population of about 1,000.

It is well known today as "Scotland's National Book Town" with a high concentration of second-hand book shops and an annual book festival.

For more information, see the EN Wikipedia article Wigtown. which provides an extensive history of the parish and the town.

Image:Wigtownshire3.png

Research Tips

  • 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).
  • collections of wills and testaments and
  • property tax listings
  • an extensive collection of local maps
  • kirk session records for individual parishes (added in 2021 and not yet complete).

This site is extremely easy to use. There are charges for parish register entries, collections of wills, and census listings (the 1881 census is free to view, also on Ancestry and FindMyPast). The charges are reasonable and payable by online transfer. Viewing the kirk session records is free, but a charge will be made for a copy.

  • The National Library of Scotland have an online map collection of historic and modern day maps which can zoom in on a specific farmhouse or street in a town. Their collection also includes London and some counties of southeast England.
  • Gazetteer for Scotland contains an article for each parish from the Ordnance Gazetteer of Scotland by F. H. Groome, (published 1882-4) and short details about each parish today including names of small settlements within a parish.
  • The FamilySearch Wiki explains a great many legal terms only found in Scotland and provides a gazetteer for genealogists for each parish across the county. It reviews the availablility of parish registers.
  • GENUKI Scotland which provides for each Scottish parish (indexed by county), 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 possibly other gazetteers from individual counties and regions. It is worth reviewing one of its county pages to see what is available online or in print from local archive providers. Each county page has a "Where in ---shire is .... ? section--very helpful in pinpointing the small places below parish level.
  • A list of Burial Grounds in Scotland is now available on the website of the Scottish Association of Family History Societies.
  • 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.

Notes for Wigtownshire

  • The Dumfries and Galloway Family History Society website may point to material of interest to the general researcher. Amongst their publications are indexes for the 1841 census. These are prepared as small booklets, one for each parish, and are alphabetically indexed transcriptions. Obtainable from the D & G FHS, address at website.
  • The FreeCen Project has a searchable (not browsable) transcription of the whole of Wigtownshire online for the 1841, 1851 and 1861 censuses, with the 1871 census partly completed.
  • The Wigtownshire Pages is an accumulation of links to various websites with genealogical information about Wigtownshire, including Births, Marriages and Deaths from the Wigtown Free Press, an index of a list of people living in Wigtownshire in 1684, and a small website of monumental inscriptions.
  • Wigtownshire Links is a similar webpage to the one above which may include other websites.
This page uses content from the English Wikipedia. The original content was at Wigtown. The list of authors can be seen in the page history. As with WeRelate, the content of Wikipedia is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.